What is Your Weather Personality?

One day, late last year, I was sitting at my beading table, and looked out the window, I noticed a sunshower had just begun to fall ever so lightly. I was very happy, because I love rain, especially sunshowers which make me a bit giddy and girlish to be honest. Instead of running out into it, as I often do, I reached for my bead tins... I knew I had some gorgeous new fire polished jonquil beads, and that I also had the very beads to team with them to create a pair of earrings that I would call Sunshowers. As I created the cascade of golden beads, I worked carefully to make sure the earrings would truly portray the joy and natural wonder of a sunshower. Then I began to think about what a sun shower symbolically represents... next thing, I knew I had to create an entire range of weather inspired jewelry with a personality profile for each weather type. My new range of jewelry was born that very afternoon and has been launched in my etsy store today!

You can come and browse the new creations, explore your weather personality, and maybe pick up a piece of jewelry to make a statement about yourself. Are you a sunshower? a rainbow? winter rain? summer sunshine? Perhaps you are more like a perfect spring day, a summer storm, fog, or even snow? These can also make fun gifts for people you know who match the descriptions to a tee, and each piece of jewelry comes with the weather personality profile printed out.

Sun Shower earrings

Rainbow Earrings

Winter Rain

All the weather personality profiles are in my new store section, which you can browse and have some fun with http://www.etsy.com/shop/Starzyia?section_id=7756024

I'd love to know what your weather personality is when you're done, you can comment here or on my facebook fanpage to tell me, and why not have a guess at my weather personality, just for kicks!

My Newest Creations...

Talkin' Turquoise earrings.
This is the first time I've created with my turquoise beads, these combine both colour therapy and crystal healing. I love that this stone is also known as the 'friendship' stone. This radiates platonic and unconditional love, is an ancient symbol of prosperity, and was revered for its protective qualities. In colour therapy this colour is very balancing for the self esteem, helps express matters of the heart, and also helps envelope you in that unconditional love.
In my etsy store now.

Violets Are Blue, Necklace.

I made one of these for myself two or three years ago and people have asked for similar, so here it is, first in best dressed! This has a medley of blue, violet, purple, and silver grey beads.
In my etsy store now.

Unamed as yet, I'm thinking possibly California Zen for the necklace title.

Gorgeous beaded metal filigree button and dazzling leaf on a plated silver snake chain.

Will be available soon.

Miss Delicate Elegant earrings.

I love the dark note to these swarovski baroque drops and the vintage feel of the copper flower pieces.

In my madeit store now www.madeit.com.au/Starzyia

Sayonara Gypsy earrings.

Gorgeous mini chandelier earrings with tiny little green beads that glow lovely in the light, and a cloisonne bead in the middle.

Will be available in my etsy store, very soon.

And how are your creative efforts going? making anything interesting? made anything using my vintage postage stamps or yarn? I'd love to share your interesting work, so tell me about it!

AusDisasterRelief Shop, Etsians Donate Quality Handmade items to fund Charity

In response to the terrible flooding in Australia, a team of volunteers have launched the AusDisasterRelief shop on etsy. This is a place where the community of etsy sellers are donating quality handmade creations (and the costs to ship them to their buyers) so that funds go to the Queensland Premier's Disaster Relief Appeal.

Our nation is witnessing homes and families being swept away in an unbelievable, and epic disaster, and we need to reach out and help all who are hurting as a result.

On a postive note, this is a remarkable time to buy handmade, and it is a joyous feeling visiting the store and seeing the diversity of items donated for sale, watching as the number of sales steadily rises, and to feel that through our talents and dedications we are united against adversity.

How you can help the store...

You might be an etsy member (or perhaps madeit, artfire, folksy) with quality handmade items to donate, which you can do by contacting the store.

You might shop and buy from the store, in which case you will be making a charitable donation and receive handmade goods with no shipping fees.

And at no cost to yourself, you could share the link to the store on your blog, facebook, twitter, kaboodle, etc, and you can also promote individual items within the store in the same way using the built in share feature on site.

The earrings at the top of the blog post are my first donated item to the store, and are in store now http://www.etsy.com/listing/65892493/happy-trails-follow-a-butterfly-earrings

The direct shop link is http://www.etsy.com/shop/AusDisasterRelief

Building a Twig Wall....

