Today I finally had a day off of work where I had absolutely nothing planned.
For the last last couple of weeks while at school, I've held back the temptation to go down the street to the crystal shop and buy a bunch of new crystals.
So I decided to fill my free day in World of Rocks. I discovered this crystal shop in September when I was googling places to buy crystals in my area. When I went to check it out, I fell in love. This shop was full of so many different types of crystals, weather raw or tumbled, big or small, everything. There was also a section with a large selection of pieces to make jewelry with such as jump rings, pendants, beads, and so much more.
I had been to crystal shops but they were mostly expensive, already-made crystal jewelry, but this one was so much better and everything I needed for my shop.

I went into the store limiting myself on the amount of money I could spend. By the end of my trip, I had thrown that limit out the window.

I just want to show off the crystals that i ended up buying, and how my collection has grown. It's crazy because I never had any intentions of starting a collection- it kind of just... happened. When I bought my first crystal pendants I didn't even know the powers behind them.

 Today i bought a large amethyst cluster, a large raw rose quartz, a tumbled rose quartz heart, tumbled amazonite, calcite, tumbled opal, and tumbled amethyst.

Shopping for Healing Crystals

Since a lot of my jewelry and inspiration for my shop is based around healing crystals, I thought I should post a little about how all of that works. I'd like to state that I'm but a beginner on all of this, and am still learning my way around. If you have any questions I will of course try and answer them to the best of my ability, but may have to direct you elsewhere.

To go out and buy healing crystals without knowing their function/how they heal, or without having some type of pull towards them is essentially going to turn into you collecting rocks- in which case that's totally cool, because we've all been there, but for the purpose of collecting healing crystals, it's much more than that.
When you're buying healing crystals, focus on how you're feeling. Do some research prior to shopping and see which stones mean/heal what. Getting stones that pertain more to how you're feeling will help you more in the long run compared to just buying stones because they're pretty. Another thing you should focus on when purchasing crystals to help you, is to see which ones you have a natural pull to. When simply viewing the crystals, or holding one in your hand, you may have a certain energy expend from the stone to you, and this is a good sign and something you should look for when investing in stones.

My best friend sent me this motivational picture this morning. I'm currently trying to juggle school, work, emotions, and my ambition to start 100 creative projects, such as, but not limited to, a recipe book, zine, a set of paintings, etc. I'm trying to actually start these projects, so I'm going to force myself to make time for them.
I hope this photo gets you thinking and/or feeling as much as it did me.

Namaste.

Due to recent talks with friends about creative endeavors coming up, I've come to realize that you may have to do everything yourself in the beginning and people will follow later. A lot of people don't seem to want to put in the work to get creative outlets up and going, but once the outlet is created, then they'll participate. I want to collaborate my shop with others, help people get their work out into the world, I want to start a small art/culture/literature zine, as well as countless other things. I'm currently in the process of obtaining Adobe InDesign and designing a small zine outline, which I will then email to people and tell them to copy and paste in their work- this is what I mean when I say that I have to create the outlet and then people will participate. There's not much work to be done by these people, because if they already have pieces written, or art completed, which I will believe they have, hence the reason I chose them to email the layout to, they'll only have to worry about choosing their pieces, copying, pasting, and sending it back. Putting in the hard work of bringing the zine together isn't a problem for me since I enjoy this sort of thing, and dream of one day running my own official magazine or work for one. So I believe that I'll benefit a lot from this project, but I also want others to benefit as well.

My Little Shop of Wonders

I started my little online jewelry shop a couple years ago, with high hopes that it would take off quick. Sadly, nothing much happened within the first year or so. I started to put more and more effort into building up stock that I was proud of and that customers would gravitate to. I have really enjoyed everything that I've had to do to build the store up along the way, so I've started hoping that eventually it'll become big enough where I'll have a steady income, even if small. I would love nothing more than to be able to have my art be an income for me.
Today I went to the art store and found out that they had a different variety of pendants for sale than they usually did. They were spot on to the tastes of the teen bloggers I've been seeing around. There are few things in my life that make me more excited than finding a perfect pendant and then thinking of all of the different ways it would look pretty as jewelry, and attractive to potential customers. So, I bought these pretties.

The smaller pendants made me invest in some cord to make chokers with, and this excites me for the sole reason that I'll be able to try something new that I haven't yet with my products and store.

Right when I got home I tried out the choker look with the evil seeing eye charm and realized it was something I would definitely have to get used to seeing. So, I went on to make the hamsa pendent into a necklace and I fell in love- but of course, look at the pendant, how could it be made ugly?

Surprisingly enough, this necklace was sold in the same day as it was made. This was definitely a much-needed pick-me-up.

Even when I'm not always making sales, the fun I have finding charms and pendants and making them into wearable jewelry amounts to more than the money. Being able to do that keeps me going forward to try and make my little shop something more than it is.

http://abandonedroots.storenvy.com/