Some Love for the Octagon Art Center ames, Ia

I really, really, love living in Ames Iowa.  I grew up here, then left, then came back and it still has everything I could ever want in a hometown.  We have great friends here, my mom and my hilarious twin brother both have stayed here, a post office with wonderful workers who I joke around with, a wild music scene, a chill corner bar where everyone knows my name and a thriving art scene.

The most visible supporter of the arts in Ames is the Octagon Center for the Arts. It is a cozy Art mecca in downtown Ames, they have a gift shop with all Iowa Artists, an art gallery with a rotating exhibit and classrooms for art workshops and classes. My wife and I just went to Daniel Marks exhibit opening last weekend.  Amazing stuff!

The Octagon was my first consignment gig back when I was a wee bitty starving artist.  That first year they made my Christmas dreams come true!  I have been consigning with them for 5 years and counting.  Every holiday season I go into the shop and swap out the things that didn't sell with my new stock of sparkly rings.  I am always surprised to see how much my craftsmanship has improved.  I was looking at pictures of my old rings from the beginning of my artistic journey.  Lets just say I have improved....

Here are some of my most recent stock I am taking to the Octagon. Shiny!

It is all a learning process.  I am really passionate about making my jewelry the best that it can be.  Sounds cheesy, but is true.

Thank you Octagon for coming along on my journey!  I love you guys.  Please, if you are in Ames, stop into the Octagon and check out all the fantastic stuff we make in Iowa.  http://www.octagonarts.org/

Does your town have passion for the arts?  What does that look like?  I would love to know how other towns support their local artists and craftsmen.

How to find your Ring Size

I get asked all the time "How do I find out my ring size?"

If you have absolutely no idea and you're stranded on a small desert Island with no place in 3,000 miles to buy beer your ring size is within a half size of your shoe size. this is just some handy trick I learned from a guy who used to sell spoon jewelry on Haight Ashbury when it used to smell like Patchouli and spoon rings were $1 and bent with artisans teeth. Today you'll notice an equal amount of hamburgers can be bought with an equal amount of spoon rings. Regardless of yogurt container and peanut butter jars, shoe sizes are still the same.

  The best way to know what your ring size is, is to go to a jewlers or the jewlery counter at your favorite big box store and ask a clerk if you can use their wide band ring sizer.  It might look something like this.

No, this is not some kind of futuristic tambourine.  The basic idea is you keep trying out the 'rings on a ring' until you find the one that fits.  Read the little number on that ring and voila! you know your ring size.

The other way you find your size is to take a ring that fits you well and have that ring sized.  you can even do that without taking off your slippers.  Try this cool site- find my ring size.com
 
They take you step by step through the process of calibrating your computer screen using a credit card, then sizing a ring you already know fits your hand.  Its pretty groovy.  This also works well if you want to find out another persons ring size to surprise them with a gift.  How awesome will you feel when they slip it on their finger and it *fits perfectly*!  That calls for extra brownie points, listen up husbands!

Most of the silverware patterns I use to make my rings make a wide ring.  This means they can be a bit of a squeeze over your knuckles, some people find a half size larger then their normal ring size fits better.  If you are not sure, just ask me,  I can let you know if the ring you like might fall into that catagory.  Otherwise, I don't have many problems with rings not fitting my customers.  I have been at this for over 5 years and have learned how to make comfy rings that fit like a charm.  Like these beauties-

• 

  Size 8 Flower Motif Sterling Flatware Ring

Size 10 Strasbourg

These are all for sale you know....

Questions?  Comments?   Lay it on me people!

Hope this info helps.

Dank
dankartistry.etsy.com

A Hot July

It has been one year since I really started working hard to do more than pay the bills. Last year I started hanging out with an old high school friend who makes stone plugs, you know the kind for big ear holes. His little business was really successful and he'd started about the same time I did. I guess it made me think about my goals and how I was going to get my little spoon bending addiction to new heights.

