Blog de White Peacock Designs

Regretsy would call this "Tragicrafting."

2014-04-28T22:03:00.001-07:00

For a friend. I love ya, gurl.

Did ya miss me?

2014-03-30T15:19:00.001-07:00

Hello campers!

Since last I posted here, I've moved 400 miles, made jewelry for drag queens and princesses, had surgery, and made some decisions about what White Peacock Designs is going to look like. I did the craft fair circuit in 2013 and had FAIL. As did a lot of vendors. The economy is not doing well, and even if one does basic pieces that meet a lot of tastes, it still might not sell - plus there is the added bonus of not being true to yourself. So what's the point in not being true to oneself?

(Thank you Latrice.)

SO. I'm going to honor the designs I always wanted to make. It's gonna be fabulous, glittery, mid-century-influenced, and distinctly ME.

In the meantime, I'm putting up some inventory on my Artfire store to get rid of old stock at sweet deals. Check back for new pieces!

Shameless Fan-Girling for the Beadin' Path

2010-09-18T19:38:00.001-07:00

Beadin' Path is one of the greatest bead stores in this country. I am not just saying that because of this awesome contest. I am saying that because they have a spectacular selection of beads. Since my crack is vintage lucite, I can say that I honestly know of no single greater resource for vintage lucite in the United States. Also, they are one of the only sources I regularly check to find out if the elusive Article 44 Swarovski has magically come into stock (They and eBay are the only two retailers I have ever seen acknolwdge the existence of the 44.). They have the best trove of rare Swarovskis I've found in a brick-and-mortar, and anyone who knows me knows how I like teh spakleth.

When I found out about this contest, I had to get on in there. And I wanted to do it with a piece some may find simple but which I passionately love.

(AA battery provided for scale)

This is my "event" choker. 20 perfect 20mm vintage lucite silver rounds, spaced with bicone silver Swarovskis that you can barely see but which provide an unexpected sparkle as you turn.

I can clinically sort through a pile of beads and decide what I want to sell, but there are moments I see a bead and think MINE. That was the reaction I had to these silver lucites.

May the best (and luckiest) beader win!

Making fabulous stuff with your fabulous stuff.

2010-07-05T14:28:00.000-07:00

A friend asked me to make a bracelet with some New York subway tokens that had belonged to her dear, departed father.

After a couple of quick Facebook messages and one trip to the post office, I lovingly created this:

That's my friend wearing her father's subway tokens adorned with gold brass chain and wire and orange Swarovskis.

Kim, it was an honor. :)

Seeing my jewelry on the recipient makes me rejoice like nothing else can. I imagine it's like watching your kid win the spelling bee or witnessing your purebred pooch receive the blue ribbon. When I'm commissioned to make jewelry, it's something I take very seriously. I am going to decorate another person, and that's a ritual, that's me honoring that person's essence, that's me giving someone a physical symbol that triggers joy (if I've done it right!).

How may I fabulously adorn you? Drop me a line or a comment and let me know!

White Peacock Designs Arises and Meets Its Destiny - Part 3

2010-06-05T21:09:00.000-07:00

And so we have Baked Freddies! I snapped this pic to show that we also had some Freddie Tacos. They were tossed.

The next step was varnishing. Eric took care of this part for me - here are the victims laid out and air-drying. Sea of Freddies.

Next, adding a silvertone jump ring. Such a task, when it must be done 310 times in a row (the count keeps dropping as a few Freddies caught lint in their varnish, etc.), needs some entertainment. So, Jon, say brilliant things while I work.

The next step was 305 (more collateral damage) pendants slipped into baggies and stapled to 305 promotional postcards, designed by Eric of course. I want to give a formal shout-out to the Copy Shop in Manhattan Beach for my postcards- they did a fantastic job in a very short time for me when all, and I mean all, the local big-box print shops could not be bothered to help me out. We love indie shops!

With the assistance of a dissected LA Weekly, the babies (I may have started to get a wee bit attached at this point) were packed for shipping.

And oh Jesus H. Macy, the shipping.

That right there is a 55-minute wait at LAX Post Office. The number of people servicing this line at any given moment? A maximum of two (2).

