2015 and a lot to be thankful for

It is CRAZY how long it's been since my last post, but I can explain. This year, not only did I get married, but my only sibling (my sister) got married, our house is a construction zone, and of course regular life has been happening in between there. This year has been a blessing in many ways. I have been picking up more wholesale accounts which have made up for less Etsy sales. The changes to Etsy and the site have not been beneficial to those of us old timers and seasoned sellers. Sadly, I find myself shopping less on Etsy because I'm not finding awesome things due to the change of the home page and I don't think it's a good direction for the community. Luckily I still have a loyal customer base and my shop is still going strong. My sticker and gift tag shop has been doing well but honestly I don't find it fun, it's just a 'job'. I have also devoted more time to painting and opened a new shop which you can find here. I'll post more about that another time. I realized just how long it's been since I last updated my blog, because I have been getting more traffic on here due to an insane thing that happened in November. Actually, two insane things happened. My jewelry is featured in Bead Style's January edition (which came out in November) AND our wedding was featured in the Pennsylvania/Delaware The Knot Spring/Summer edition. Crazier things have really not happened. I'm so proud that my jewelry has made it far enough to get into a magazine, it really does make all of the time, persistence, heartbreak of copycats stealing my designs, roller coaster ride of owning a business in general all totally worth it. You can see my feature on the last page of Bead Style's 'Rising Star' section. I tell a little bit of my and my jewelry's story. And it's freakin' awesome.

As if that wasn't enough, our photographer submitted our wedding to The Knot and it was chosen. Like, what the crap!!!!? Amazingness, I would curse here but that's not really appropriate. I have a LOT of updating to do, so please check back soon to see more of our wedding, more of our home renovations, my paintings for my new shop and obviously some cat photos.