I started social networking, I made this blog and built my Facebook fan page. I bought a lot more inventory at once and bought some extra tools I'd been holding back on. I learned a bit about Search engine optimization and started working my way to the top of the Google ladder. Ok, I spent a lot of time working on search engine optimization. I got to page 3 eventually with lots of very minor changes to my Etsy site and working on quality back links. It took the Google spiders quite awhile to catch up with my changes. I didn't move up or down for quite awhile and I got kind of used to being in page 3.

I was behind my competition who had over 1000 listings which were mostly 50 single listings copy and pasted a dozen or so times each to make it look like a bunch of different stuff. Christmas was good for Spoon Rings and he dropped off several times to catch up with the listings he'd sold and didn't have any rings made for. I was really glad I didn't go with the Billion Listings Philosophy! I was busy enough making 40 or so rings to keep up per day.

In January Google changed the way it searches and I'm now at the top of the search engine. Seems Google figure out all items that were copies weren't any different than the others. Google now searches for individual listings and some companies that have figured it out are spending thousands of dollars to say something different about each one of their 10,000 red bar stools. Looking back I'm really glad I hung in there and stuck to my little philosophy about taking real pictures and having a listing for every item. All those days of running out in -20degrees to shoot pictures really paid off!

Today one of my competitors asked me this:

I love this ring, I have one listed also! I just wanted to ask you a question: How do you find your info on your vintage flatware? I can find virtually nothing online. The only ones I get info on are the ones that belonged to someone I know. There's tons of info about sterling stuff, but I haven't been able to find much at all on silverplate. I was hoping you would share your knowledge. Thanks! Lorri For awhile I didn't quite know how to handle the question. Then it sort of trickled in and I actually told her the truth. Here it is. do lots of research with a small amount of reward. The best info I get on any pattern comes from real people. Some people who sell silver know tons about patterns and those would probably be your best bet. Look for collectors, I usually look for people who are selling parts of their collection and ask them. Some people know nothing and some are a wealth of info. The belonged to someone you know stuff will always sell better than the "pile I got at auction" stuff. Auctions are usually estate sales and people there know the person who died. I went to an auction last year about this time and I could tell just by the stuff there she was a wild eccentric. The stories are even better. Ask around, Dig deep, and be passionate about it! Some of this stuff has been cherished for over 100 years. I just spent an hour researching the celtic pattern as well. Someone told me today that it was her grandmothers pattern and I became incredibly interested. Apparently the boy finds the snake that's dying because it's fighting with itself. He brings it home and it eats everything it eats the spirit guides, it eats the people. it eats everything in it's path and when it's done it goes back to find that there is nothing left to eat. It leaves the earth and goes for the moon and the sun. The boy meets it and shoots it with an arrow and all the souls are returned to earth. I got an awesome set of silverware yesterday that's casted. The knives are hand forged. I suppose I can tell because I'm familiar with the process. Maybe that's part of it. Try to find some patterns that have story all ready. Seek out the rare or get your hands wet with collectors spoons, I used to sell a ton of the state spoons especially locally. People you sell to have stories too. Bring it out. We're in one of the few business settings where even really shy people can have a voice. I've sold wedding rings, promise rings, bereavement rings, graduation rings, engagement rings and more. It's all about being human, give some stuff to charity auctions, sell where you can hear your customers. Ask questions! you'll probably begin to realize that it takes a lot of work (besides bending) to sell a piece of silverware. I can make a bracelet in 20 minutes. After researching, sitting at auctions, buying Materials, driving, taking pictures, and uploading, I've got at least an hour in it. After Etsy, Paypal, advertising, and tools and equipment take their cut I'm left with just enough to pay my bills. It's really the stories, the laughter and the people that make all this worthwhile.

A Possum in the Sack.

