Saturday, April 25, 2009

Grand Opening - Eronel Designs


Back in the dark ages, when I was a teenager, I used to make jewelry. In the past few years, I've still made jewelry, but I used to sell it, along with my paintings, at Womancraft, an artists' cooperative in Chapel Hill, and at Horizon Gallery, which used to be in Brightleaf Square, in Durham. Working at Womancraft was great, because every weekend, I got to spend 4 hours meeting new people that came in the store, catching up with the regulars and talking to my fellow artists and artisans. As you can guess, many of our conversations went something like this:

"After I leave here, I'm going to the Persian Carpet."
"Is that a restaurant?"
"No, it's a rug store."

I don't think I need to provide attribution for the individual quotes, unless this is the first post of mine that you've discovered. I'm afraid that I didn't have to make up that example either.

In any case, once I started college, particularly when I was a sophomore, my classes interfered with how I had chosen to spend my spare time for the previous four years. I had to quit. I not only quit working at Womancraft, but I pretty much quit making jewelry and I quit painting. I concentrated even more heavily on my studies and then leapt right into my career, which did not involve my artistic abilities.

Recently, I've started making jewelry again with wild abandon. I still have all of my supplies from the old days, my sterling silver and gold-filled wire, my semiprecious gemstone beads and my tools. Now I have an art studio, so I can spread out all of my work without having to put it all away before preparing for exams or writing a paper.

I decided to set up an Etsy store to sell my work. For those of you who haven't checked out Etsy, it's a way for artists to sell their handmade crafts on-line, within a nice framework. When I was younger, I sold my jewelry and my paintings under "Lenore's Creations", but I decided to be a little backward and my wares are now called "Eronel Designs". Like most things, I have no idea how successful my new business venture will be, but if I come anywhere close to selling as many earrings and necklaces as I did long ago, my fingers will be pretty busy on the weekends.


In reality, I only did this so I would have an excuse to create a third Twitter account, @eroneldesigns, to communicate information about the store and spout random bits of enthusiasm.

6 comments:

  1. Those are some beautiful earrings, Lenore! Importantly, I'm glad that you're finding a chance to use your creative side some more!

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  2. Thanks, Rachel! It really is a lot of fun. Off to make another necklace...

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  3. "Firefox can't find the server at eroneldesigns.twitter.com."

    Although, they really should implement that.

    So, I know about eronel and now eroneldesigns. What's the 3rd twitter account?

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  4. Thanks pointing out the problem, Tanner! I fixed the URL in the post.

    The third one was actually my first, which I use for boring work status.

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  5. Yay! I'm so glad you've returned to jewelry making.

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  6. Thanks! I'm glad I've gotten back into it, too! :)

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