New News in a New Year

Not much news on the KKaZZ designs front these days; my full-time web design business has been demanding so much attention that beading has gone by the wayside for a while now.

A couple weeks ago I managed to steal a little time to inventory and photograph all the new stuff I'd done since August(!), optimize the pics, stick em on Facebook and Flickr and post them all on Etsy.

After an epic two-day battle with the KKaZZ workflow, I've now got more than 70 items in the shop and am thinking about signing up for a few more local craft shows.


The Can-Change environmental festival was a great day on the lake last September, and made me realize how much I enjoy sitting outside by the lake talking to community members about art. And I sold a lot of stuff, which I must say is motivational.




Building the displays was fun. I'd rescued some big pieces of driftwood from the cottage where I used to live and found that they lent themselves well to hanging things from. I built the other pieces out of scrap wood, recycled styrofoam and some black cloth - techniques learned from my time building set pieces in high school.

KKaZZ is now good and prepared for more shows and anticipating an interesting year.

Some new work, and a new retail location!

It's been a great week. There was some day-tripping to Marten River Provincial Park with friends, a couple unexpected visits from other friends, and yesterday Heart of Unity, a neat little shop on Main St. here in North Bay, took my whole line of prayer beads and some other stuff and put them on display. I'm thrilled, to say the least, especially now that I've got art in two galleries and one retail location in the area. I love making the stuff, and it's nice to know that other people appreciate it.

Here are a few of the newest pieces:



I've been getting into bead embroidery again as well; here are a couple beginner pieces. Working on a bigger, beaded Aleister Crowley portrait of sorts at the moment.

KKaZZ Designs' first official gallery show, and some other things.

It's been a great summer so far...self-employment is great because it allows me to plan my working time around the weather and whatever interesting things are happening in the offline world. I love having work-life balance and the ability to make time to create stuff and to take off for road trips on short notice.

They've included two visits to Toronto so far this summer; one which involved general roaming around all over Yonge St./Chinatown/St.Lawrence market, much eating of sushi and Indian food, and the discovery of ArtOn, my new favourite bead shops which are side by side on Queen St.

The second trip was this past week, to see Tool live at the Molson Amphitheatre, an experience I'll never forget. I also scored this very excellent limited-edition print designed by the band's guitarist, Adam Jones.



I love freaky art like this.

This afternoon in Callander, which is just south of North Bay, the Alex Dufresne Gallery opened a show called Adornments to display jewelry made by local artists including Peter Sloan, Fluttering Designs, my friend Kathleen, and me.

Here are a few shots of the gallery and the pieces I've got on display. I feel very honoured to have been invited to participate. :-)

Some new designs

I'm looking forward to doing some beading tonight while I watch my friend's kids. Am in the middle of uploading some new images to my Flickr Photostream. The next step is to add them to the KKaZZ Designs page on Facebook and blog about them. I'll put them up on Etsy at some point, if they're not already there.

I need to start working on an Operations Manual for KKaZZ Designs. I've been reading an excellent book called the E-Myth Revisited, which explains how entrepreneurs can turn their small business into a turnkey business (think about franchised companies like McDonald's) by refining the operations of the company into systems and distilling the systems into an Operations Manual so you can sell copies of the business to other people. That's my goal for AloeRoot Web Services, ultimately, but in the meantime I'd like to start the process with KKaZZ Designs as well, so I can eventually hire people to fill some of the positions I'm doing myself at the moment.

Anyway, enough business chatter. Here are some photos:



To see more, visit KKaZZ.com's catalog!

Moved!

No new jewelry for a few days now; I've just spent the last week or so moving and settling into my new house. It's near downtown North Bay, and much more populated an area than I've been used to for the last three years. It's nice to be able to walk everywhere, and have city water pressure, and have my mail show up right outside the front door as opposed to 4kms down the road.

Finding work-life balance is great when the weather's nice; I love working from home because I can take a morning break and go outside to water the plants in my new yard.




The gardens need a little attention, but I love the fact that there's no grass to mow. I don't have a high opinion of lawnmowers - they're noisy, environmentally unfriendly, and I don't see the point in maintaining "lawn order" as Alan Watts used to call it. I plan to let this place go pretty wild, Taoist fashion, while taking subtle care of the plants and neatening things up a little. The nyjer feeder is already attracting little chickadees, and I found a perfect blue robin's egg in the yard last week. There are lots of trees, which was my main sticking point when house-hunting. The maple in the neighbour's yard is the biggest one I've ever seen, and it has lots of personality, casts a lot of shade, and hosts a large bird population. Last night I sat out on the porch and eavesdropped on bird conversations until the sun went down and the mosquitos found me.

More new stuff!

I've been beading like mad these last few days, mainly because my house is all packed up in preparation for the move and there's nothing much else to do, other than try to keep my hands busy!

This one is a custom work for my neighbour - it's turquoise with silver beads and I'm really pleased with the way it turned out.











While I was finishing the first necklace above, my neighbour started digging in my toolbox to see what else I had - she found this pendant and these beads and asked me to make her a second necklace. But of course!




This is the original Ouija Board necklace that inspired the one in my last post - also for the same neighbour. Which just goes to show you that it's not always terribly important to have retail space or even an online store to promote your work; word of mouth and existing happy customers are just as important, if not more.






In fact, I've sold more pieces during random conversations in my living room than I have anywhere else.



Not that sales are the ultimate goal, either - my plan was always to earn enough to support my beading habit :-)

Custom Necklace for Helene

I made a necklace very much like this one for my neighbour. Her friend liked it so much that I was asked to create this piece. Yes, that is a tiny Ouija board and an eeny weeny Tarot deck.

Some of the beads are vintage - found at Rebuilt Resources here in North Bay. The rest are Etsy finds, or from BeadFX.com





Here's a closeup: