My First Jewelry Wedding Gig

I was SO fortunate this year that my awesome friend, Sienna had recommend me to do a bridal jewelry for her sister, Garmisch who is now happily married to her husband, Tim in Australia last month.

It was my first bridal request so it was VERY exciting and lots of new experiences had been learnt. Since I’m currently living in Jakarta, Garmisch and I communicate a lot via emails. She’s the best client anyone would ever want really. She sent me so many helpful pictures of what she wants that when I finally did come up with some jewelry, no further alteration was needed. When trying to come up what sort of jewelry I'm going to make, color theme is my no.1 concern. The design, and all the rest comes second. I asked about her flowers and what the bridesmaids are wearing. In this case, Garmisch is wearing white, and her flowers and bridesmaids are going to be yellow.

This is one of the picture Garmisch had sent me of the Bridesmaids dress to let me have an idea about what sort of 'yellow' is in her colour theme.

When I went to Australia for holiday, I used this opportunity to discuss the details with her in person. I also took measurement of her, and her bridesmaids wrists to get their bracelets properly fitted. We meet up in the city’s café and she even brought her dress over!!!

These are the final result of the jewelry:

For the bridesmaids, I use predominantly peach rice pearls to match their dresses.

Fo Garmisch, she requested a chandelier style earrings and a matching 3 layered bracelet. After looking at many photos and conversations, this is what we came up with:

A few weeks ago, Sienna sent me a link on to the photos from the wedding. These amazing photos are taken by Tate Needham on the courtesy of t8photography (www.t8photography.com) So amazing in fact I'm considering him to do photos for my own wedding now. So, If you're getting married in Canberra, he's your man! ;)

This is a photo of Sienna wearring the peach earrings.

Misch looking absolutely stunning in her dress, flowers and the jewelry.

I’m not there at the wedding, but seeing my jewelry had made it there in those photos made me feel like a piece of me had been there at there, especially when I saw this photo here:

A big congratulations to the new Mr and Mrs. Riley! And thanks Sienna and Garmisch for your friendship and support! You guys rock my world…!!!

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A couple of weeks later I was approached by another customer, Carrie from Ohio, USA. She requested to make 3 sets of necklace/earrings set for her bridesmaids. Her wedding is in May. She loved a necklace I had made, but wanted the colors to be predominantly black, red, pink and

white.

Then there’s a hiccup, my supplier had run out of those oval hoops, so I had to buy hoops that are larger. After experimenting with it a couple of times the result wasn’t very good.

So I went back to the shop and looked around for other alternatives. I found round hoops that I quite like, so I made these Christmas necklace to test it out:

It was really cool because Carrie ended up liking this one better than the original oval hoops! Yay for both of us! But there’s another challenge. Carrie requested that I use non- iridescent swarovski crystals rather than the iridescent ones that I use. So I rang up all my suppliers, and none of them supply a 6mm round non-iridescent crystals. I found that rather irritating because personally, I also prefer non-iridescent crystals, and I think they used to have it. They also stop ruby colored crystals coming in… and I like to use a lot of ruby. That’s the downside of the bead market in Jakarta. They like to stop supplying whatever that doesn’t sell without any warning.

I happened to be very lucky this time because I had to go to Singapore to attend a 3 day conference. I have a bead shop over there that I normally go to, so I bought the non-iridescent crystals over there.

So this is the final outcome! Carrie said that it looked exactly as she imagined, and that made us both very VERY happy! Yaaay! =D

Looking back at this project, it did take a long time for us to work this pieces of jewelry out, and there are times when I feel that the nature of my suppliers are very unstable that I’m going to hit a dead end several times. But God has been extremely good to me. With a lot of faith, it’s just so amazing to see how it all just work out by itself in the end.

Thanks Carrie for your patience and trusting me with this project! I really appreciate it. I also can’t wait to see the photos in May of course! =)

Finally thanks to Etsy for making it possible for me to work with people from around the world. I absolutely LOVE it…!

Identity

Many weeks ago now, I met up with one of my jewelry customer as a face to face delivery. I went through a lot of problems trying to meet her at the Four Seasons Hotel- I had to go a couple of hours early, take several detours, got lost, even ran out of mobile credit at the same time. I think I was especially unlucky that morning. But it was actually worth the visit after all.

