New website, new tools, new jewelry!

My website, www.angelafalcone.com, has been totally revamped. Check it out and let me know what you think. I created a special mobile site since the main website is flash, so that's what you will get if you're viewing from your phone.

Anyway, I got a new riveting tool for my birthday. Super exciting! I've also had minimal saw blade breakage lately and that makes me happy. (I hope I didn't jinx myself just now...) So, here are a few things I've been working on.

Alex and I are doing the Gretna Farmers Market this weekend with her knitted stuff and my jewelry. Should be fun!

New Jewelry

It's OWL good!

Finally giving myself more time to work on what I love. Too bad silver has been around $40/oz lately (about four times the cost I was paying when I started making sterling silver jewelry in 2006). I'm turning to less expensive metals like copper and brass to satisfy my jewelry making needs. I have a couple of giant sheets of copper right now, but it's so thin! I had no idea how much that mattered with sawing sheet metal. The metal bends as you're sawing and since I'm still learning how to saw sheet metal, I end up breaking a ton of saw blades. One thing that I found helped is that I took a square of copper and hammered it a bit until the metal wasn't as malleable. I only broke one blade for this owl pendant, and that makes me super happy!

This is what I've been up to lately...



14k gold filled wire bangle bracelet
http://www.angelafalcone.com/


I just wish I had more time to make jewelry. 5 more weeks until I am officially done with undergrad classes! You're going to help me celebrate, right?????

<3

Jewelry Shopping Ettiquette 101

This is something I wrote on an old blog when I worked in retail jewelry sales and thought I would share again:

I'm not going to lie, from my experience as a jeweler and a sales associate at a retail jewelry store, I have become a jewelry snob. My lust for well-made jewelry can be compared to neither sex nor chocolate. Solid gold seems to exude a charm unlike gold filled or gold plated metals. My knees get weak and wobbly, my stomach fills with butterflies, and goosebumps surface. Diamonds may be a girl's best friend, but only when skillfully incorporated into a fine piece of jewelry.

This is why I find it insulting when a potential customer decides to ask for an outrageous discount when not only are our prices amazing, but the piece of jewelry in question is of superior quality.

Here are a few tips when on the prowl for something fabulous:

Ask before trying anything on.
This is especially important for people with newly pierced ears. Trying on jewelry like earrings is unsanitary for not only you, but also for the next customer. Where I work, we have alcohol swabs readily available for customers to try on earrings. Many places don't do this. If they don't offer rubbing alcohol, just think of the many people before you who have tried them on and decided on a different pair. How gross!!

When offered an exceptional discount, don't ask for more. You may find yourself having no discount at all!
Jewelry stores are NOT flea markets. It's okay to ask a question like "Can you do a little better with the price?" but asking for 60% off is just rude. I kid you not, this happens every day for me. If asked politely, I will usually offer 10% - 20% off but never any more than this. This is standard for jewelry stores because they usually take the wholesale price and multiply it by 2.4, leaving enough for profit and commission for the sales associate. When you ask for a ridiculous discount, you're insulting the quality of the piece. I can't even count how many times I have been turned off by a rude customer and refuse the original discount.

Don't make a negative comment about a piece of jewelry.
This includes telling your shopping companion something like "Oh, don't buy that, I can make something like it instead." when the sales associate can hear. Don't get me wrong, I'm a jeweler myself and get many ideas from shopping around, but you will NEVER hear me say that to someone at a jewelry store. It's rude and chances are you don't have enough experience or are too lazy to actually do it.

Clean hands please!
Oily, nasty, dirt-under-your-nails hands are a sales associate's nightmare. Not only are you putting your hands all over the newly polished jewelry, but also all over the just windexed glass display cases! Either take some hand sanitizer with you or ask someone at the store for some. Every place I have worked with jewelry has had hand sanitizer for those dirty hands. Please don't put the sales associate in an awkward position when he/she has to ask you to clean your hands first. - We're not your parents, nor do we want to be!

Wire Wrapping!

  

Mustache vs. Moustache

I've had a slight obsession with moustaches lately. Relax, it's nothing to worry about. But it did inspire me to create a sterling silver mustache necklace and now I'm planning a moustache themed birthday extravaganza for my 24th birthday next month! The plan is to get together with my friend, John, who's birthday is just a few days after mine and have a duo birthday celebration at a friend's hookah bar in the French Quarter with bellydancing and the works. Of course, it will be B.Y.O.M. (Bring Your Own Moustache) and I'm planning on handing out cheap felt stick on moustaches to complete strangers. It's New Orleans. Weirder things have happened. I also feel the need for some sort of moustache game involving pictures with random moustachioed strangers/moustache bingo/guess that moustache/et cetera. There will definitely be chocolate moustaches on sticks and a giant moustache shaped cake. What else am I forgetting??

So, my question, "mustache" or "moustache?" Which spelling do you prefer? I'm working on creating invitations for this classy event and I'm torn between the two. As my friend, Doug, just pointed out to me, "but moustachioed is such a better word than mustached."

Everything Old is New Again

With so many much needed changes happening in my life, I'm feeling the need to start blogging again, revamping this super old blog with a new purpose, name, and template. I think the reason why I gave up so quickly on this blog two years ago is because I created it with the sole purpose of having a blog revolve entirely around creating jewelry, when I had to fight to find the time to make jewelry, let alone blog about it. The new name I came up with (literally five minutes ago), The Frazzled Crafter, is because, well, if you know me at all, you know that I'm in a constant state of frazzled.

As far as updates go (and the reasons for being so frazzled) I have a new website (http://www.angelafalcone.com/) with a functioning online store and everything - fancy! I just landed a new job three months ago (thanks to my bestie, Alex - http://accusima.blogspot.com/, for getting me the interview) at an insurance company as an account manager. This is the first time EVER that I have a job that is neither in the retail or service industry. It's definitely refreshing. Overall, I think it was a wise career change as it leaves my evenings and weekends open for class, jewelry making and crafting, and spending time with awesome people. Speaking of class, I have roughly 4 semesters left (if everything goes as planned and I don't take summer classes) until I graduate with two degrees. I'm finally seeing that light at the end of the tunnel!

As for jewelry making, I've stopped creating so much of the simple jewelry just because it's easy to sell. I know I need to make a profit, but if I'm not enjoying it, what's the point? The whole reason why I started selling my jewelry was to fund something that I was passionate about. So I'm packing up and moving on. I recently started sawing sterling silver sheet metal and, wow, so much fun! You can see from the picture I posted here one of the first pieces I created with sawing. It's a bff puzzle heart necklace duo made for my bestie and myself. I know, cheesy, right? I still haven't learned how to solder, but I have done some PMC and am super excited about this since I learned that I can fire it over a gas stove instead of having to buy a kiln.

So, expect more posts with not just jewelry, but other fun projects I'm working on in between work and classes, like reupholstering an awesome channel back chair and playing around with a new gouache set that my godmother gave me recently.