Twitter Giveaway

ENTER to WIN a CUSTOM Quartz GLOW-in-the-DARK Ring from MerCurios.  The ring is custom in that, upon winning, YOU CHOOSE the Following:

• Pink or Green Stone
• Gold, Silver or Copper
• Skull or No Skull
• 1 or 2 Finger Ring 
  

How to enter to win this custom ring:

1. You must follow me on twitter
2. Please copy and paste this exact message and tweet it from your Twitter account to be entered:

Twitter giveaway! Follow @MerCuriosJewels and RT 2 enter 2 win a $58 CUSTOM GLOW Quartz Ring! Full rules and prize: http://bit.ly/cmKSXQ

This contest is open worldwide. The 150th person to tweet or re-tweet will be the winner. This contest will end as soon as we reach 150 contest tweets. The winner will be announced on Twitter. Good luck!

Proximity

“Proximity” …when a customer said they were going to be adding a charm to their two finger ring when it arrived, I encouraged them to send the charm to me instead.

This was the end result.  Making this ring has opened up a whole new world of possibilities.  My imagination has been soaring with ideas. 

...now to just get caught up on the custom work I’m inundated with so I can breathe life to those ideas.

Enjoy!

Puff the Magic Dragon

I well-up every time I sit down to read Gabriel this book.  Seriously!  It's actually kind of disturbing & I can't control it.  No matter hard I try, I CANNOT get through Puff the Magic Dragon with dry eyes.

Now I'm the kind of person that finds *meaning* in almost everything.  A bird appears out of nowhere and  it's a message of some kind. I look at the clock at precisely 6:12 & I know my grandfather is near. 
 
So I decided to ponder those uncontrollable tears & here's what I finally came up with - The book - which is really just the song in print - is trying to tell me to enjoy my son & his childhood while I still can.  Because one day soon, sooner than I might like, sealing wax and silly strings are going to make way for other stuff.

"A Dragon lives forever, not so little girls and boys

painted wings and giant rings make way for other toys..."

Crying yet?

With that I've come to realize that "Balance" is my life lesson this time around.  Being able to balance my wants and needs with those of my family...especially the precious, oh so impressionable little cargo.  After all :

Balance = Bliss

I do find that when I am in balance, everything else in my life seems to harmoniously fall into place.   Just like magic!  Yet, it is something I struggle with everyday.  Why? 

"One grey night it happened, jackie paper came no more

And puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar.

His head was bent in sorrow, green scales fell like rain,

Puff no longer went to play along the cherry lane.

Without his life-long friend, puff could not be brave,

So puff that mighty dragon sadly slipped into his cave"

I married my best friend

I just saw a commercial for Drew Barrymore's new movie "Going the Distance" with Justin Long.  One of the lines her character says is:  

"the only way you are content in life is if you marry your best friend"

That line got me thinking about my relationship...  We have been together five years, going on six and ...

...he inspires me, he motivates me, he supports me, he is my harshest critic & worst enemy.  He is my best friend.  He knows how to push all my buttons and how to melt my heart. 

I am definitely not suggesting that being married to your best friend will be all rainbows and puffy white clouds against a crystal blue sky 24-7/365.  It won't! Every relationship takes some amount of effort after all.  However, going though life with your best friend at your side "the good will always outweigh the bad" and the ride will be so much more fun!

That's a picture of our engagement tattoo by the way...we custom designed it to signify *home*.

Metallica and MerCurios - what they have in common

My husband recently told me that what's happening to me reminds him of Metallica.  For the longest time Metallica was told they were "too heavy".  They refused to conform & stayed true to their music and eventually the music industry & the public caught up with them.  The same could be said for MerCurios...

The beginning of this year I met with Henri Bendel and was told I was "too edgy".  Then I met with a long time friend of my husband who is an "Accessories Branding Expert"; she used to buy for Hot Topic back in the day, etc...  Now she is the person well-known Accessory Designers call in when they need their business and Collections turned around.  Anyway, she expressed I had talent & vision, but...was "too edgy". 

I was bummed, but persevered. I didn't really know where I was headed or how I would get there.  What I DID know was that I had to stay true to myself otherwise I was not paying homage to the creativity that lives inside me.  It has a life of its own.  Changing how it is inherently born would be untrue.   Making it any less "edgy" would be fasle...so I persevered.

Then, a little while after that - and MUCH to my surprise -  The Three Village Patch got in touch with me.  They discovered me on Twitter of all places and wanted to write a business profile on MerCurios.  I said YES of course.  Then it all seemed to snowball from there...  Sales took off; our jewelry was featured in the "Etsy Finds" blog not once, but twice!  We were on the Etsy front page a few times.  Well-known Fashion Blogs started including our jewelry in their "shop it now" sections - half the time I discovered these little features via Google Analytics.  And the creme de la creme - the Australian Fashion Magazine "Cleo" included our jewelry in TWO issues - September and October - and continue to request more samples.  We have been approached by other fashion publications and boutiques and tattoo shops too!  And it just keeps getting better...

Too Edgy, they said... Stay True to You! says I  ...and the world will eventually catch up.