Jewelry Design Dos and SEO Don'ts

The crop is off and time to close everything down for the winter; the long last watering to fill the soil profile, draining all tanks and irrigation lines, getting all the netting off and stored away. Then it is time for the farm to rest.

What a great time for thinking of new ideas, rethinking old ideas and developing breakthrough methods. I plan on studying the fashion crazes and vow to keep up! I plan on getting my sterling/fine silver pieces online and showing off my great hoop earrings and chandelier earrings. I have some great surprises coming in rings and barrettes and things. I am working on jeweled bibs that will be both stunning showstoppers, one-of-a-kind must haves.

My web sites are moving up in the search engines and I am hoping for a good holiday season. The SEO work has been challenging especially walking the tightrope of optimizing without ever crossing the line of no return. It is frightening!

Vital Wonders Magnetic Jewelry has a great new navigational design that is consumer friendly. I added a new top section grid of pictured categories on my Storefront/Home page and a new page Product List of pictured listed products. My dichroic glass jewelry site www.iluvjewelry.com has many new pieces I have been making during August and September 2009. I have been experimenting with melting in the wire bails in the dichroic glass pieces and will be trying fine silver wire and sterling silver bezels. I have a Cats & Kittens Line coming in 22K gold decals melted into my glass pieces which will be celebrating the summer '09 of finding our 4 feral kittens my son and I raised.

The summer of 2009 was different; I started my boutique and enjoyed developing it until the leading organization folded and took our whole mall down; finding and raising the very young kittens; starting up chickens again and even trying cornish hens; learning html and building my sites; harvesting late season wine grapes and eating my son John's homemade pizzas.

What a great summer in all!

Harvest is done! Best Cabernet Sauvignon ever.

Well, harvest went with the usual quirks, glitches and I can't believe its! This was the longest I ever let the grapes hang, but the buyer wanted them sweet [to sweeten up his other sour grapes everyone else reaps] and they went through a frost and -wow- what a treat. I think there are gold metal prizes in the future for Woody Creek Cellars; remember - 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon. It should be special.
The cabs were gorgeous. Slightly wained bringing out the sweetness and complexities. After cold nights and hot days; after an early frost. They were very special this year. I had almost no Merlot this year and very little Cabernet Franc. There was no Chardonnay, Gamay and the Zin went too far and were pretty shot. Letting the grapes hang past 24 brix is harder than it sounds. It is up to the buyer what their needs are, but hanging past their apex is great for sugar but plays havoc with the ph and acid levels. But DiJulio vineyard never has had sugar problems, so I can see the need to sweeten the sour grapes coming in behind us. No offense other local growers, but I am seeing many incredible breaches of growing; watering late, spraying late, struggling with low sugars, pushing young vines with nitrogen, pushing for early crops instead of root growth. My vines have the maturity of over 35 years and I have been tending them for over 25 years now. I think experience speaks and so do the varieties I luckily have.
Well we will see what Woody Creek Cellars develops from my grapes; it is too bad they can no longer make wine from just my grapes, but I can understand upping the quality of the local harvests and the need to blend mine in with the others. My harvests have been too small lately, dealing with frost damage and die backs. Next year should be great if nature allows. My Merlot will be in and I will be dong a new pruning technique since my beautiful vines died to the ground a few years ago from a hard frost. But new growth is always positive and it gives a chance to reflect and try new ideas. Here's to resting this Winter and starting fresh in the Spring with new ideas to sow. Happy hibernation everyone.

Wine Grape Harvest | Woody Creek Cellars | Stylehive | Page ONE in Google

Harvest is almost here for my vineyard, DiJulio Vineyard in Palisade, CO. I am glad Woody Creek Cellars is buying my grapes this year as I feel Kevin Doyle is making some of the finest wines in Colorado, if not the country. His winery is in picturesque Cedaredge, CO. in an old packing huge shed; big enough for all the wine barrels, equipment, stock, tasting room and best of all, a great bocce ball court - inside! I had Kevin's cabernet sauvignon and merlot last Christmas and the wine was fabulous; clearly fruity, rich yet refreshing with a good dry self-pleasing end adding to the innate ability to let you easily finish the whole bottle. My wine-loving daughter and I were very impressed with how Kevin's wine-making abilities keep developing and producing great results. Call (970) 835-3714.