Her name is Betty. She looks like she’s much older than my mum but younger than my grandmother. She works for citibank in Singapore, my dad is her client- she saw my jewelry when I advertised it on facebook. We ended up talking for awhile, and I found her one of the most amazing woman I’ve ever met! But this blog entry is not about Betty. It’s about one of my favorite topic to wrestle with in my head: identity.

Let me build up to that now.

When I finished high school and on my way to go to the music school, Monique DiMattina, my former jazz piano teacher sent me an sms,

“Whatever you do, be yourself.”

I respect and adore Monique, and I knew that as an artist, she knows exactly what she’s talking about. I constantly kept her words at the back of my mind. But at that time I also know that even though it sounds easy, I wouldn’t understand fully what she says.

Sure enough, I faced the world, struggle through uni dodging criticism, trying to please my lectures to get the grades. My identity had been put through a very rough test. University made me come to a short conclusion: It’s very hard to be yourself, so hard that it’s almost not worth it…- until I met Betty.

I’m not really sure what we were talking about to come to this topic, but she happened to say, “It’s very easy to be yourself.” And of course I snapped, “No it isn’t! It’s very hard!” Then she said, “Being yourself is the easiest thing to do. Not being yourself is much harder.” I fell silent. I thought that my struggles all this time had proven a point, but it hasn’t. This journey is not over yet.

“If you do what you don’t want, you will be unhappy, and whatever the result is in the end, you will not be satisfied. If you do what you want and be yourself, it is much easier to do, and you will be satisfied in the end.”

“But it’s not easy!”

“Yes it is! It's the easiest thing to do! But you must remember that when you be yourself, people will dislike you.”

I immediately thought, “She’s completely right!”. I don’t have problem with being myself, I let peoples criticism hurt me, have effect on me, let them shaped me in the way I don’t want to and it makes things very confusing and hard. I like the way she was not hesitant about it. It’s not “People might, they may or may not dislike you.” She says, “People WILL dislike you”. It’s inescapable…, but happiness is at the brim of the horizon.

And then something happen at work.

I was designing a picture to go on mugs, and it took me a lot of effort because I’m still trying to get familiar to photoshop and in using my wacom. When they're done my boss immdediately offered them to our customers, but none of them wanted it. So I got a bit upset thinking that my effort is now wasted.

My boss was so nice to me that she tried to cheer me up by telling me that my design is not ugly, it’s just that sometimes it's hard to know what the market is like. “You know, there’s this design, it’s so ugly and I hate it. I don’t even want to make sample for it because I don’t want to be responsible for it if it doesn’t sell. But they liked it and we had a lot of repeat order for it. Even export wanted it!”

I feel rather hopeless and bewildered. For awhile I find myself thinking of how ugly can I possibly let myself draw for the mugs to be able to sell.

I also learnt other exceptions when selling in local Indonesian market:

-Don’t use too much purple because it’s symbol for widows.
-Don’t use too much yellow because it’s the colour of death.
-Make sure that the design is very colourful no matter what
-Don’t draw dogs because they are considered unclean.

That night at dinner time, I was complaining about this situation to my parents. My dad says, “Well… you know the story, if you’re trying to catch fish, you can’t use a bait that you like… like donuts. You have to feed them worms, even if you don’t like worms.”

But … but … but… why would I wanna catch fish if I’ve already got my donut?

Gettin into Wire!

I’ve been spending a lot of time on my beading desk, as a result of an excessive amount bead shopping. I feel rather motivated to get all the money I spent back. I mean, it is almost Christmas, and I have to be prepared in expecting the best out of my sales. Plus my ideas had been flying around everywhere ever since I got more familiar with wire.

I’ve managed to get a few rolls of artistic wire during my last trip to Aus. For Au$9 per roll they are very dear, but the colours are so great I can’t just stick with the usual silver or gold. I got like, 10 rolls of different colours and different gauge, and at that stage, I’ve never even coiled a wire in my life. Now I’m glad I got that many wires because they’re running out very fast.

Summer is approaching in Australia, and my friends had been out (even in the midst of their essays and exams) flying kites, swimming in the lake, going for barbecue picnics, late night games, movies and such. Being alone in Jakarta makes me miss them even more knowing that they’re having fun. Though, like Proverbs said, there is a time for everything. I’ve had my 3 weeks of fun when I visit them, and it’s time to sit on my bum and try to earn some again. I can’t complain, cause making things with wire is a lot of fun too.

