Recently, I have been organizing my home office and crafting work area, and with that comes lots of purging. As you can imagine, after many, many years of making jewelry, well, it adds up! I used to sell my work through small boutiques, online, and through art shows. So I had to make a lot of jewelry back then. Eventually, I started writing about making jewelry, which brought me to make more jewelry, and the more success I found with designing for publication purposes versus for selling purposes, the more finished jewelry I had around here. Plus, I often have vendors send me free components to use in designs, so even if I wanted to sell my jewelry, it would not be ethical for me to sell finished jewelry when I did not pay for the parts that made it up.

So what to do with all this jewelry? I found lots and lots and lots of it when I was reorganizing. Some of it is pretty nice. Some of it, well, it’s okay. Some of it is just ready to be taken apart. But before I ventured down that road, I decided to give away some of my jewelry first. Obviously, anything made with high end metals or super expensive stuff that I purchased or jewelry pieces that I rediscovered and want to claim for my own, I have kept. The rest, though, I put together in a zipper thermal pouch (it’s really a Thirty-One lunch box, LOL) and brought to work for my fellow faculty and other co-workers to take and share and enjoy.

I’m freeing the beads! I decided that seeing other people wear my jewelry will give me much more pleasure than having it sit untouched packed away somewhere. I hope each piece finds a good home.