But that is OK, because they took my box with my 305 pendants with their 305 silvertone jump rings in their 305 bags stapled to 305 postcards and stuck Priority postage on it and set it on a cart which would eventually be wheeled off to the sorting facility and then put on a plane...for Vegas.

As I speak, my 305 pendants are in the bags and hands of 305 fabulous attendees strutting their stuff at the Burlesque Hall of Fame. 305 people are looking at my little labor of love and deciding whether they want to toss it or come visit my website. And some will pull out their iPhones or Droids or laptops, or wait until they come home to their desktops, and they will casually surf over to my site and look at my sparklies.

No matter what happens, I made it happen in less than 10 days, I have reached a glamorous, dazzling audience I always wanted to reach, and I am proud.

White Peacock Designs Arises and Meets Its Destiny - Part 2

2010-05-28T23:12:00.000-07:00

After racking my brain in part 1 of this saga, I was hit with inspiration from a theme I kept seeing on Craftster - Shrinky Dinks. Apparently Shrinky Dinks are freakin' hot among the Indie crowd. I had no idea.

And the beads said, "GO FORTH AND MAKE 300 PENDANTS OF YOUR LOGO IN SHRINKY DINK. NEVER MIND THAT YOU HAVE NEVER DONE IT BEFORE. NEVER MIND THAT YOU HAVE LESS THAN TWO WEEKS. DO IT NOW. YOU WILL PREVAIL."

The long story short is: 17 hours, approx $250 in supplies.

The picture book version goes like this:

Eric modified the "Freddie" logo (for those of you who don't remember, Freddie is the name of the White Peacock) to fit better on a disc shape. After mass raids of all local Michael's, we pulled together 10 packs of ink Jet Shrinky Dink, destined to generate 330 logos (I believe in spares).

I found the punch worked much better if I used Eric's paper cutter to trim the edges of the Shrinky Dink sheet first.

320 printouts of Freddie on Shrinky Dink, meet the Marvy Uchida Giga Craft Punch. I flipped it upside-down so I could see the placement and used a towel to cushion the punch and my hands. The punch is a heavy bastage, and sadly my hands were red and sore for over a day after this part of the project. Remember, though, I was defying its shape's physics and using it 320 times in a row.

Then, a simple hole punch to make the hole for the jump ring.

The discs were baked 6 minutes a batch just slightly varying from 300 degrees.

In the next installment, I'll show you what they looked like when they came out of the oven and how they were packaged.

White Peacock Designs Arises and Meets Its Destiny - Part 1

2010-05-23T15:27:00.000-07:00

I have had White Peacock Designs as a business since 2007. I have been doing jewelry since 1992, when I first picked up a bead at the Bead Shop in London (that's a story for another day). I love my beads. But I have not given my business - my entrepreneurialism - the respect and priority it deserves.

While life has been going on in 2010, White Peacock has been in the back of my mind. There was just so much to do, and I'll never be professional, and why am I unable to get my act together, and whine-de-friggin'-blah.

Apparently the Universe got sick of this, because last week I got a colossal kick in the sparkle-pants.

The hubby (I've referred to him as Silent Partner in the past, and I'm stopping that now because he is much more than that. Love you, Eric!) worked it hard and got his awesome tropical and tiki creativity a prized vendor slot at an upcoming event called Tiki Oasis.

Tiki Oasis is a celebration, as you can guess, of all things tiki. Also, if you look at something and think "ring-a-ding-ding," chances are it has made an appearance at Tiki Oasis.

One of the organizers of Tiki Oasis, Baby Doe of the fantastic Devil-Ettes, offered us the chance to also vend or participate at another upcoming event, the Burlesque Hall of Fame.

The checkbook said "no," but the beads said, "THE MOMENT HAS COME FOR WHITE PEACOCK DESIGNS TO RISE UP AND GO FORTH. DO THIS YOU B1TCH OR YOU WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOURSELF." Oh, and the deadline to do anything was just a couple of weeks away.