If I was living in Australia, I’d be too tempted to go out fly a kite, swim in the lake and stay up with friends instead of staying at home making jewelry. Now that I think about it, maybe that’s why I didn’t do so well in uni. Uni was driven entirely by pressure, I'm not fased so much about what I'm going to do when I grow up so I'd much rather be out playing around. I have to admit, I’ve done some pretty stupid pointless things (for some reason having a race of rolling down commonwealth hill comes to mind). In a way I think I did the right thing, I knew those days weren’t going to last forever.


Here's a photo from 2006, taken right before we decide it'll be a good idea to race rolling down the hill... aaah memories...!

This time around, tempted or not, I’d rather be spending time at home, being in touch with my creative senses, interacting with my ideas.

It started out with a bunch of failed experiment…

I figured that it was silly to experiment on expensive wires, so I did a couple of sketches to plan ahead and use cheaper wire to make sure the idea worked. (yes I use my keyboard as a bench... I just don't have that much space in my room for all my stuff. I don't think my keyboard is very impressed with me right now.)


And then doing whatever it takes to make those sketches work.

I wrote a sign in front of me on the mirror that says, “Clean up mess after each session” in bright red. But it’s not working, only sometimes when I’m out of ideas and getting a little bored, but a the moment, there’s wires flying everywhere!

And so, voila!
(All these can be found in my Etsy shop of course!)



I’m drawn in, I’m immersed… I think I’m addicted.

The 'Artist' Within

I have discovered recently that I am, naturally, a very lazy person. It’s probably very obvious, but it’s never too late to find out these things. If I had my choice, I could be ultra lazy and ultra can’t be bothered trying new stuff, going to new places or meeting new people. So the question is, what makes me want to do stuff?

Here’s the story…

A couple of days ago I was super duper cranky at work. What happen was that, while I was away on holiday, someone had taken my artwork and modified them without my permission to sell. It’s wrong, but I shouldn’t complain because we are working in the same company, and if the company makes money then who cares what we sell. It’s all about what the customers want right?

I DON’T THINK SO…!!!

I think this whole grabbing my artwork without my permission is a lot of crap. I’m so angry how everyone these days just treat artwork like it just fell out of the sky or something! We artist have to have the talents, the vision, the idea! We have to read, research, dream, go through trial and error process, be in the mood to come up with these things, and then some thoughtless, heartless people out there just take them like art is just something that comes from a mass production factory somewhere. Cheap!

Anyway, I don't really mean to go on about that.

That situation brought me to the next natural progress of spilling to my boyfriend over skype after work. As he was trying his best to respond accordingly ( which he’s getting better at by the way) he said, “Well… obviously there’s this little artist inside you that’s trying to get out”

The title ‘little artist’ just kindda stuck with me. Suddenly it made me see little creative fairies living in me.

I never really see myself as an ‘artist’ until early on this year. I went through some really tough times last year and as I was trying to find ways to make my life easier. So yes, basically I was having an identity crisis at 23. What I decided to do was to go to my parents holiday house, by myself, in the mountains with a book my aunt gave me about self-discovery. For 3 days I was evaluating myself and the situation I'm in and figuring out why I was so miserable.

I came out of the 3 days more confident than ever knowing for sure that I am an artist- not because of what I’ve done, but because I’ve been born that way. Some people may have issues with me believing that. Some people think that you can’t be born an artist, you have to earn it. Maybe it’s true for some people, but for other people that I’ve met and know, they just are.

So, about the little baby fairies… they have always been there, and they’re keeping me going. If I don’t respect my art, express myself in music, create things using my sight, hands, my voice, hearing, they will start to cry. And if they cry, it really hurts.

Ok, so it may sound like my being is divided into a couple of different void, but that’s exactly what keeps me going. I don’t want to be drawing, or singing all the time, 16 hours a day. I’m not some crazy art maniac and I still want to live it up a bit, but if I don’t do art, something within me is starved and I could literally go crazy. This could be one of the reason why art can be depreciated. Some people survive on art like we survive on food. Honest and true artists would keep making art even if they don't get a commission or ever be rich.

That's the same little faeries inside them playing in...

Wedding Bells in February

By this December, Greg and I would have been going out for 3 years, which is for us, is an Ok amount of time for not being engaged yet. But apparently, 3 years of waiting is a little bit too long for most of our friends.

It’s only October, but it looks like my Calendar is already full for next year’s February. All these wedding dates are flying at me only in the past couple of weeks, and they all happen to land on February.

