wedding day!

during the ceremony

i've been married for almost 2 months already! and i'm just now getting around to sharing some pictures of my special day with you... i really need to learn to manage my time better, huh? priorities, melissa, priorities! blog comes first ;).

anyway, here are a few of my favourites:


my dad walking me down the aisle


that's love :)


actually, THAT's love :D


this is probably my favourite ♥


at the reception


cutting the cake!


our sparkling cider bottles


that cake was SINFULLY delicious! thanks, 'sweet tempered'! and they just so happen to be carrying my brand in their store/bakery as of this saturday, yay!

thanks also to my good friend melissa ferro cole, my photographer. it was awesome having a friend do my wedding photos!

i really couldn't have imagined a more perfect wedding day... i am so blessed :).

♥,
melissa

cyber monday sale!

30% off everything in my shop this monday, CYBER MONDAY, 12-01-08!

this sale is in addition to my other sales that are going on right now:

• buy 3, get 1 free on all pocket mirrors! on duplicates, too!
• pendant necklaces reduced to just $10 each!
• free shipping on all orders over $50!

don't miss your chance to save big this holiday season!

the sale will run all day, starting at midnight monday and ending at 11:59 monday night (central time).

this is such a crazy time of the year! you'll be relieved to know (well, i was, at least!) that i got an 'a' in that biology class that i put off forever :p. i now have to do an entire sociology of deviance class in just one week (but don't fret for me - i just need to write a bunch of papers, which just so happens to be my forte!). i have 2 other college courses beginning this week (gotta love self-paced classes!), and i need to apply to take that gigantic french test soon so i can test out of all my foreign language credits i need to graduate.

on top of that, i am still waiting to hear back on the final result of whether or not the retail shop i am supposed to manage will open, and whether or not what the job entails will suit me and my schedule. and on top of THAT, i have been working on a secret new project that will appear in my shop this coming friday! all i can say is it's nothing like anything you've seen on etsy, and you're gonna LOVE it! :D

and i did finally get my wedding pictures, so i will be sharing a few of those on tuesday. i already have them in an album on my facebook account, so you can peek there for many more photos than i will be able to post here :).

i hope all of you had a tryptophan-tastic thanksgiving! ;D haha, sorry, that's my favourite (and thankfully only...) thanksgiving gimmick!

♥,
melissa

finally!

hello! didja miss me?

after basically a 3-week hiatus from blogging, i have returned to you ;p. things have been so eventful the last few weeks that i haven't had time to sit and blog, believe it or not! but i missed it, so here i am :)

let's see, where to begin?

• the nine inch nails concert on october 23rd was AMAZING. it was definately the best nine inch nails concert i've been to, and of course that means it's the best concert i've been to overall ;). here are some pictures:

as you can see, we got REALLY close this time! ah, to be close to trent reznor...

... but i am a married woman now, and even though trent's hair is dreamy, his voice is dreamy, his muscles are dreamy, his butt is dreamy... no! no more of that ;p.



we eventually had to retreat a bit, but i could still see mr. reznor perfectly fine, in all his yelling glory. i got a few really good videos of the concert, too.



the acoustics were much better at this venue than the one in houston, and i was blown away.



the opening band, ghostland observatory (from my native austin), was super awesome as well. the singer really struts his stuff on stage, and it's hilarious and very engaging! look them up on youtube for some examples of what i'm talking about. and yes, the other dude in the band is wearing a cape :p.

i like their music a lot, and brandon and i are going to see them in austin on november 15th at the place where i attended my very first nine inch nails concert :). i'm sure we'll have a blast! they're a lot of fun.

and of course no concert would be complete without a silly pic of me and brandon!

• halloween was mostly uneventful (would you believe that not one trick-or-treater even came to the door?!), but it gave me an excuse to wear my platinum-pink wig!

i love this wig! brandon bought it for me for my birthday last year, and i just adore it ♥.

• my etsy friend heather (auryndesign) is a super-sweetheart and featured me on her blog recently. that means a lot, especially since we are each other's competition, you might say. she is a good friend with a lot of talent, and we each have our own totally unique spin on the washi-paper-jewelry front, so it works out :). so yes, i am excited that i was interviewed for a feature, especially from a friend :D.
  
