Check out "Crescendoh"

Good Morning!  I am excited to share that on July 25, 2010, Kelli Perkins a Guest Curator on Jenny Doh's new website Crescendoh featured a link to my blog as an inspriational post.  The post she chose to feature was one that I did as a tutorial on how to make over an ugly mannequin into a useful display piece.  You can find that original tutorial here, which she chose to feature as part of her guest feature.  This display piece for my jewelry was one of my favorite non-jewelry projects that I've created, and it is so fun for me to have others appreciate it and enjoy it too.  The below photos show the before and after stage of this redo and the tutorial gives step by step illustrations and photos of her redo.

 

                                                    Before                                        After

Many of you may recognize the name, Jenny Doh, as she has been the Editor-in-Chief for the wonderful Somerset Magazine series for years, and is a talented artist as well, she recently began this wonderful site as a support to artists, their art they create and their stories about how they came to be artisians and how art has saved them as individuals.  The website is a treasure trove of inspiration and filled with great stories and links.

              One of these stories is about a gal named Kelli Perkins, and she just so happened to be inspired by my above blog post tutorial, and asked to feature it as part of her feature.  I'm so honored.  To read about Kelli Perkins as a Guest Curator, and also the link she created to my blog, you may find it here.  Scoll quite a ways down into the page to find it on the right side of Kelli's feature.  Thank you Kelli for including me and honoring my blog in this way. 

A Sweet Post About a Necklace Design From a Happy Customer

Below is the reason I design and create jewelry for a living.  On days like today, when you receive notice of a wonderful blog post about one of your designs and you've made the customer thrilled with their purchase, it really makes what I do worthwhile and enjoyable.  So thank you Candy for your purchase, and thank you for the flattering blog post about that purchase.  Enjoy the read and stop by Candy's blog.  She is not only a fabulous photographer, but has wonderful transformations on her blog as she recreates with others cast offs aka junk. 

I just had to share my little purchase with all of you! Can you tell I am just thrilled?!

Photo taken by Candy of Junk Sophistacates blog.

http://junksophisticate.blogspot.com/

http://junksophisticate.blogspot.com/2010/02/wow-look-what-i-got.html

Candy's blog reads like this:

Wow! Look What I Got!

This necklace was created by jewelry redesigner, Gretchen Schaumann from Mimi-Toria's Designs. According to her website, Gretchen's pieces are created by "using vintage, found treasures and special new elements to design and create beautiful functional art". What do you think? Extraordinary, right?

And the tag "Junker Girl"?! Get outta here! Could this be any more perfect for me? Coming from someone that doesn't spend much money on herself, I am beyond happy with my little gift...to ME, from ME!

Make sure you check out her blog to see what other designs she has available. They are all so unique so you may have a hard decision to make! I can also attest to her integrity and believe she is one of the kindest people I know.

Now let me grab that necklace and put it on! I've got vacuuming to do!

**I haven't forgotten about my dining room either, so that will be posted soon too. :)

As always, take care and keep on junking!

Candy

These are the photos I posted on my blog that Candy purchased the necklace off of.  As you can see her one photo did my necklace more justice than all three of the ones I took.  Too bad Candy lives in Ohio, or I would ask her to barter with me for her photographing my jewelry for my designs.

Behind the Scenes Making of an Article & Studio Photos

Star Tribune in Minneapolis, MN did a photo shoot of my studio, my jewelry and I in the studio and an interviewed me on August 18th. This is the behind the scenes peak of that day as well as parts of the article and links to the online version. I was asked to not reveal any of this until after it ran in the newspaper on September 16th, so here it is.

Scanned copy of the photo used in the article of me in my studio.

This was the upper 1/3 of a full page of the Home and Garden section on September 16, 2009.

Hey blogging friends, this is one of the exciting things that was happening that I had mentioned in this blog post. It has taken me a while to write about as it was published the day I was setting up at the annual Junk Bonanza event out at Canterbury Downs, and this event kept me busy through last Saturday. I've been going through email contacts, trying to regroup, working my corporate job for several days, had a daughter turn 15 & take her permit, entertain out of town guests and now while a bonfire burns in our background with a cluster of teenagers to celebrate Emily's birthday, finally I'm finding the time to write this post. I am miserable with a head cold as well, but this was such a wonderful opportunity, that I must delay no longer in posting. So for all of you out of state friends and out of the country friends, I'm sorry for the delay.

Kim Yeager of the Star Tribune sent me interview questions through emails, and than she also interviewed me in person on August 18th in our home. This text above is the result of what she chose to use for the article.

On the right hand side of the page there were photos of three of my vintage redesign jewelry pieces, as well as information about the Junk Bonanza event that was to start the following day and linked me to the location that I was to be selling in at that event.

The fabulous photography of this article was done by none other than, Joel Koyama of the Star Tribune. He is shown here photographing me in my studio. Joel also shot all of the rest of the photos that you can see online in the gallery that goes with the article which can be viewed here.

This is how Joel was able to accomplish the cut away look of the jewelry he used in the article. He used the white background to really make the jewelry stand out. He was very easy to work with and a very nice gentleman.

This photo personifies Kim. She's joyful every time I see her, with a smile on her face and is one of those people that makes you feel like she's a long lost friend. Wonderful to work with and made me feel totally at ease. I am not an in your face kind of gal, and she made me feel so comfortable and confident while interviewing me and working with me. Thanks Kim!

Studio Photos

by Gretchen

Inspire

This is one of many places that I'm inspired to do my designing

and the studio is where all of my design elements are housed.

This printers cabinet is used to store small design elements. I have two

of these types of cabinets and find them to be perfect for my storage.

More containers for storing supplies.

Various glass storage jars and containers make things easily visible.


I have two of these white racks filled with shoes boxes of supplies. This one happens to be all raw bead elements, findings and new supplies. The other white rack is pretty much all of my vintage elements. This is an inexpensive way to keep organized.

A corner of my studio with some of my favorite things.

The corner photo above is where Joel decided to take my studio photo shot. Would you believe I spent about 90 hours preparing, organizing and gathering all of my supplies to get this studio set up enough to let Kim and Joel into it, and this photo is one of the results of that. lol Truly it was a labor of love, and is now so much easier to design in my studio now that I have everything organized and contained in one room. This was great motivation.

Thanks Kim and Joel for a wonderful experience and for choosing me to be represented as a Vintage Redesign Jewelry Designer. I am blessed!

Exciting Week Ahead

I am so inspired!

Oh, how I wish I still had another month to prepare for this week. Many exciting things are happening and I've truly been blessed. Today is the end of our September occasional sale event at the French Flea, and it was another great sale. Thank you to all of my customers!

I am at our cabin working on jewelry for this weeks large sale event called Junk Bonanza here in Minnesota. I have been a shopper at this event the previous three years, but this year I am privileged to be a vendor at this event. I will be a vendor this year with three other friends. Lanette of Cottage Elements , Julie with Designcafe, and Sue of Destination Art. Look for us in the Tent Section G (G for Gretchen). lol

I will be posting through out this week with updates on my events, but also want to give you all a heads up that the Star Tribune is doing an artisan article on Mimi-Toria's Designs this Wednesday, September 16th in the Home and Garden section, page 3. This has been a wonderful opportunity for me, and I look forward to seeing the resulting article this week. I spent about 90 hours readying my studio for the photo shoot and the day they came out to our home on August 18th was a lot of fun. I will give a behind the scenes look once the article is run, as I promised to not spoil anything ahead of this September 16th printing.

Thanks for your support of me, my jewelry design and my blog.