Greg’s sister, Joanne is getting married to Henry on the 6th of February. They had been going out for 3 years and the relationship has been striving through a painful long distance since Henry lives, and is from Bangladesh. They met at Bible school in Australia. They’ve been trying to get married for awhile but Henry has been having problems in applying for a VISA to get in the country to get married. Their July 09 wedding is delayed till February 2010.

Our friend Nick is getting married to Anita on that same day. That's a photo of Nick there, the only one I have of himself.... Actually, I don’t really know this couple. I’ve seen Anita around at church years ago but never really had a proper conversation. I don’t even know Nick. When I recently came to Canberra for a visit, Nick randomly appeared to crash my lemon dinner party. It was rather surprising since we don’t even know each other but now I guess I’m entitled to go to his wedding if I wanted to. I think it’s only been a year since they’ve been going out.

This Tuesday at work, what I thought is going to be a boring morning turns out to be quite an eventful one. I checked my Etsy account finding a sale from Melissa’s boyfriend, Nat. He left me a message there saying, “Are you going to be around next year’s February? Wedding bells might be just around the corner!”

I… was… ecstatic!!!

My quiet American friend Melissa had only met Nat a couple of months ago. Mel spent half her life on the computer so it’s nor surprising to hear that they had met through facebook. They finally met in person a couple of months later to find that they couldn’t stay away from each other.

When we met Nat, we immediately thought that he looks, talks, and thinks exactly like Mel. I thought this is kindda creepy, because I always thought that Mel is very unique, but at the same time, this is really cool stuff! I told my German friend, David about this via skype. His response was,

“So… Mel is getting married to herself?”- as if he wasn’t sure of what I just said or something.

“Well... more like the male version of herself.”

The couple is flying over to Boston this November to meet Mel’s parents, and if it all goes smoothly, then just like Nat said, there’ll be an extra wedding bells ringing by February. If they do get married by then, that means they had been going through the whole 3 process of going out, getting engaged and getting married within 9 months.

Half an hour later, I got an email from my friend Sally who is currently living in London with her boyfriend. “Good news! We’re engaged!”

…And apparently that’s not enough ‘good news’ for the week.

Today Greg sent me an sms saying, “I have good news! You better ring me back!” but then I never did cause my phone died and I never get that message. 4 hours later when I turn on my phone and did find out that there is a good news, Greg said to me, “Actually, I can’t tell you about it now cause they rang me back saying that they wanted to let you know themselves.”

…I think I nearly died with curiosity. My imagination ranges from my best friend Lyndell is pregnant to my friend Caroline (who is happily single) is going out with Greg’s cousin (which is just impossible really). It was really killing me! I had to ring Greg and begged him to tell me who's the person involved in this 'good news'. I think Greg took pity on me and have kindly rang the mysterious person and ask them if he can just break the news to me. But instead, they just went, "It's killing her? Good! Tell her we'll ring her on skype by 9pm, otherwise you can tell her"

Gaaargh!

I finally got a call from Skype… slightly past 9pm though. It turns out to be none of all of my guesses. It was one of my really good mate, Fizz who’s been living in Sydney. He is now engaged to his girlfriend, Sarah. He knew me well enough to know he’d get a mad reaction out of me when he break the news. I found myself taking deep breaths and yelled at him over and over again for keeping me in a torturous suspense, “DON’T YOU EVER DO THAT TO ME AGAIN!!!”

And guess what? They are getting married at the end of January or February.

So now, I am freaking out. How the hell am I going to get back to Australia this February?!?!?!

And by the way, later in the evening Greg said to me, “Maybe we should get married in February… it seems to be the way to go!”

The Cats Who Own Me

I’m starting to find things that I can appreciate out of living in a slightly chaotic place like Jakarta. As far as I know of, we have zero urban animal control. We have lots of strayed cats and dogs running around everywhere. A couple of years ago in Singapore, they had mass killings of strayed cats. They would chipped the ears of the cats that they don't kill to mark them. In New Zealand it’s very important to track all cats in the country to protect their birds. In Australia, they had mass killings of kangaroos because there are too many of them around. Recently they’ve decided that it’s a good idea to eat them. So now Australians can buy kangaroo meat in their supermarkets. Subsequently kangaroo meat is cheaper, and a good substitute for beef.

