Fourth Week At Home

Hello! Now that we are approaching the one month mark under the stay at home order, I hope you are staying strong, safe and well. I continue to adjust beautifully to working at home full-time. However it is a mixture of emotions between worrying about what is going on in the world, feeling heartbroken for those who are suffering and who have lost their lives and keeping up with all the personal and business expenses. Being at home is calming though and the stress of conducting estate sales has melted away. Here's hoping my blood pressure has gone down! I'm taking this opportunity to work on online selling as much as possible but I'm going to make a point to try and strike a balance going forward and take some time to do some baking and get the house organized before all is said and done. I'm gradually starting to get back in exercise again by doing a 10-minute stretch routine every morning. Next step is to work in an evening walk, there are too many people on the sidewalks during the day!

We are powering through our Roselle online estate sale, I posted all of the items to the online store and to eBay as well. Between these two venues, we have sold almost all the pens and many of the watches. CLICK HERE to see our remaining items, we would like to wrap this sale up in April so we are taking offers!

I also posted my first online jewelry sale which consists of all of the pieces in the New Native American Jewelry category. None of the jewelry has been presented in the jewelry caravan and these pieces are NOT estate sale leftovers. The category consists of Navajo pieces which are pre-owned but from the 2000s or newer as well as new pieces by Buffalo Dancer which I purchased directly from the artists at the Tucson Gem Show. Buffalo Dancer is from Taos Pueblo, New Mexico. Their jewelry is exactly what I like - beautifully made and charming! CLICK HERE to see a summary of the items in the collection. Prices reflect our 50% off discount and include USPS shipping with delivery confirmation.

The Native American jewelry project continues, with a little change of pace. I decided to post some Southwestern style jewelry at the beginning of the week, a very unique collection by Scottsdale, AZ artist Thane DeLeon. They are mostly rings with a couple of pendants mixed in. The rings especially are 3-dimensional works of art with a nature theme, using gunmetal color sterling silver with 22K gold accents and genuine turquoise and gemstones. We also have a rabbit with carrot ring and a dolphin ring. These are total conversation pieces! I'll be posting this collection individually to our online store next week.


I also posted a lot of Native American jewelry without stones. I was very excited to post the two pairs of earrings especially because they are both so unique, especially the storm clouds earrings. They both sold right away and I could have sold them numerous times over. I had originally posted the larger cuff bracelets back in January but I was newer to selling in Facebook groups at the time and had not made a name for myself so they did not sell. Now I've been given two badges in the Native American Jewelry Lovers group - Visual Storyteller and Conversation Starter. This time around was a different story, they both sold right away as well and people were fighting over them. In January, I was given helpful information about the cuff bracelet on the right. It is a Northwest Coast piece, designed by Danny Dennis for Metal Arts Group. It's not very often that a piece of jewelry makes its way to Chicago from the Pacific Northwest or British Columbia, Canada.


The photo at the top represents some of the new arrivals that I received on Friday. I was almost through my current Native American jewelry collection and getting ready to move on but I now have more goodies to show as well as some amazing Mexican jewelry. Yesterday I put together my new massive 32x32 inch photography light box. I had purchased the 16x16 inch box from the same company who is in France and I just love it. The box fits beautifully in the space made for it in my basement closet devoted to photography, but it's a little too small for group photos. I had to spend extra time getting the jewelry to fit in the space so the sides of the box do not show in the photos. No worries with that anymore! I set the new box up in the breezeway for now because I have a lot of objects in addition to jewelry that I'm looking to sell during this time at home. Once everything I have is photographed, I will move it to my basement so all photo-taking equipment is together. It's on my card table which is the exact same size so it will be ideal to have it on a larger table so I don't have to worry about it falling off. This has definitely been many years in the making to be able to take nice photos with my iPhone XS Max without having to spend a lot of time on Photoshop adjustments. I also bought a remote control shutter which is very helpful when trying to take tricky shots on my own.

When I opened the packaging for the light box, there was a flyer inside which said light panels will be coming soon! This is very exciting because then I will be able to take the jewelry photography to the next level and give it a bright white background without shadows. Once that happens, look out Chairish and 1st Dibs, here I come!

On tap for next week is to finish the Native American jewelry and then get started on the vintage Mexican collection. I hope it will be as well-received as I have some incredible pieces, many are designer and signed. To break things up a bit, I'd like to post the new Mexican jewelry as well. The timing with the stay at home order is such that we had only been home from our epic Arizona buying trip for a month and hadn't had the chance to fully display our finds at the estate sales. I'd love for these beautiful pieces to find new homes. It will take time to post everything online as I am working on this project on my own but this time at home has allowed me to master the online store and get it up and running. I am so grateful to those who have purchased from me, it's a very difficult time for a sole proprietor as the government is not providing assistance for us and the jewelry sales are helping to make ends meet. Take care and see you next time!