  
• you might have noticed a bunch of brand new things in my shop. well, that's because i put a bunch of brand new things in my shop! ;p. more on those in my next blog entry, but feel free to head on over to the shop and check out the new pocket mirror and pendant necklace designs! the new pendants come on 18" sterling silver-plated chains!

this pocket mirror is called 'natural beauty', and is $6 in my shop

• also, i've decided to no longer do my "monthly goals" blog post, as i rarely felt i was meeting my expectations, and it's just a reminder that i didn't do as well as i hoped for the previous month, if that makes any sense.

but the main reason i've been away from my blog is college work. i am finally done with everything but my final in my biology class, i've studied a lot for my huge french test (i have to test out of 16 credit hours of it), and now i can complete my deviance sociology class with nothing else in the way!

oh, and i still don't have any more wedding pictures to show you; they are supposed to be on their way to be by next wednesday. i'll share as soon as i get 'em :).

and one final thing: i don't like to talk about things on here that might offend people, but i just have to say that i voted for barack obama yesterday, and i am feeling extremely, overwhelmingly, and fantastically proud. his winning speech was so moving that i got all choked up. i know many of you probably would have loved to see mccain win, but hopefully president obama can show all of america how his intelligence, instincts, and know-how will give this country at least a few of the things it has been severely lacking. i have faith in that, and hopefully you guys on the right-side will be impressed with him before too long :).

okay, no more preachy-yeswecan-hope-mongering! ;D

for those of you who have been checking in to see if i'll ever blog again (haha), thanks for sticking around! oh, i'm on twitter, too (see it on the top-ish right?), so you can follow me there!

♥,
melissa

and now i'm married :)

photography by 'i heart photography'

well friends, i am finally married! and i have to say, it feels great to be melissa a. griffith :).

the picture above is, so far, the only one i have to show you (the others are being edited as we speak), but you can clearly see that it was a gorgeous day; there wasn't a single cloud in the sky. don't worry: i'll post more pictures as i get them! :D

the day itself was... exhausting. brandon and i barely got to eat anything because everyone and everything required our attention, and i had a terrible migraine through much of the day and night, but it really was lovely and i wouldn't change a thing about it :).

we stayed at the hyatt in downtown austin (right on town lake, which we had a beautiful view of from our 14th floor window), and were greeted with chocolate-covered strawberries and champagne. how romantic! the next day, we went to north austin and met two of brandon's friends for bowling, which was a lot of fun, and later, we met another of his friends for dinner. after that, we swung by my parents' house to get our wedding gifts and such, and then we headed home. we pretty much spent the whole weekend recovering from thursday and friday, haha, and this week, for me, has been all about catching up on things like cleaning, emails, and school, as well as preparing for my meeting tomorrow and working on my name-changing. i'm a bit worn out, but glad that everything has worked out really well.

so now that the stress of planning a wedding is behind me, i can refocus on the other important things in my life: my shop, my health, and my schooling.

i have an appointment tomorrow with a nice lady near austin who owns an upscale home decor and personal accessories shop called 'sanctuary home.bath.garden', which i am really excited about. this will be my first experience with consignment; i am generally leary of it, and much prefer wholesale, but she runs a very reputable shop, so i am going outside my normal boundaries of selling comfort for this opportunity. she says that if the consigmnent works out well, we'll switch to wholesale for simplicity's sake :). her shop is stunning, and i am extremely honoured that she contacted me. also, brandon and i are often in that area (my absolute all-time favourite thai restaurant is there, 'thai kitchen'! mmm!), so making deliveries/checking my stock and picking up checks will be very convenient. i am feeling really fortunate lately, and this is part of the reason why :).

on the health front, my good friend lea recently told me about this "self-hypnosis diet" book/cd that she found, and was saying how astonishingly much it has helped her so far, and recommended it to me. i have undergone some hypnotherapy in the past, which worked out very well, so i decided to buy the material and give it a try. i've got to say, it's incredible how much power your mind has over your body! i started reading the book on monday, and i've already lost about 3 pounds, simply by altering the way i think. for instance, instead of telling myself, "no matter what i do, i can't lose weight", i now think, "i am becoming thin and healthy". it may sound silly, but it obviously has helped me so far, and i haven't even tried the cds yet! i have not changed my eating habits (which were mostly healthy already), and have merely continued with my semi-regular exercising (other than cleaning, i've really only exercised by playing 'dance dance revolution' on the playstation, haha). i am hoping i can get into a routine where i start doing the abs-ball exercise every other day, and pick up pilates again. i love pilates, but i tend to put it off because it takes over an hour to do. however, i feel so much better at the end, and really there's no excuse for me not to take an hour out of my day to do that. so anyway, i'm going to keep thinking positively (whereas i'm used to simply thinking realistically), not say that i'm going to "try" to do things to get healthier and instead actually do them (do or do not, there is no try! :p), and add more exercising into my daily life.

