February already...

It's a new month! January brought some crazy weather, with more snow than we've seen here in many years. January was also the best month Subtle Harmony has had since we opened a few months ago - thank you, wonderful customers! ♥

My most recent goal was to have 100 listings in the Etsy shop by the end of January - and it's done! As of right now, the Etsy shop has 103 listings and the ArtFire shop has 102. Sales keep decreasing the number of listings (which is always a welcome thing to happen!) but I've been adding things regularly... and I have two new chakra bracelets to list as soon as I take pictures and get the descriptions written. I've been doing more work with ribbon, I've started to work with chain bracelets, and I've also started working with copper - so there are some new things happening in the shops.

And there's also a new shop. We opened an account on Zibbet.com a few months ago but didn't do anything with it... until now. Over the weekend, I got the storefront ready with banner, avatar, profile, policies, all that stuff. Then I started listing - although only two items so far! More will be added soon, and I hope to get the shop filled up quickly. It's quite bare at the moment but if you'd like to check out the Zibbet shop, just go to http://www.zibbet.com/SubtleHarmony.http://www.zibbet.com/SubtleHarmony

So - that's the latest news! And here's the latest new item that's been added to the shop...

A short necklace of green aventurine with a pewter knotwork Celtic Cross pendant. I have always loved Celtic knotwork, and I can't resist adding more of it to my work.

I hope your February is off to a great start! Thanks for stopping by. ♥

Thursday's thought...

"Nothing will ever be attempted

 if all possible objections

 must first be overcome."

~ Samuel Johnson

almost a new year...

Despite good intentions, I haven't kept up with blogging! I got sick a couple of days after Thanksgiving and am just now starting to feel like myself again after two rounds of antibiotics and lots of cough medicine.

When I've had the energy these past weeks, I've been crafting things and adding to the Etsy and ArtFire shops. Here are a couple of the latest items...



A yin yang keychain. The stones I used are said to have metaphysical properties that help balance yin yang energies.



Amazonite wrist mala bracelet. This has 27 main amazonite beads, 6mm round, with a 10mm round amazonite bead serving as the head bead or guru bead. The wrist mala bracelets can be worn just for the sake of being a bracelet, no other purpose involved - or they can be used as malas or prayer beads to use while saying mantras or affirmations, meditating, counting for relaxation, and so on. Traditional malas have 108 main beads, so the number of 27 main beads used for this wrist mala bracelet is significant because it's a subset of 108. I've been enjoying making wrist mala bracelets, and we have several listed in the shops now - not only this amazonite one, but also angelite, rose quartz, black onyx, black tourmaline, bloodstone, green aventurine... as well as ones that incorporate stones for the seven major chakras. And we'll be adding others in the future.

As this year comes to an end and a new year is about to begin, I'm spending time this week trying to get more organized - but it's a challenge! Being more organized, however, is going to be one of my goals for 2011.

Whatever your goals for the coming year, I hope you achieve them...

Chloe...

Our 16-year-old cat passed away in mid-June. I blogged about it here in an earlier post. When Chance died, it was the first time in our marriage that we had no animals in the house - and it felt strange. Not only was there the adjustment to Chance being gone, but there was also an adjustment to having only two human people in the household... and no sounds of purrs or meows or wild gallops through the house, no furry creatures to pet or talk to or cuddle.

Several weeks ago, we adopted Chloe. She's a little over a year old - about 15 months. She is sooo sweet. She's timid, and it took her a while to start trusting us and get used to being here, but she's settled in nicely and is enjoying being thoroughly spoiled by us.



My husband taught her how to play fetch with her catnip mouse, and she LOVES it! She brings the mousie to us to throw and she'll chase after it (or sometimes even catch it in mid-air) and trot back to us with the toy in her mouth, dropping it at our feet and waiting for us to toss it again.



In non-cat news, Subtle Harmony is now settled in nicely at ArtFire. We have no plans to leave Etsy, we just wanted to expand to include other venues. The new facebook page is gradually gaining fans (see the right column for a quick way to check us out there). Several new items have been posted in the shops recently, and there's more to come soon.