While it’s very hard to buy or keep a pet in modern countries, it’s very easy to adopt one here if you’re not fuss on what type of cats and dogs you want. You just pick them off a street... that’s how my family got our cats.

It started out when my little brother Vincent came home with a mommy cat from school that just gave birth to 2 little kittens. When the kittens no longer need their mum, we kept the kittens but return the mum to the school.


Vincent had named these cats, but I never knew what they are. I naturally call the guy cat “Fatty” cause he’s got a small head but has a fat belly that made him look so disproportionate. I named the girl cat Mimi as she is a very self-centered cat. She always meow’s “Me, me, me, me…” and looked at me like she needs something. But really, she just wants to get into my room and hi-jacked my bed. Then one day, mum decided to take the cats to the doctor to get them sterilized. The doc asked her what the cat’s names are for documentation purposes. Surely enough, she had no clue what they are, so she made them up on the spot…. And that’s how our cats ended up with 3 sets of different names.


A couple of months later, as I was going for a morning stroll in a tea plantation with Simon and Daniel, a little boy kitten approached us. That kitten followed us for the whole walk as loyal as a dog. The walk wasn't easy, it was very hilly and rocky. When we nearly reached the end, he lied down and stopped following us. We didn’t have the heart to leave him there as he looked very tired and hungry… so we took him. After watching Ice Age 3 the night before, we christened the cat as ‘Rudy’, and unlike the other cats, his name remained consistent thus far.

I’m enjoying the ups and downs of keeping these cats, but I'm especially close to Mimi. Maybe it's because she's a girl. She is a really good companion for me when I get sick or lonely. She’ll sit quietly on my lap as I’m beading or working on the computer. She’ll even sit next to me and put her paws on my shoulder when I’m sick in bed. She likes to meow outside my room and sit there till I open the door just to get a pat... or to hijack my bed. As you can see on the photos, she could REALLY get comfortable in my bed! I'm starting to get used to it, besides, I get to take all of these really funny photos. And the best thing is, even if they do wake up because of your flash or whatever, they just look at you, yawned, stretch a bit, and just go back to sleep peacefully, unaware of the evil things you are plotting behind their back....



When I first decided to adopt Rudy... he was never meant to live with us for a long time. I didn't know how we can keep another cat in the house. Though, over time I think he had stole my mum's heart, especially when my niece who is only a couple months old loves playing with him. During the holidays when all of us weren't around, he must've got bored and he disappeared for days. My mum got panicked and got everyone around the neighbourhood to look for him. We finally found him in a neighbour's house with another cat.

I also enjoy watching little thrills that these cats do to keep me amused around the house. Like this photo! Today was an especially hot day. As I opened the fridge for an orange juice, Rudy jumped in and made himself fully comfortable inside the fridge. Instead of immediately taking him out of the fridge, I ran to my room and grabbed a camera to take this photo. I just hope that my parents won't see this... :p

So yes... the joy of living in a country with no complex pet order is getting a free pet. My x housemate Melissa looooooooves cats. I think she's almost famous for it. But unfortunately, most rental properties won't allow pets. When she found out that I have 3 cats at home through facebook, I think she was very jealous! All I have to say to her is, "Come and live in Indonesia! You can have 10 cats for free if you want!"

I reckon this can be a selling point in a 'Come and live in Indonesia' brochure... if there is any....

Money, money, money

I’m so broke at the moment… and as much as I hate being broke, I think I deserve it. If I count my blessings and really think about how much I have and done with the money, all the travelling that I did, I should be glad that I’m broke. I don’t think I have enough room if I ever plan to play around!

I got myself a new gadget yesterday. It’s a small Wacom intuos 4. I couldn’t afford to pay for it so dad helped me. He wants me to have it anyway and it’s part of the deal that if I pay him the huge amount of sum that I borrowed of him, he’ll help me pay for the wacom. I’ve owed him a lot of money since June. I borrowed the money to pay my travels around Indonesia with Simon and Daniel, then ticket and VISA to go to Australia. I calculated it tonight and it totaled to US$1700. I gasp, thinking that it’s $200 more than I thought it was… leaving me with only $200 in the bank… plus I need to pay $60 for the beads I just ordered. Being a part time Indonesian worker, I really don’t get too much. I have to say that at times like this, I’m just glad that I’m living under my parents wing… and I’m not ashamed of it!

Though, I feel like I just got hit in the head and I’m starting to think of ways to get out of this… better get cracking with my jewelry then!