i am working really hard on not getting blue about college. it seems a little overwhelming sometimes... all the courses i have to complete before i can graduate. but really i have less than a year left, and i am grateful for that. i think the main thing that really bothers me is that i will have to take out another student loan, but with the banks as they are currently, i'm worried i won't be able to get any money. at that point, i would be stuck, because i won't be able to continue my current lifestyle: i'd have to get a full-time job in addition to my shop, which in turn would make my schooling suffer, as that's less time i would have working on my classes. and let's face it: bills have to get paid :p. so i'm in a bit of turmoil here. hopefully, all my worrying will have been for nothing (that's usually the case, haha), and i will get my loan and everything will be fine. it would also be great if i could make a living wage off my shop! ;)

so those are the things that are currently on my mind.

oh, and as for shop updates: i have decided that after the holidays, i will be slowly switching to the glossy, waterproof finish for my items. in general, people seem to prefer the glossy look, and i will still be able to make items matte-finished on request. also after the holidays (or perhaps before, depending on if i run out of ribbon or not, haha), i will be switching all my pendants to the 18" sterling silver-plated chain. as many of you have mentioned to me, it looks nicer and is more durable than the ribbon (although the ribbon is so cute!). the ribbon necklaces will be available on request, like the matte-finish. i think these are the best ways to push my merchandise up to the next level of awesome, and i hope you agree :).

well wish me luck tomorrow (i am shy!), and i'll update you later! :)

♥,
melissa

i'm getting married tomorrow!

:D :D :D

wish me luck!

♥,
melissa

september summary, october goals

is it really october already?! yes, the internet, it is! and i couldn't be more excited!

i'm getting married in just a few days, college is going well, and my shop is seeing much more success than in previous months!

to recap, here were my goals for september:

• sell 25 things in my shop and fulfill at least one wholesale reorder
• reach 560 hearts
• finish all the wedding planning
• finish most of my biology class, and be prepared to test out of all my french requirements for college
• redo all the primary photos in my shop.

i ended the month with 26 sales, so i met my sales goal! i did not reach 560 hearts (ended up at 525), but that's okay. i am (mostly) completely prepared for the big wedding day next thursday, also! and as for the biology and french - i only have to type up a few lab reports and mail them off, then take the final for biology, and i have studied french a lot over the course of the month. out of the 1000 vocabulary study cards i bought, for example, i readily know ~850 of them. the words i'm having the most problems with are adverbs, conjunctions, and prepositions. studying my old french textbooks has helped a lot in jogging my memory, too. also, i did redo most of the photos in my shop! overall, i'd say i feel pretty accomplished for september.

looking ahead to october, here are my goals:

• get married! yay!
• push myself more with the french thing, and complete biology by mid-month
• register for 3 more courses
• complete my sociology (deviance) course
• sell 35 things in my shop
• reach 600 hearts
• redo the rest of my shop photos

also, please take a moment to answer my poll questions (at the top, on the right) if you haven't already. changes are coming, and i value your input!

here's to a fruitful october!

♥,
melissa

i love pretty packaging!

yes, i love pretty packaging, so it just comes naturally that i would want to make each package that i mail out to one of my customers as presentable and fun to open as possible. after all, that's how i want things that i buy to arrive to me!

here's my latest finished order, 100 custom washi fortune cookies for a very nice customer's upcoming wedding:



i hope she loves them! they look just like the ones i made for my wedding: boxes stuffed with these pretty little paper cookies!

it really makes me start thinking about my wedding. it's only about 40 days away, and i'm starting to get butterflies! i still need to get my dress altered, sign the contract for our photographer (this just came about yesterday! an old high school friend of mine, mel ferro cole of i heart photography, just found me on facebook, and we didn't have a professional photographer yet, so we thought, what perfect timing!), get our rings polished (and my band, from my mom's set from her marriage to my biological father who died when i was 6 months old, resized), get our marriage license, sign the contract with the catering, and a few small details. not much left, really!

i have a busy fall ahead of me, that's for sure. i'm tackling 5 distance learning college classes over the course of this semester, plus testing out of 16 credit hours of french, plus the wedding, christmas, the busy holiday season that's about to take hold in my shop, and more! phew! wish me luck, is all i can say ;).