I'm still not organized about blogging regularly... so in case I don't post here again in the next few days, I'll go ahead now and wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanks for stopping by. ♥

new happenings...

The move is official, and the SpiralSpace shop on Etsy is empty (for the moment, at least!) and everything is now at our new Etsy shop, Subtle Harmony. You can click here to visit the shop.

And... Subtle Harmony has just opened an ArtFire studio! Most of the products are the same at both shops, but there are a few differences. I hope you'll check out our shop on ArtFire by clicking here.

If you've visited the blog before, you might notice it looks a little different. I know nothing about how to do website stuff, but I've been playing around with the blogger design, trying to help this little blog transition a little from SpiralSpace to Subtle Harmony. I didn't scratch this one and start over with a new blog with a new name... but maybe that would be the thing to do. Decisions, decisions!



Despite my good intentions, I haven't blogged much these past months. My ArtFire studio has a blog feature, and I've posted one entry there since opening shop. Maybe I'll finally get better at keeping up with blogging.

Thanks for stopping by. ♥

changes...

In making decisions about business and the future, my husband and I decided to open an Etsy shop under a new name - Subtle Harmony. I'm in the process of listing all of the products from the SpiralSpace shop into the new place. I hope you'll stop by the shop to check it out - SubtleHarmony on Etsy.

We'll soon have a Subtle Harmony shop on ArtFire too, but I'm still in the process of setting things up over there and don't have any listings yet.

With the new shop and the new name, there's a new facebook fan page too - you can check it out here.

Here are a couple of the newest items in the shop...




Thanks for stopping by! ♥

hummingbird treasury...

When I first started visiting Etsy, I had no idea what treasuries were. Then I found out more about them - but I was intimidated about trying to put one together.

Well, this weekend I decided to finally give it a try. I love hummingbirds - so I decided to use hummingbirds as the theme of my first treasury. I still feel a bit intimidated about curating a treasury but it was a lot of fun to do, and I'll definitely be doing more!

I'm going to try to post here using a generating tool from Whale Shark Websites. I'm hoping this will look okay, but I realize different browsers can do different things... so if you see gibberish (or nothing at all), I apologize! If you'd like to click directly to the treasury on Etsy, just click here.

Labor Day...

When I was growing up, from kindergarten through high school, the first day of school was always the day after Labor Day. I must admit I always hated Labor Day! I didn't want summer vacation to end, and starting a new school year always kicked up my anxiety level. (Social anxiety was part of my life even as a child.)

Those days were a long time ago, though. My college and grad school schedules were different, so no more day-after-Labor-Day first day of classes. And it's been years and years (and years!) since I've been a student on any campus.

Still, even after all this time, Labor Day marks a "new beginning" during the year for me, much in the same way New Years Day does. Actually, it's only recently that New Years has started catching up for me, in terms of feeling like a time for taking stock, evaluating, starting new things.

I guess maybe Labor Day, for me, still beats New Years Day to some extent - because today I'm brimming with ideas for some new projects and I feel that sense of energetic excitement about new beginnings.

I have been - my life has been - going through a lengthy period of transition and change. The process is still ongoing, and it's... well, a whole bunch of different emotions all swirled together. An important person in my life has said a few times recently that I'm in the process of metamorphosis, moving out of a cocoon into the freedom of being a butterfly, my true self. I think that statement fits, even though it scares me!

There are so many great shops on Etsy, and as I was browsing recently I found a wonderful shop that's new to me. The Midnight Orange is the shop of a fantastic artist with many pieces that really speak to me. When I saw this one, I made one of those impulse buys and purchased it right away. I knew I needed to have this, because it fits so well what I'm going through...




The piece is Into the New by TheMidnightOrange and that's the photo from the listing. She arrived last week and she's perfect! I love shopping on Etsy.

One new thing that will be happening fairly soon is a new Etsy shop for me. I'm not sure when it will officially open - if all goes as planned, it'll open by the beginning of November. My SpiralSpace inventory will be moved to the new shop, and there will be other items there as well. I'll be posting more information here as things progress.

Thanks for stopping by. ♥