Another wonderful day in my creative life.... complete with dreams, obstacles, perseverence and ultimately - solutions.

My 'Rule Titania' earrings from my madeit shop were to be transfered into my etsy shop, where I feel they are more accessible to the public. I thought I should do a new photo shoot for them and instantly visualised them sitting inside a birds nest, this is the 'dream' part of my day.

The obstacles were that I did not have a birds nest, and when I very enthusiastically attempted to make one... I discovered that birds are ultimately better at building birds nests than humans even though we have opposable thumbs!

My 'solution' was to build a twig wall, on a bed of leaves and use that for my photo shoot.

These earrings are now available in my etsy store www.starzyia.etsy.com

Since I had twig city set up on my dining room table, I took photographs of some of my new colour therapy earrings, which are to be added to the store during this week.

While building the twig wall, I was thinking about the three little pigs, (the house made of twigs), especially when I had to knock it down and re-erect it. I am happy to say I did manage to completely make the wall of twigs without use of any wire, while attempting to make a nest I used kitchen twist ties to make rings of stick and vine but they wouldn't hold and my twigs kept snapping.

So as you can see I had fun 'playing' (working) today!

Open for Business in 2011!

I'm open for business, 2011, yay! I have enjoyed my break, the hardest part was starting vacation, the first two days I was itching to go online and work, but after that I did get used to it so much I postponed my return a whole day. Now I am just as keen to do all that my creating and promoting requires and to plan my year.

What's New for Starry Girl by Starzyia in 2011?

Well I have just scrapped my existing store sections (earrings, jewelry, etc) in favour of sections like 'colour therapy', 'crystal healing', 'symbolic and traditional' etc this is a trial phase, so if you are familiar with my old sections and visit the store now, I'd love to know if you think this makes finding stock easier or more difficult.

The colour therapy section aims to provide a burst of colour energy and look gorgeous for you while being very thrifty.

The crystal healing section is where you will find natural gemstone creations that combine the healing properties with colour therapy too... super combinations for any purpose.

Don't forget that many of my creations will be drawn from multiple disciplines so it is worth looking in multiple sections.

I have just listed the three crystal healing necklaces pictured in this post, and will add through the year. Currently I have chrysocola, jade, new jade/serpentine, citrine quartz, rose quartz, apatite, and autumn jasper healing creations in my etsy store www.starzyia.etsy.com

My facebook birthday club is now up and running, members receive a 15% store discount for my etsy and madeit stores during the month of their birthday. If you haven't signed up but would like to, visit my facebook fan page (use the link on the right of page), click like (if you are not already a liker) and click on discussions.... under the birthday club discussion, post the month of your birthday, and you will be a full member!

I'm hoping all my friends and supporters have a great 2011, best of luck with all your adventures, creations, and goals, xxoxoxx Starry

Favourite Projects of 2010

First, the big job that I've put off for years... the postage stamps. I have my own childhood album, and the albums I inherited from my grandmother, plus thousands of loose stamps sent to me by my aunty. I had to make index lists for all the albums, research the value of the stamps, and this last part, not quite done yet... approach a stamp trader with the stamps I'm not keeping. While doing this immense job, I managed to sort some lovely sets of stamps for my etsy shop so that the beautiful stamps can be used in other people's creative work. For years I have known I have to do this job, but it was so overwhelming, chaos can freak me out a little bit, and it was also difficult to find the space necessary to sort the loose stamps into separate nations, then find separate storage envelopes or acid free baggies for them to keep them separate... I used to sit on the couch and hyperventilate a little bit, until one day I could actually begin to do the work.

I have also begun to use some of the stamps myself to make jewelry and hopefully this year some paper crafts and digital art creations too.

Amber's 18th Birthday card... this is a scanned image sot the text is not as clear and easy to read as the actual card. I collected some of my favourite quotes for her as she embarks on her life in the great big world. The quotes used are as follows:

Life is a cup to be filled, not drained.

A heart that loves is always young.

Be grateful always.

Find beauty in all that surrounds you.

When you know yourself you will be free.

Help others, and deliver them to happiness.

Sing out loud every day.

You're never too old to jump for joy.

I started to make teapot earrings, a great way to satisfy my love for beading and for tea! I always include some of my collected tea quotes in the listings.

My etsy and madeit stores are reopening this week,

www.starzia.etsy.com

www.madeit.com.au/Starzyia