♥,
melissa

busy bee me

yes, i'm busy with another wholesale reorder from my first wholesale account :). along with the usual reorder, this order includes 20 pairs of 'yoko', a new addition to my client's store! i still feel super honoured to be selling to such a popular venue.

also, my sales have magically picked up in my own store! looks like my dry spell is quite possibly over :). yay, i can pay bills again, haha!

and how do you like my new store banner ^ and avatar > ? if you're in the market for a really cool banner/avatar set for your etsy store, i strongly suggest henryrabbit . amanda is awesome!

oh, and here's one of those martinelli's sparkling apple cider bottles we bought for the wedding:



so cute! it's got little red sakura blossoms on the sides of the label, too! these little bottles are the perfect size for each person to toast with at the reception. i'm so excited; i'm getting married in just 2 months! :D

well, time to prepare some bagel sandwiches for brandon and myself :).

♥,
melissa

6 month etsyversary!

it's already been 6 months since i started selling on etsy! i can't believe it :).

i've got my "buy 2 get 1 free - any pendant necklace" sale going on right now in celebration!

also, i decided it was high time i created a wholesale catalogue to hand out to people who are interested, and here's how they turned out:

the front of my catalogue (don't mind the blue hue - it's just my camera being crazy). i bought thicker paper so the text on the other side of the paper wouldn't show through, but i guess i need even thicker paper :p. oh well, not bad for a first try!

a sample shot from inside my catalogue. it was such a pain (i hate microsoft word!), but it was worth it :).

the back of my catalogue. the little grey box in the corner is where postage goes, and the bigger grey box is for an address label. so if i need to mail a catalogue to someone, all i need to do is seal it shut on the side and mail it! i blurred my address in this picture because, well, you never know what weirdos are on the internet ;p.

although they were a pain to make, i really had fun putting the catalogues together. they are getting put to the test tomorrow when i meet with a woman who's interested in stocking her boutique with my items here in the small town i live in. i'm excited!

this is just an example of what i've been up to while etsy is sloooooow. i've been working on wedding planning a lot, also. brandon and i took an engagement photo, and i'm in the process of printing out a ton of those to disperse at the wedding. i also took care of ordering the individual bottles of martinelli's sparkling apple cider that we are going to toast with, and i even managed to find a promotional code to save 10% on those!

i hope everyone's hanging in there and being productive this slow july!

♥,

melissa

june summary, july goals

'lilith', one of my newest beauties in my shop


my goals for june were:

• sell 25 items in my shop, bringing my total to 81 items sold
• look into another wholesale opportunity
• clear out my tile pendants
• reach 360 hearts
• have lots of fun! i'm going to a book signing/reading of my favourite author, chuck palahniuk, this thursday, then saturday brandon and i are seeing eddie izzard! my best friend sarah and i need to plan my bachelorette party, too. and i want to read a bunch of the books i just got in the mail :)
• join an etsy street team?
• work on my french and biology stuff

here's what actually happened:

• i sold an amazing 44 items in my shop... wow! as of the end of the day on june 30, i reached 102 total sales.
• i did more than just look into wholesale opportunities; i landed 2 new wholesale accounts, got a reorder on my previous one, and have 2 pending wholesale accounts! all this happened the last week of the month, too, so i'm still feeling a bit overwhelmed (but in a great way!)
• immediately, all but 4 of my tile pendants sold out. i still have 4 left, and they are still $4 and waiting for good homes :).
• i surpassed my goal and made it to 363 hearts ♥
• i did have a ton of fun! i did all the stuff i planned, although i didn't get as much reading done as i wanted.
• i found an etsy team to join and contacted the team leader (EAST - earthpath artisans street team, by the way), and all i have to do now is go through their checklist to be in compliance and participate in the team :D. they seem like a really nice group of people, and i think me and my shop will fit in nicely.
• okay, now hear me out! i totally didn't do anything for my biology class :/. i really need to do that; summer is quickly passing. i did practice my french a bunch, but i need to start studying my textbooks in addition to practicing.

june was a fabulous month! i'm really excited, because everyone says summer is slooooooow, but i'm getting so much accomplished.

here are my july goals:

• sell 45 things in my shop, bringing my total to 147.
• complete all these wholesale orders and delve into the new ones
• reach 430 hearts
• introduce my new washi fortune cookie line (thanks for your enthusiasm and advise, ryan!)
• start preparing my inventory for christmas, as i will not be able to do a whole lot of new creating once college starts again at the end of august
• attend my bachelorette party and have a blast! :D
• take care of the rest of the wedding stuff, because, again, i won't have as much time on my hands when college starts in august
• plan brandon's birthday (august 9)
• do all that biology and french stuff (for real this time!)

here's to a fruitful july, everyone!