Since I was not going to be able to go in person, how was I going to make the White Peacockian presence known? The image of burlesque is all sparkles and joy and creativity and beauty and fierceness. White Peacock NEEDED to be there.

The answer...in our next installment!

Downtown LA and the Peacock

2010-01-12T02:11:00.000-08:00

White Peacock Designs is going to be expanding into new territory. The IRS likes when a vendor makes money because it make them look, you know, legit.

While I work on finding indie craft fairs to sell at in 2010 (Renegade Handmade Los Angeles is going to be in a park in the open air in Downtown LA in late July. What could possibly go wrong? Apart from White Peacock seeking a roof and air conditioning elsewhere...sigh....), I've decided to use Downtown LA for something else.

Specifically, black chain.
Sweet, elusive black chain. Hard-to-find-online black chain. I love this stuff. The wholesale vendor told me they can't keep it in stock. I would agree, because Michael's can barely keep it in stock. And yet, a certain local bead store has twice-refused my request for them to carry it because "our customers are not asking for it."

So fine. Next week, look for my Artfire store to pick up the torch and carry it instead! I'll be shooting photos of the chain this weekend with Silent Partner and hope you'll be sampling my chain wares next week.

(Oh - that bit of red is to find out if hungry jewelry makers want red chain. Do ya? Do ya?)

"She keeps all her goods in the shop window."

2009-12-03T00:01:00.000-08:00

Pay attention chilluns, because this is how it's done on the cheap.This is our glamoxurious table for LA Derby Dolls Vendor Village. Item by item:

4 displays built by Silent Partner consisting of 99 Cent Store badmiton rackets and plastic containers, blue-green fake fur we already had from my ill-fated art show attempt, and a bucket of plaster from Michael's.
4 lime green locker shelves which happened to hit the clearance table for a whopping $1 each at Staples precisely as Silent Partner and I were passing it on the way to check-out. They are zip-tied and stacked two-per.
One lovely purple pre-lit tree from Target. Holiday festivities, ya know.
1990's Ikea starry tablecloth.
Striped tablecloth gifted to us by the MIL when we began our short bout of living in sin.

Today I also got in the mail a USB cord to connect my phone to my laptop for modem connectivity. A non-smartphone, connected to a laptop running Vista. "What could possibly go wrong?!" But if it gets us Paypal, I'll tap-dance for the customers while my laptop shudders along.

Thank God I can also honestly say that 99.9% of my jewelry is done. Tomorrow will be pricing!

Laptop testing tomorrow. Sleep tonight. 4 late-nighters in a row is eating my solar plexus.

Derby derby do, be derby derby....

2009-11-29T01:50:00.000-08:00

There's been some polar changes in White Peacock-land over the last month.

Silent Partner and I will officially be vending at the LA Derby Dolls championship bout on December 5, 2009. The women who frequent a Derby bout are strong, independent, stylish, and love a non-demeaning good time. I have a strong feeling I have found my niche.
The niche itself has changed. I've been working with parakeet chain and plastic charms and lampwork glass and less-delicate designs. The usual customer of White Peacock Designs would not recognize, for example, this cheerful little necklace:

Yep, the Tiara Chick made that.

The economy is what it is. I want White Peacock to meet those challenges while still piquing the interest of people enough to convince them to open their wallets. Sterling and gold are at an all-time high. People need a cheap, legal, innocent thrill. And land o'goshen, this is fun stuff, arty pretensions be damned.

The challenges in sourcing some of this stuff has been ridiculous; it can't even be found online unless one wants to deal with China directly. One benfit of this saga is that I now have some ideas for future online vending of some jewelry supplies that just might pay the White Peacockian bills. There seems to be a tremendous disconnect between what some artisans want and what they can even find to buy.

More updates to come as we count down to Derby Vendor Village!

Latest Creative Moments

2009-10-29T18:21:00.000-07:00

Silent Partner and I have begun to collaborate on jewelry! Yes, in addition to his many artistic endeavors, he is now becoming quite an expert at resin. Check this out:

He created the original scuplture, carved this mold, and is now making resin pendants that light up with a battery-operated LED. We plan for him to start making beads and for me to make them live as adornments.

