engraved jewelry - leilani handmade

New Pearl Option for the Flower Child’s Personalized Necklace – with Engraving

Posted on June 9, 2014July 12, 2017 by Leilani — Leave a comment

A customer recently asked me if I could do a pearl instead of a Swarovski crystal for her flower child’s necklace order. I had some 4mm freshwater pearls on hand, and I loved the result so much I decided to add it as a permanent option for both silver & gold versions of this product. Now added on the website and coming soon to Etsy (my Etsy shop is closed as I am currently travelling).

DPP_3106 — pearl option gold (click to view listing)

As an aside, I get asked every now and then if the blanks I use are black. What you are seeing here is the reflection of the camera lens. Often the glare is so bad on these very shiny blanks I cannot capture the detail in the engraving. Often times the best way to take a clear picture of the engraving is to have the reflection of the camera lens absorb the light. So in the closeups this is why sometimes the blanks look black. My photography skills leave much to be desired, I know. 😉 I try to post several photos to help best represent the piece so always browse through them all to get an overall feel for the product. Photos are so flat and one dimensional they do not do my work justice. I think most – if not all – online sellers are feeling my pain, here. 🙂

Sneak Peek at the Custom/Engravable Line…

Posted on May 19, 2011July 17, 2017 by Leilani — Leave a comment

Well, I cannot believe my eyes. As of last night, the website is LIVE! All of my Etsy & Artfire inventory is now available on my own little piece of the world wide web. But, before I work on search engine optimization, we still need to move the site over to the faster hosting, & I really need to get my custom collections up & running. I had originally set a goal of having it all live by the end of May, however after finally assessing how many collections I developed over the the winter, I have my doubts that I can go public with every single one in less than 2 weeks, especially with the custom requests that happen to come in in the meantime.

Here is a sneak peek of what to expect nonetheless. I will launch one collection at a time and announce each on the home page of my website. I also would like to do a giveaway to kick off the launch, but I haven’t figured out what just yet. Suggestions welcome! And sooner than later before I get wrapped up in all things infant! 🙂

So here is but one item available from each collection.

From “Awareness”:

From “Beaded”:

From “Children’s”:

From “Dark Angel”:

From “Gemstone”:

From ” Gothic Spider”:

From “Keepsake”:

From “Sweetheart”:

From “Remembrance”:

I also have a pet tag engraving collection conceptualized on paper only. At this time I decided it is best to go forward with what I have before developing anything new. 🙂

Cross fingers that the attributes (for customization/choice on each piece) built into the software are straight forward and I can get this up and running smoothly. With open-source, anything can happen. 🙂

New Year, New Goals…The End of the Jewelry Sabbatical

Posted on January 10, 2011July 17, 2017 by Leilani — Leave a comment

I have been quiet. The end of the 2010 was drawing near & I wrapped up my jewelry sabbatical getting a head start on 2011 projects. Like a writer who sequesters themselves in a secluded cabin to write a novel, a lot of times I do similar when I feel a new project idea coming on and I need no distractions to bring it to fruition. I’m glad to have been inspired to get a jump start as January is not going quite as smoothly as I had hoped. I am the perpetual over-achiever. 🙂

So let’s recap what I’ve been up to…

I started one year ago my jewelry sabbatical. I decided over Christmas break a year ago, after over a decade of beading/beaded jewelry that I wanted time to concentrate learning/trying new skills. I found myself feeling really stagnant making the same style over & over – and I needed time to not feel pressured to be making sales. The biggest result of that is I learned how to engrave using a pantograph engraver. A line is already in development & well on its way to completion. I decided to source out supplies that were quality but not precious metal. I’ve always been dedicated to offering my work at a price that is affordable to everyone. There will be sterling silver variations as well, but I will start out with blanks that are treated for durability, the cores being metals such as brass, copper & steel.

This is my new project. Named after my two girls, jade-n-rose will be offering jewelry making & craft supplies in small lots. Inspired by my early days jewelry making, I will strive to offer quality supplies in small quantities for those who only want a few items at a time. Currently housed on Artfire, we are starting to work on its very own website in tandem with the heavenlyflower website. I was hoping to have more items listed by now but have gotten sidetracked. I hope to get back to it soon; I literally have hundreds of items ready for sale.

I also (finally) chose a blog layout I am happy with! I believe these types of themes are called “magazine” layouts…and they give a snippet and photo from the post rather than showing the whole post on the front page. I’m a skimmer so I love this format for searching for topics that interest me. My holistic blog has also been updated.

There was a lot of things that I didn’t get to last year or only barely scratched the surface. I have carried it over to my to-learn list this year, although it is a tall order since I already have non-jewelry creative projects on the list. Considering all the goals I have for this year, it still feels exciting & ambitious rather than daunting and impossible. I will dig in, and hope that the blog this year will continue to inspire you to take on a creative project that perhaps you have been putting off for some time. This is my theme for 2011: tackle the projects that I have always wanted to do but never got around to do it.

Creatively yours,