♥,
melissa

taking a little break...

... to write a blog. whew, what a weekend!


saturday, brandon and i had our second cake tasting for our wedding cake (delicious!), and the ladies who are doing our cake complimented my purse and asked about it. i told them i bought it from a woman on etsy, and it turns out that one of the cake ladies' husband has a shop on etsy! i told them about my shop, which turned into me telling them about my wedding washi fortune cookies, and they said they would put my store's link in their "friends" section of their company's website as soon as they have a free moment! wow! also, they told me about this indie shop near downtown austin that sells on consignment, and after checking it out, i am definately going to make an appointment with the buyer so i can begin selling there. and when brandon and i got home from austin, i saw that i had sold a pair of earrings ('the dawn is still dark')!

sunday was full of cleaning and reorganizing.





here's what my workspace looks like now that it's all organized. MUCH better than before, trust me! i am normally a very organized person, but my workspace can be a very confusing place at times. but the most exciting thing about sunday was that i sold 7 things from my shop, plus 2 books from my half.com store!


and this morning, i woke up to ANOTHER sale - this one from a friend of a friend! i truly am on cloud nine. i am so happy my little shop is taking off. hopefully soon i won't have to worry about how i'm going to pay bills :).


so today has been one big, busy blur - packing orders, mailing orders, ordering new moo cards (yes, i am already almost out!), starting to remake all my sold items, and talking business with lea (who is having a "free shipping" sale today, by the way, in honour of her 2-year etsyversary!). here's what my fat stack of mailables looked like today:





on my dining room table. 7 packages (... and my mortgage payment, grrr...), including 2 international ones!

and the day's not done yet: i just made ANOTHER sale! the etsy gods must be testing me to see if i've got what it takes, haha ;p.


all i can say is i am so grateful: i'm grateful for all my blog readers. i'm grateful for all my customers. and most of all, i am deeply, deeply grateful for all of you that i call "friend". ♥


have a wonderful evening :). who knows what tomorrow brings!


♥,
melissa

ohm

this is my tattoo. well, this is the tattoo i want; i just painted this on myself with tempura paint :p. and actually, brandon doesn't like tattooing on hands, so it's going to be on my right shoulderblade instead of my thumb :pp.

i've wanted 'ohm' tattooed on me for a really long time now, so i think that after the wedding, i should go ahead with it.

brandon and i had a very eventful day today! he took the day off as a vacation day so we could get a bunch of wedding stuff done, and i'm happy to say that we survived, got everything wedding-related accomplished, and he didn't die of boredom (always a plus!).

first, we woke up early and drove towards austin. we ate breakfast at 'chick-fil-a' (mmm...), then headed for 'unbridaled', the dress place. i just placed my wedding dress order 2 weeks ago, but nicole miller had it in stock in my size (for a trunk show, i think), so it got shipped the next day after i put down my deposit. 2 weeks and $1732 later (ugh... but it's worth it! i swear!), i now have my dress hanging up in a nicole miller garment bag in my closet ♥. i will try very hard to resist putting it on and walking around the house in it for fun :p. no promises, though.

so anyway, next we went to the social security administration office to get brandon a replacement card (his has been lost since... he can't remember when. his mom lost it when he was a teenager or something). we waited for -maybe- 30 minutes, and got everything taken care of. easy!

after that, we attempted to run some other little errands (to no avail, but that's okay), and since we were near my parents' house, we stopped by to show my mom the dress (i think she wanted to cry, and she was grateful we thought to come see her).

it was then lunchtime, so we ate at 'outback steakhouse' really quick before going to our appointment of the day: cake tasting!



i found this picture in some magazine. it looks sooooo good, and it's our colours! the only thing we're changing is the shape; it's going to be a square cake instead of a round one, and it will have 3 tiers. the cake is going to be red velvet (::drools::) with cream cheese filling alternated with raspberry puree filling, and the icing is chocolate buttercream. are you drooling yet? :p. the samples the ladies that own the patisserie brought for us were absolutely delicious, and we're going for a second tasting in a week and a half, at which point we'll place our order. yay! i think everyone we work with is astounded by my preparation and i-know-exactly-what-i-want attitude. i guess most brides are kinda floopy about things and don't really know what it is they want, but i sure do. all that time recovering from surgeries last year was spent wedding planning, and it has really paid off! i'm not stressed or pressed for time at all :).

i've also been busy making new things for my shop. i've been really focusing on my washi-scape line (i need to beef it up in my shop... those few pendants in that category are looking lonely!). i have over a dozen new pendant necklaces to list, plus a new star magnet set, many pendant boxes, and a brand new gift set. exciting times in 'washi by maoiliosa' land! i'm also just 1 sale away from meeting my monthly goal (!) of 25 items sold this month, which is just incredible! my little shop is really taking off :).

here's a new piece, 'blushing':



whew. what a day! i'm gonna go curl up in bed with a good book :).