I've also taking up knotting. I feel that knotting shows the vintage beads I love off in an era-appropriate way. Beads like this:Oh Beadin' Path, how you tempt me. I can't wait to knot these babies.

And finally, Silent Partner and I are investigating another venue to sell our stuff. We can't talk about what it is yet, but if we can make it happen it would be awesome!

Oh, and in NO WAY WHATSOEVER related...buy tickets to the LA Derby Dolls Baby Doll bout on November 15.

Artfired Up

2009-10-11T20:18:00.000-07:00

Behold my move from Etsy to Artfire! This is White Peacock Designs' new online insta-shop. You can see on the right side of this blog that I have added a studio widget so that people can see what's going on in my shop.

So far, the Artfire experience has been painless.The most challenging part has been that my pics of past work appear to have been swallowed in a computer migration. This explains why I didn't get started when I said I would in September. Lesson learned - one can never be too organized.

Silent Partner is shooting more jewelry pics as I type. As soon as I have a good run, I'll post some more itms to my store. Stay tuned!

I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel.

2009-09-27T23:10:00.000-07:00

In between the last post and now, I and Silent Partner extracted ourselves from an artists group we'd joined over the summer in the hopes of meeting more artists. Instead, we had a run-in with some Arteests and made the decision to leave. As I do believe the aims of the group are noble, I'm not going to name them and only wish them well.

These are the two entries I'd made for the art show they're putting on.

"The Brites of Spring" featuring my tiara Spring.

"Come In...If You Dare," featuring a new tiara, Blood Red Rose Black

What Silent Partner and I have learned:

We're going to need to go it alone for a while. I need to focus more on developing new wire skills and different tiara designs before I do things like volunteer for committees and run spreadsheets for auctions.
I am so grateful that joining this group forced me to stretch my wings - apparently I have a talent for set design or window display! Who knew?
We are not Arteests. As SP put it, "we just like to make fun stuff." To that end, I've started perusing the forums at Craftster and the Indie Craft Shows Blog.
SP and I have had our eyes forcibly opened to other possibilities for selling our art, and we're going to have a good time exploring them.
Most importantly, I have never been so proud of my art. I stood up for it, and I am now all the more passionate over it. And dammit, that rocks.

This week, I'll be posting to Artfire. I can't want to share the news when that happens!

The triumphant, grandiose return of White Peacock Designs.

2009-09-05T23:17:00.000-07:00

So, um, hi.

Yes, I've been away for a while. Various things have gone down, all of which are positive but overwhelming en toto.

White Peacock Designs now lives on a new server. Quick lesson: Verio Web Hosting = teh suck, OTV Computing = the bomb diggity.
The summer saw a job transition with exponential responsibility growth thereof. I am happy with my new day-gig and am very, very busy.
I have been developing various businesses on the side. I'll be mentioning them later as I pick this blog back up.
Etsy has been useless for me (as other internet savvy peoples have pointed out). I've abandoned my Etsy store and have opened a store on Artfire. I have heard kind things about selling there.
The last few months have seen me take time to review my style of jewelry-making and acknolwedge that my simple tiaras might not be what people want. I need to develop my style so that pieces become more recognizable as a White Peacock design. Nobody doubts when Eni Oken has made a piece, but anybody who's taken some time with pliers and wire could make what I make. And while I dearly love my pieces, each and every one of them, girlfriend's gotta make that dollar to buy more beads!
I began poking at filigree and resin.

It's time to start churning out more jewelry and expanding my skills, to update the website, to populate my Artfire store, along with all the other big and fabulous plans I have. And to use this blog to re-open and re-focus the jewelry channel of energy in my life. Please re-join me in this journey of creativity.

Hey, who needs a website? Apparently not me!

2009-04-13T09:58:00.000-07:00

Click here to see White Peacock Designs! Oh, nothing comes up? Well, why don't I try contacting my website hosts to fix that? Except I've already been in contact with them for three weeks.

This is Day 3 of being crashed thanks to my website "hosts." The three-week-long saga to move my website to a new "enhanced" server within the same company has culminated in a dead website. This, after I was promised two separate ways that I would have no downtime.