On Friday we went to bed at midnight so I could get to Market Day by 7am. Around 3am I woke up because I felt something rubbing the top of my head. I immediately melted off my pillow and flipped over to see a possum scrabbling towards beth. "Beth!" I said , no answer. Getting closer, I now gave a "BETH!" She opened her eyes and upon seeing the terror in my eyes followed them to the possum. She rolled over, aimed at it and screamed with at least 2 lung fulls of air and threw a pillow at it.

I kept my eyes on the pillow and sent Beth to find my welding gloves, a light, and a box. Once the tools arrived I slowly started peeling back pillows. Under the final pillow it was, back in the corner. As soon as I reached for it, it melted down the side of the bed. I looked down, there it still was, well, it's head at least teeth bared and apparently stuck. Whew! I sent Beth for a yard stick. I reached around and poked it and it immediately came up. I pounced on it, grabbed i, musky smell and all, and threw it in the box. We got dressed, I shot this picture and we drove off at 3:30am with the possum in a box on Beth's lap. We stopped by the haunted forest, Beth set the box down and gave it a healthy boot.

By this time We began to realize how hilarious this all was and laughed until we got back in bed. Neither of us slept.

The next day after the show we Beth put some water on the stove and we noted how the burner smelled like possum pee. She also showed me the empty bag of chocolate chips. Curiously we are also now missing the two tiny buttons to set the timer on the stove. They must have been eaten. We had seen the possum 2 days prior in the kitchen, it had caught sight of us in the living room and turned and ran. We chased it until it disappeared and I had figured it had gone through the tiny hole in the floor the chipmunks use to come in and out after we close the windows. I guess not.

The start of a long road.

A few weeks after I threw my boots in the river I came back from Colorado and met Jo Meyers Walker a local artist. I started doing work for her around her store and talking alot about being an artist and working for myself. She started a little art market in the little tiny town of Gilbert called Mardi market and I began sewing pants. Pant's were something I had done for myself since middleshool. I'd buy an old pair of pants at goodwill and split the seams all the way up and add a bunch of fabric making for a really baggy pair of pants. It took me about 8 hours to make a pair. I started making bell bottoms and skirts too. The worst part about making clothes is that 1 size doesn't fit all. If I made a pair of pants and someone liked it, it was a slim chance that it'd fit them. I think I sold two pairs the entire summer to people who worked the market with me. It wasn't like I was doing that bad, most people didn't sell anything. I started to think about all of the other creative stuff I used to do like make stuff out of junk. When I was young and living at my mothers I'd tear apart old appliances and build sculptures out of them. When I was a senior I broke a few out for an art show and won a bit of money. When I was laid off from my job in Iowa City I'd spread all the junk out on the floor and build stuff with it too, I even sold a few back then to make a few bucks. Jo thought I should teach a Class to children on building junk sculptures and lined up 5 kids for the class. I rounded up all of my junk piled it in a big canvas, wrapped it up in sack-like fashion and threw it in the back of my VW bus. I proceeded to my new career as art teacher and would drag the stuff out and open the canvas out on the ground and let the kids rummage through it. I began to notice that teaching art was very exhausting. It's like taking al of the challenges that make art an art and multiplying it by how many students there were. At the end of a two hour session I felt as though I'd put in 12 hours already.

Christmas rush

Do you hear that off in the distance? It's the stampede of the holiday shoppers. This guarantees I'll be here in front of this computer unless I'm eating sleeping or selling jewelry to real human people. I looked at my etsy feedback today. Somewhere I have 1 negative and 3 neutral feedbacks. After page 4 I decided I didn't have enough time to go through it all. I guess it's not that big of a deal. I feel like I don't have enough time a lot lately. Like I'm right on the crest of the stuff I've gotta get done wave and I'm paddling into it so I don't fall off. No glass ceiling means no time for stopping. I mean it's not like it's a bad thing, I'm making money hand over fist, it's just a little nerve wracking.

I began listening to meditation music while I'm working. I feel a lot less like being angry. It's either the music or I got most of my anger out when my car got towed.