♥,
melissa

'japanese wedding'

i just made a new batch of my japanese washi fortune cookies! these feature cute little white cranes in flight. cranes are a staple of japanese weddings.

these are now listed in my shop :). to read more about them, go here.

i needed to actually make some so i could take pictures for the listing, so i went ahead and made the 20 of these i needed, but with my wedding 'thank you' fortune inside. now that i'm done taking the pictures for the listing, i can mix these in with the sakura ones i made for my other washi fortune cookie listing! if i hadn't done this, these cookies would have just gone to waste, because i make these custom-ly per customer. how effecient of me, yes?

also, don't forget to stop by my shop and check out my $4 tile pendant necklace sale! i've got to clear them out of my inventory so i can replace them with aanraku bail versions :).

♥,
melissa

may summary, june goals

here are the things from my goal list that i managed to accomplish in may:

• complete my first wholesale order
• order new moo business cards
• finish the semester of school (i even got all a's!)
• buy my wedding dress (yay!)
• list cool and cute things in my shop
• entertain friends at my house (i think we had people over at least once a week in may)
• read some books for fun

i didn't:

• reach 300 hearts. i'm at 290, which is close! and i did gain 70 in may.
• sell 20 things in my shop. i sold 17, which is more than april, though :).
• have a give-away. i decided to scrap the idea i had. i did list some great deals in my shop throughout may, however.
• begin my biology class. what can i say, i'm a procrastinator!
• start to study my french stuff. i'll get around to it :p.

overall, i'd say that may was a good month. i didn't quite meet my selling goals, but i did come up with many new ideas and improvements on current items. june will be a great month for introducing all the exciting things i have planned :).

so here are my goals for june:

• sell 25 items in my shop, bringing my total to 81 items sold
• look into another wholesale opportunity
• clear out my tile pendants (i've got a new and improved version planned!). and just so you know, all throughout june, all my tile pendant necklaces are just $4!
• reach 360 hearts
• have lots of fun! i'm going to a book signing/reading of my favourite author, chuck palahniuk, this thursday, then saturday brandon and i are seeing eddie izzard! my best friend sarah and i need to plan my bachelorette party, too. and i want to read a bunch of the books i just got in the mail :)
• join an etsy street team?
• work on my french and biology stuff

well, here's to an awesome june, the internet!

♥,
melissa

a startling discovery

well, the internet, on wednesday i went to buy my wedding dress. my maid-of-honour and best friend, sarah, went with me, and we also bought her dress. then we went to ulta and bought my nailpolish and makeup for the big day. it was a really great day, and i had a lot of fun catching up with her. we don't get to hang out very often because she goes to the prestigous university of texas and i live an hour away :(.

but today's blog entry story comes from a realization i made just yesterday.

backtrack to wednesday: i wanted to get pictures of me in my wedding dress so i could show my mom, who had wanted to come but had to work. all sarah and i had to take pictures with was her camera phone, however, because i was not thinking clearly due to the fact that i hadn't got a lot of sleep the night before (brandon had his friends over till 1 in the morning). so sarah took pictures, and yesterday she emailed them to me. obviously, they were blurry, but i was glad i at least had something to show my mom.

so i opened up the picture file after receiving it in my email, and i made a startling, horrifying discovery.

i'm not sure if any of you are familiar with lost highway, but it's a movie directed by david lynch and it is very messed up. needless to say, it is one of my favourite films, as i have weird tastes :p. anyway, robert blake (yes, that robert blake) plays this really creepy guy in the film, and my first thought upon seeing me in that wedding dress was: holy crap, my face looks strikingly familiar to robert blake's in lost highway.



this is not a good thing, the internet.

please note:

• the pale face


• me with very small eyebrows, robert blake with no eyebrows


• the wide, dark eyes


• the similar noses


• the colour of the lips
  

and most terrifyingly:

• the same exact smile. right down to the crescent wrinkles and dimples.
  

when i pointed this out to brandon, he exclaimed: honey, you really need to come up with a different smile.

yeah... i'm definately going to work on that. i always thought i looked creepy smiling in pictures, but it took my wedding dress photo for me to realize just why! ugh!