You can imagine what the next news about my website will be.

If you have any tiara needs, please contact me via this blog and I will reply tout suite! :)

Please help Ike-a-Saurus!

2009-04-07T20:11:00.001-07:00

Meet Ike. He's a sick little dude whose daddy lost his job and the family's medical insurance right before Ike landed in the hospital for several weeks. Friends of Ike's family are throwing an online/silent auction for him.

Yes, White Peacock Designs contributed a tiara to the auction. Look at that happy little face despite all his tubes. How could I not?

Please send the family love and support and maybe a few ducats. Thanks!

Hamster in a Wok

2009-04-03T21:04:00.001-07:00

That just about says it all.

Gervais + Elmo = Hilarity on 'Sesame Street'

2009-03-12T18:18:00.001-07:00

"Home" was never sung like this.

2009-03-12T00:22:00.001-07:00

BNL LIVES!

2009-03-08T03:23:00.001-07:00

Their first show since Steve left the band, last night in Florida. The joy and adrenaline in the band is palpable, and those fans are singing as if they personally owed it to the band to help out. My own personal moment of glee is Ed and Kevin collectively taking on the traditional end-of concert aria. Nobody will ever belt this out the way Steve did, but the knowledge that the aria will go on is an immense comfort.

Long live Barenaked Ladies, Mighty Conquerors of Douchebaggery!

He may be lavendar, but his money's green!

2009-03-06T15:06:00.001-08:00

I want to invoke my Argentine heritage, go back to Argentina, get my hair did by this hairdresser, dance the tango in the central plaza with the older gentleman, and then buy everyone a round of good local wine and steaks.

Silent Partner then pointed out that if the wife had actually gotten out of the car, then they would have been there all day charlando!

Turning the Page? The final Page? I'm fresh outta clever.

2009-02-25T23:27:00.000-08:00

Goodbye, Steve Page. I hope you find what you're looking for. A lot of the BNL Cupcake Cheerleaders have been making giddy about the opportunity to see you live separate from the band you co-founded. Good thing you hate LA anyway and would probably have to be hand-carried here now that you're under no obligation to anyone but yourself (and isn't that delicious).

By the way, that lovely illustration above was courtesy of the Huffington Post. I was shocked, especially since Steve is known to be a lefty. It seemed very Perez of them.

It will be a while before I can listen to their music again. Their music is full of too many memories, too many important moments, and to know that it will never be the same again live...well, I hope the grief stage gives way to anger quickly.

Thank God I have new plans for White Peacock already outlined and in the works - I feel like I can't afford any more delays, whether internal or external.

Give these ad makers a Nobel Peace Prize!

2009-02-20T12:41:00.001-08:00

You can't watch this and want to wage war afterward. You just can't.

"Go away! I do not need refinancing!"

2009-02-10T20:55:00.001-08:00

Incidentally? "Coraline" is much worth seeing. And I sincerely hope I will never be as evil a crafter as the, um, tailors in this film.

Excerpt from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

2009-02-01T22:49:00.001-08:00

"After the wedding cake...was cut, everybody hit the dance floor again. Even though it was getting late, and the toddlers were sleepy-eyed, nobody wanted to leave.... Instead they stayed and danced. They waltzed, they jerked, they Cajun two-stepped, they mash-potatoed, they jitterbugged, they fox-trotted, they boogied their little hearts out.

From her perch on the crescent of the harvest moon, the Holy Lady looked down and smiled at her imperfect children. The angels attending her that night felt little twinges of longing to be in human form.... They wanted to rock, they wanted to roll, they wanted to feel the peculiarly human feeling of having a perfect night in an imperfect world. They wanted to taste the saltiness of tears...the way - if truth be told - almost everyone did on the night Sidda Walker wed Connor McGill....

When the dancers spoke, breathless, happy, in between songs, they told each other the night was charmed. They told each other it felt like some kind of spell had been put on them.

To this the Blessed Mother only winked. To this she would only say, 'Them that know don't tell; and them that tell don't know.'"

In an imperfect world, may our mutual endeavors be as perfect as the angels allow. I love you, Silent Partner.