I love you, Wednesdays.

Because, seriously, Friday is still 2 days away.

I love you, Wednesdays is my bloggin' attempt at a.) shutting up about my products and sharing the love of others' with others! and b.) sharing sources of inspiration that often stands behind my jewelry and creative process. In honor of my wedding anniversary coming up, this Wednesday I am lovin' my favorite color/design scheme: Black and White polka dots and Red Roses. Thankfully I am not alone, look at these great finds!

fabricfarrago, charmsnfindings, thecrochetdiva, JulieAnnA, risamay, AlasMyDear, kaityscreations, DaogreerEarthWorks, sweetside, OneManPaperShow, fotostrudel, leosmani, HopePhotoArt, meringueshop, PuppyDogsNPolkaDots, mollyannemake Make sure you visit their Etsy shops!

I would like to say that, for the record, I am pretty sure I STARTED the polka dot fad. Really. I started buying/making polka dot things back in 2003 - long before Target's One-Spot was exploding with Polka Dot stationary or the scrapbook stores saw the value of investing in everything dotty. Before he even asked, I told the Hubs that I would only marry him if he was cool with a black and white polka dot wedding (with red roses). He figured that, since he was the dude, he wasn't allowed to have a say anyway, and thus gladly obliged. Haha - sweet. At first finding polka dot things for the wedding was hard. Then the rest of America caught onto MY fad and we had stuff coming out of our ears. For the Christmas before our wedding, about 9 out of every 10 gifts I received had something to do with dots or red roses. Even our engagement party theme - and cake - was black and white polka dot themed (made by my dear friend Kris, click here to see the website I created for his cake business!). Before long we had more than enough black and white polka dot napkins, plates, cards, ribbons, even stamps. And when people heard of our theme and saw something dotty there after, guess whose house it ended up in? Don't get me wrong, I was totally grateful for all that we had been given. But it spun out of control after awhile and before we knew it, I had more dots than I knew what to do with. I had three wedding showers and an engagement party - all polka dots and red rose themes. Thankfully the dots weren't too out of control during the wedding - and no one told me they were seeing spots by the time the party was over! Here are a few of my favs:

I wore a Target swimsuit cover-up dress the day of my wedding and matching b/w polka dot flip flops! And yes, that's a fuzzy bride/groom hat on my head. Don't ask.

OUR. CAKE. ROCKED.

For their gift, we gave each groomsman a dotted tie with their initials monogrammed on the bottom.

A few ladies from church decided to make us a quilt with Black and White quilt squares, each signed by a wedding guest! The finished quilt now hangs in my craft room and is BEAUTIFUL!

The tables were adorned with real roses in vases, rose petals, rose candies, favors, one-use cameras, and polka dot napkins. Overload yet?

My mom spent months making these faux red rose balls for the white chairs going up the aisle. After the ceremony we brought them into the reception hall and put them on the head table. Two for one! (photo by good friend Josh)

We also had a retro photo booth at our reception, which turned out to be one of the main attractions of the evening! I provided the scrapbook materials, and everyone put at least one of their snapshots from the booth into a scrapbook right there, which became our guest book! (spread the love at their website!)

This is what happens when you have a scarf and photo frames you don't know what to do with.

I even tried to show the black and white lovin' in our outfits. We requested that the guests all wear black and white, which turned out perfectly and added an extra dimension of fun. Everyone looked great! Especially my saucy bridesmaids! (photo by Corey - click on his link to see more of our wedding pictures featured on his front page!)

So, what colors inspire you today?

Wedding jewelry - for myself!

In the spirit of my first wedding anniversary coming up this weekend, I figured it would be fun to share with you the first large scale jewelry project I ever did (even before my days on Etsy) --- my own wedding! Finishing my Masters, finding a new job, moving nearly 400 miles away, and working two jobs didn't stop me from creating a very personalized, unique, and, if I say so myself, beautiful wedding. I was having a blast creating everything from the favors, invitations, website, centerpieces, even the flower girl's basket (which I will showcase, whether you like it or not, on Thursday!). But one task was starting to get on my nerves - that of finding the perfect jewelry for everyone involved in the wedding (i.e. 6 bridesmaids, a flower girl, a mom and mother in law, 3 grandmothers, 2 readers, and 3 very special helpers). I searched EVERYWHERE. I visited every online site (except Etsy, as I had yet to hear of it) and trekked all over San Francisco and Louisville with no luck. I finally found myself in the jewelry department at Macy's in San Francisco in tears over what was becoming this impossible task. From there I walked to Chinatown and into one of it's MANY jewelry shops and a light went off. "Duh, you can make it yourself, you OCD crazy lady, you."

(sometimes I felt like this bird - lost at jewelry sea! I took this picture from the boat on the way to Alcatraz... as a visitor, of course!)