...

in other news, these are the nailpolishes i came home with:

the colour on the left is 'chicago champagne toast', and it's what i'm wearing on my wedding day. the colour is a little off in this photo; it's actually less mauve than that. the one in the middle is my favourite, and it's called 'gargantuan green grape'. brandon's actually letting me paint our bathrooms this colour (yay! i've always wanted a green bathroom, for some reason). the one on the right is 'do you lilac it?'. gotta love opi nailpolish names!

also, i have several new books to read this summer! i bought lullaby (chuck palahniuk; the only book by him that i haven't read), no country for old men (cormac mccarthy), teacher man (frank mccourt, another of my favourite authors), a gemstone reference book, and another mothman book. those should keep me busy, don't you think? :)

well, i'm off to start making some new, exciting merch for my shop! and my sale ends tomorrow, so don't forget to take advantage of that!

♥,
melissa

busy me

i've started working on my wholesale order, and it's been fun so far! i had to make 40 of these ^ and 40 of a different design to make 20 pairs of earrings in each style. my fingers are stained black from painting the wood pieces for this batch ^ :p. i feel like a real artist!

while taking a short break from that project, i bought this from a chick on etsy. i'm planning to wear it to the nine inch nails concert in august :D.



and i forgot to mention this the other day, but i bought this super cute purse (see below) from etsy seller bagsbymelanie, and i LOVE it. it's absolutely perfect in every way. thanks, melanie! :D



i've already managed to stuff it full of melissaness, as you can see.

i should mention that the purse i bought for my wedding day that i mentioned a while back arrived, and it is gorgeous! if you want a pretty bag from some awesome aussie etsians, check out aishii, where i bought the wedding purse.

okay, i've got to get back to jewelry-making! have a great weekend, everyone :).

♥,
melissa

lower prices and new merch!

i spent the last few days doing tedious improvements for my shop. i started by cutting the ribbon off all my pendant necklaces, cutting a new ribbon for each, and finishing up each piece with crimp beads instead of sealed knots. then, of course, i had to take new pictures to reflect the changes i made. and while i was at it, i thought i'd go ahead and shoot a more interesting main pic for each item. the problem is that i have some 90-or-so pendants, so this took a lot of time!

• time spent redoing the pendants with crimps: 5 hours


• time spent reshooting pics of the pendants: 2 hours


• time spent replacing the old pics with the new ones in each listing: 6 hours
  

^before



^after! ah, much better!

then, i decided that i am going to start attaching a free tag to each pendant necklace when i sell it that has my shop info on the front and a to/from area on the back. the tags are cute and simple, and i love them, but i wanted to advertise this in my shop, so i had to go back into each description and add that info :p. that took another 2 hours. all the time spent was totally worth it, though. my stuff looks a lot better now :).

also, after much thought, i have decided to lower the prices on my pendant necklaces to $11. so basically, now my items have a lot more worth, because 1) i changed to crimps (which looks much nicer and more professional), 2) they each come with a free gift tag, and 3) they cost $1 less than they did before!

additionally, i lowered the prices on my prints to $5 last week. those are slow-selling, so i think i'm going to discontinue most of them when the listings expire next month. i'll keep a few of my favourites around, though :).

and one more super exciting thing: i made something completely new!




you can read the description here, but basically these are little washi fortune cookies that i personalize with messages, names, fortunes, whatever you want! i'm really excited about these! i listed these 2 days ago and i've already had over 100 views, which is a TON for me! the ones you see above are the ones i made for my wedding :)

okay, time to go make some more rings with some new paper i bought!

