Origami madness & a bit of a rant

I sell quite a lot of jewellery through my stockists and markets. (Well, a lot by my small standards) I don't list  many of them in my online stores as they tend to get a bit lost and I find that often with jewellery people like to handle it and hold it up against their bodies.

I love working out the packaging for the individual items. I have sold a few of these Moth,  Butterfly and Birdee necklaces of late, but didn't have great packaging. How does one package a necklace I pondered? In addition, I decided that it had to be repurposed and with a handmade element. I wanted it to stand out and be something that customers would want to pick-up.

 Voila! The finished product. (Apologies for the dodgy photo, I did a quick shoot before delivering these to Little Polli and the Blackbird yesterday)

They are made from Webster Dictionary pages and are quite thin. It makes the boxes quite  light and delicate. I originally photographed them on the same pages, I don't know why it took me so long to work this out! I had a bugger of a time working out sizes and the inserts. Aaargh! As it is, these boxes are only just big enough for the butterflies, and I will have to make bigger ones for the moths.

 My husband thinks I am crazy. I spent a whole day making ten boxes which are ultimately going to be thrown away and which I will receive no monetary return. But, and it’s a big, they were the first ones, and I have worked out all of the problems, so hopefully I can form a production line and get them knocked out a lot quicker in the future.

Also, and this is most important, I did them because I am quite passionate about making things. I have been thinking about this quite a lot lately. Basically, when you look at it, I work for about $5 an hour...tops.  And recently, I have been quite disheartened in my dealings with people who possess limited  honesty, integrity and ethics. Maybe my expectations of people are too high. But yesterday I was inspired by an interview with Jenny Kee in my newly delivered Frankie magazine. She said:

“If you’re on a creative path, go for it. Don’t try and build an empire. Do things with integrity, in a small, meaningful way. If you’re really creative, create little businesses, so there’s lovely choice with original talents. You can make a living doing that.”

Ofcourse it is fine for Jenny to say that. She became famous and made alot of money from her creativity...would she have said the same thing if her businesses had failed and she had to work a menial job the rest of her days, relying on government handouts for her livelihood in her later years?

Regardless, I will soldier on. We only have one life so we might has well try and make it the life we dream of.