EtsyMetal Blog Carnival: 2015 New Years Resolution!

Blog Carnival: New Year Resolutions! It's that time of year again! Lets discuss our New Year Resolutions and how do we intend to keep them? Any that worked from last year?

Lets start with a Happy New Year!

I don't really make personal new years resolutions. But I do like to set some business goals each year to give me some sense of direction.

I did pretty much reached last years goals to grow my business outside of Etsy and develop some new technical skills. I spend a lot of time working on my website and it paid off big time. I did take an engraving class last may but haven't had much time yet to practice more. I also took a platinum fabrication class at New Approach School which was really helpful in learning a few bench skills related to platinum work.

In 2015 I plan to step out my ring making comfort zone a bit and add earrings and maybe necklaces to my line.

I love, love, love making rings. Doesn't matter if statement rings, wedding bands or engagement rings, rings with or without gemstones, adding textures, playing with different metals and so on. But I never particularly liked making earrings or necklaces. I don't really enjoy the scale of it, nor do I particularly like soldering tiny jump rings and findings. I suck at piercing designs out of sheet and hurt myself more with the saw than getting nice cuts in the metal. So I always stayed away from making them. But I do love wearing earrings and necklaces. Not making these myself has allowed me to splurge on awesome designs from my jewelry making friends to add to my wardrobe.

But customers do occasional ask me for earring designs or necklaces to match the ring they got from me. Or the significant other has a birthday or anniversary coming up and some earrings would be a better gift than another ring.  So my focus will be in the beginning to add earring designs to complement the ring collections I already have. There are already plenty of design elements I can play with and I am familiar with. So I just need to change them up a bit to work as earrings. I actually started to play with some things over the Holiday break. Here some work in progress earrings. They match the textured Saw Rings, the Wave ring collection and some mixed metal pieces with gold accents.

I also finished some round mixed metal studs that are similar to my hand textured diamond accented bracelets and added a stacking ring set as well. I am in the process of listing these as I go.

I am looking forward to this new challenge. There is also an exciting Earring a Day challenge going on that a few of my friends participate. It's to much for me as I don't have time for a daily challenge. But it will be fun to see what they come up with. You can follow along their progress on Facebook or on Flickr.

I was also hoping to get a 3D printer this year to play more with my CAD designs that can't be milled on my CNC machine. I thought I found the perfect one to invest in but unfortunately the Indigogo funding did not meet it's goal and I am not sure  if this printer will become available. But there are others I have my eyes on and hope to get one in 2015. A 3D printer would be helpful for some of the earring designs I have in my head.

Check out the 2015 resolutions other Etsymetal members have set out to accomplish:

2Roses: http://www.JewelryTutorial.blogspot.com
 http://www.fentondesign.ca/whats-happening
Laura Jane Bouton http://laurajanebouton.blogspot.com/
Beth Cyr - http://beth-cyr.squarespace.com/blog/
Lou Hunter - http://peculiarforest.blogspot.com/
Markasky - http://www.evelynmarkasky.com/blog