I joined Stylehive! Stylehive is a sweetly self-loving site for connecting fashion aficionados. Anyone can join and start a 'hive' and start collecting looks, designers, companies and other hivers. It is a great way to keep current with the fashion trends and the absolute beauty of haute couture clothes, photography, modeling, shoes, accessories, clothes, night wear and underwear, purses, and shoes again,and more purses and more shoes... and tons of fun stuff about discovering interesting vibrant people and businesses. My hope is to collect classic, retro, and fashion-forward looks to cross reference to my jewelry lines and how my individual pieces fit in. As I learn what's hot I will be continually redesigning and developing my jewelry designs. I am thrilled about all the excitement at Stylehive and invite all fashion lovers to join into the fray.

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Winter is coming and I am looking forward to spending the R & D time developing new out-of-the-box ideas in designing and learning more and more html so I can keep jazzing up my sites www.vitalwonders.com for therapeutic magnetic jewelry and www.iluvjewelry.com for my dichroic and sterling silver jewelry lines.

I am running a contest with my myself to get it right in the SEO department for my sites. I am shooting for page one in Google by the end of the year, on the organic left side of listings - for both sites; but will celebrate either one's success - big time. I believe it will be Beef Wellington for two, for myself if I am alone, when that day comes.

I am starting a review section in my blog reviewing Grand Junction area businesses.
Keep tuned. It won't be pretty.

R & D

It is R & D time. I now have the time to develop my new ideas and try some experimenting - with web building as much as jewelry designing.

I am constantly tweaking my two websites www.vitalwonders.com and www.iluvjewelry.com trying to make them more concise, visually attractive, more interesting and mostly likable to the search engine robots.

I have been firing up the kiln making new dichroic pieces, working on long oval pendants with added dichroic accents mimicking gems adding patterns, intensity and depth. Whether they are teardrop shaped, a long oval, figure eights, elongated rectangle or freeform shape; I love the look of vertical lines projecting upward and downward - from Mother Earth to the Heavens. Representing, to me, the aspiration of our dreams grounded in the flesh of the Earth. Each pendant has its hills and dales, hidden gems, surprising colors and complexity of patterns. I also like how they rest on the breastbone over the heart area.

I am also making small dichroic pieces for smaller earrings, posts and hanging; and for multiple dichroic drops on a choker for a charmed look. I have some fabulous ideas I am working on for some embellished cloth and woven necklaces. I am looking forward to the Fall for gathering ideas and snookering them away to work on during the long winter.

Family, love, home grown food, hopes, wishes and some decent perspective.

Hello everyone! My new web site - www.iluvjewelry.com is open and ready for viewing. I am so joyful to be spending August at home reorganizing life.

I can't wait to see what doors I can open.

I am making jewelry even as I speak. Trying to come up with less expensive pieces, being what sells in bad economies, but I find it very hard to either simplify or mass produce. I am also taking the time to develop new ideas in fusing and in implanting bail wires inside the glass in new and creative ways.

Keep checking in on my new site, open and nearly finished, as finished as possible when it is an ever morphing medium - www.iluvjewelry.com. I have been racking my brains learning new web ideas to implement into my site. WWW.ILUVJEWELRY.COM will be developing non-stop. After all, don't great innovative ideas come out of the worst economic strife. I just must learn to relax and let it flow. That's way better than being frozen in dead panic. What comes out of that?

Livin' on faith and guts can hold incredible beauty. With this perspective, I am embarrassed by my own ennui when times were good. Money and good fortune are full of empty pride, like sugar having empty calories; can it be bad to feed your broke-ass soul with family, love, home grown food, hopes & wishes and some decent perspective?

How I hope I remember these sweet lessons when times get better.

Vital Wonders Boutique Has Moved

Vital Wonders Boutique has moved, where to; is still up in the air. The building that Vital Wonders was in, closed; all the shops had to move on. A very sad ordeal, having invested so much in the store's development, having sacrificed maybe too much, but when one door closes, another opens.

I am looking for a new location, but unfortunately will be closed until then. My new web site is up and will be fully working by next week. Then I will be dedicating myself to making fantastic new jewelry designs and styles. It is all about looking forward, fashion forward, having faith in the future and open to new adventures. We will see what develops. Beauty oft times comes out of chaos.

I was trying to put down roots in the middle of a brewing storm, and am not terribly surprised the boat capsized. I'll float on top of the heaving swelling ocean until I sight land. Ahoy!

People Aren't Surprising - Is that surprising?

People seem to end up being everything you were hoping they weren't. I get tired of being disappointed by people.