♥,
melissa

weddingness

i am all about wedding planning right now, and i am on a roll! six months left :D

yesterday, brandon's shirt and shoes arrived from the men's wearhouse. i made him try on everything (and his pants, which he bought some time ago), and he looks great in his wedding gear!

i haven't bought my dress yet (wanting to lose some more weight first...), but here's "the one":

it's from nicole miller, and it is outrageously expensive ($1600?!), but since i own at finding great deals, we can afford it because of all the money i saved us elsewhere in the budget (the chick in the picture is definately not me, by the way). i've already tried it on once at this fabulous little boutique in austin, but my best friend sarah's coming with me to buy it next month, and i can't wait for her to see me in it! and on that note, i can't wait for brandon to see me in it even more! :)

last night i found the perfect shoes:

so cute, and only $15! they're exactly what i was looking for. i got lucky :).

and of course, i've already shown you the tiara i bought from my friend lara. that's pretty much my wedding day ensemble! oh, and i am going to be wearing this jewelry set that brandon bought me about a year ago from dharmacrafts (one of my absolute favourite shops):

ignore the necklace on the top right. the one i have is the double-necklace on the left, and the earrings. so beautiful, and perfect for my wedding!

also, i still have a dozen invitations to make, but i managed to finish making a batch of 75 very cool wedding favours! i can't tell you what they are quite yet (it has to do with the surprise new items i'm going to list in my shop soon!), but i will show you soon, i promise! hopefully they are a big hit. as far as i know, no one on etsy is selling these, and i'd like to be the only one, at least for a little while, heehee.

well, i suppose it's time to prepare lunch for that fiance of mine. chicken sandwiches and tater tots sound good? :)

<3,

melissa

strawberries, meatloaf, and a shopping spree

i have a lot of things to share with you today, the internet!:

• my honey-pie brandon did a super-sweet thing for me a few days ago. while i was in my history class all day, he went to the store and bought me flowers, strawberries, whipped cream, and a cute card for a nice romantic surprise! this is a rare indulgence, as brandon doesn't usually do this sort of thing. the flowers are alstros, one of my favourite kinds of flower because they're so delicate, colourful, and (best of all) inexpensive! last night, i chopped up some of the strawberries and served up this tasty treat for us:

i stuck a raspberry-flavoured chocolate ball in the middle of his whipped cream, and an orange-flavoured one in mine. can you tell i like to create cute food presentations? haha. anyway, that was really sweet of him to do.

• my friend wren posted this piechart in her blog yesterday, and i almost died laughing:
  

meatloaf: he'll do anything for love, but he won't do "that". i wonder what "that" is? hmm.

• following my etsy friend tizzalicious' lead, i went on a crazy shopping spree! i mainly bought things for my best friend, sarah, who is my maid-of-honour. i came up with a really cool idea for a "thank you" gift for her, so i went on the prowl around some awesome etsy shops (and some non-etsy shops, too) to gather the goods. unfortunately, i can't share what i bought just yet, because she might read this blog and then the surprise would be ruined, but once i give it to her (in october), i'll share a picture of the completed gift with you!
  

of course, i didn't just buy things for sarah... i got some goodies for myself, too :D. here's what i got:

^this is from 'curious by design'. they have all different kinds of collages, and they're all really cool. i also liked the gypsy ones a lot. i'm not sure what i'm going to do with this yet, but i'm excited to find out!


^ these cutecutecute stickers are from my etsy friend fromjapanwithlove. i like to check her shop every few days to see what new kawaii things she listed :).

and finally,



^ i bought this as my wedding day purse. goldish-yellow isn't one of my wedding colours, but this tote just screamed "wedding!" at me, so i got it :). i love the little dragonflies that are on it; perfect for a japanese-esque bride!

so yes, i was naughty. but what else could i do when there are so many great sellers on etsy?! :D

<3, melissa

the invitations

my wedding is only 6 months away!




i thought you might like to see how my wedding invitations turned out:



^ oops, this one is a reject because i placed the text label too far over to the left (notice how the first part of my name runs into the flower branch :p). but you get the point on how they look!

of course, they are 100% handmade by me, which i hope the receipiants will appreciate (in all, i guess it took me about 4 evenings to make 60 of these things). i had a blast making them!



^ this is the back of the invitation. i made a pocket to hold the r.s.v.p. info and 'save the date' sticker (to put in a dayplanner or on a calendar!).



^ finally, i signed the back of each invitation. i do this when i make cards for people, so i thought i'd continue the trend :).

so, what do you think?

other fun things:

• i made a sale today! i sold 2 bags of cut-out paper sakura flowers this afternoon. just for fun, i'm going to double the order for free :).
• the price of the art prints in my shop have all been lowered to $5! yay!
• soon, there will be a new and fascinating product in my shop. hint: it involves washi paper, but not like the other items in my store thusfar! and it is very cute!
• if you have a moment, please respond to the poll at the top right of my blog. i want to know if you think making washi rings is a good idea or not :).

okay, i'm off to stick address labels on a million envelopes (not nearly as much fun as making the invitations, i fear).

happy sunday to all :D.

<3,
melissa