I spoke with a lady at Lawrence Trading Company on Grant Street in Chinatown about pearls and crystals. I bought a few string of pearls and commissioned her to make 6 simple pearl necklaces (and managed to talk the price down from her original offer because I knew how much they would have cost me to buy them in China - I swear this is probably the only use my Chinese skills will ever have in my life)! Next I went to Baubles and Beads in Berkeley (say that 5 times fast!) and bought several bags of both real and imitation Swarovski crystals (that way I could tinker with deigns with the fake crystals first). I even asked the lady behind the counter what she thought of putting pearls and crystals together for wedding jewelry. She looked at me blankly. Oh well, lady, I am buying them anyway. Finally I got all the necessary findings at Michael's: silver wire, sterling headpins, sterling clasps, silver crimp beads, etc. I had no clue how I was going to manage to make any of these items, mind you, and half the time I was merely assuming that the supplies I was buying were right for the job. Thus the experimenting began. I was torn between a necklace or earrings for my outfit (I didn't want to clutter myself up and do both). I looked at all kinds of designs online and could only gather that, if I was going to do earrings, that they had to be big, yet elegant. My poor fiance had to watch me try on every design I made for about a week straight and give me feedback on what I am sure looked to him like repeats. "What do you think, fiance? Should I make this 3mm longer?" That poor man... Here are two designs I made yet didn't choose to use for my own wedding - they are now on sale on Etsy (just click on the picture for the link)! Finally I made a design with some briolettes I got from Artbeads (my now favorite bead source - hello free shipping!). The result was perfect - especially since I had the satisfaction of making them myself! I also have them for sale on Etsy because I just couldn't keep it to myself! Next on my list was a bracelet for myself. I had a vague idea that I wanted a funky, bold, yet again, elegant bracelet that I could wear again in the future. I looped ends of silver wire strands with crimp beads and crimped in large and small pearls on about 5 wire strands, and then lots of 3mm - 8mm Swarovski bicone crystals on 5 other strands. To end them, I did the same crimp loop at the end of the wire, and latched them all onto a Sterling heart-shaped clasp. I was very temped to continue adding more and more layers of these strands to the bracelet, but had to remind myself that I needed to save the beads for the remaining 15 other pieces of jewelry on to-do list! (If you look closely, you can see that the non-heart clasp side of the bracelet is a hot mess - the bracelet was too large by the time I was done, but there wasn't enough wire to cut off the crimp bead and re-crimp it... so I ghetto-fied it by wrapping silver wire around the end to tuck it in. Though this totally embarrasses me now - it didn't seem to bother me a year ago - I was just happy I had pulled it off!) Next on the list were my bridesmaids. I duplicated the bracelet I made for myself for them, but instead just had 3 strands of pearl and crystal mixes and only one crimp bead on each side of the beads so as to allow them to more up and down the bracelet rather than just sitting still in one place. (You can also find this bracelet for sale on my Etsy site or by clicking on any of the above pictures!). Since I had the lady in Chinatown make their necklaces (for less money than if I had made them myself, so as to relive my conscious!) all I had left were the earrings. I tinkered again with some ideas, but settled on this simple (yet snowman looking?) 3-pearl design, finished on sterling silver headpins and ear wires. Still not done. I wanted my flower girl to match, of course, so I made her a necklace in the fashion of the bracelet, except with a big glass pendant in the center. I liked it so much that I made one for my mom, mother in law, and grandma. By then I had run out of real crystals, so I used the remaining glass crystals and pearls to make earrings for our readers and bracelets for our helpers. They didn't even notice they were "fake." I of course presented all 25 pieces of jewelry in matching black and white polka dot gift bags with red tissue paper to go with the theme :)

(Notice how Lilly's basket matches her dress, which matched my dress? And the fan as a homage to my love for China? Click on the images to see detail!)

Though I literally spent 90% of my wedding week making all this jewelry, I loved every minute of it! And when someone at the wedding noticed that all my ladies were wearing coordinating jewelry that I made and suggested I sell it, well, the rest is history.

Buddhism + Christianity = art

I studied Chinese in college and graduate school, and lived in China for a few summers before moving to Los Angeles. I am especially fascinated with the Chinese language (I studied Mandarin for 4 years in college and can still hold my own when bargaining on the streets in Chinese in San Francisco or China itself!), Chinese art, and Chinese religions, especially Buddhism. That said, I dig how Buddhists use their art as both a means of meditation and a teaching tool (ie mantra). I have tried to think of my own craft (jewelry, scrapbooking, photography, etc,) in similar terms, though in my case using the medium to both meditate on the beauty that is at our fingertips and also to praise God. While taking an art class in graduate school on the topic "visual preaching," I had to do a project on incorporating a scripture verse into a piece of art. I decided to use my Chinese painting tools to tackle the verse "Let the peace of Christ rule your hearts" (Colossians 3:15). I thought about how Buddhist monks paint a simple circle as a way of representing meditation and the circle of life and reincarnation (called zen circles). In my case, the circle would represent Christ, who, to get theological, "is the same yesterday, today, and forever" (Hebrews 13:8). But using a painted black circle alone wouldn't be enough, I needed to add some red (making my favorite color scheme complete!), preferably in the traditional Chinese signature form. So I put the Chinese character for peace (pronounced "ping") in the bottom right hand corner and in red to represent the heart (at least in my mind!). The scripture, and my new little piece of Chinese art, was complete. I later made several t-shirts with the Chinese translation of the verse written on the back and gave them to friends who liked the image. I also framed it and put it up in my living room (against my red, red wall with my other black and white frames and images). I was looking at the image a few weeks ago and thought to myself, "Hmmm, that looks like a bracelet." Well, here they are, the painting and the bracelet. I dig it: