Blog

I am sure you have seen, or perhaps at least have heard of the movie Coco. We love this movie. It depicts the culture of Dia De Los Muertos in Mexico so well. The Mexican family, the alebrijes, the altars, the food, the desire to see your loved ones again.

Dia De Los Muertos is celebrated on November 1st. This holiday celebrates and honors the dead rather than mourns. It is thought that this holiday originated with the Aztecs through festivals in honor of the Goddess Mictecuacihuatl, the goddess of the underworld. This Goddess today is portrayed as the Catrina.

The holiday also originated in Southern Mexico. Until the 20th Century, did the holiday finally make its way to the northern regions of Mexico.  The strong holds of Catholicism in the Northern parts of Mexico prohibited the celebration of this Holiday. They limited their celebrations to All Saints Day.

Many families create ofrendas (altars) in honor of their deceased loved ones. These altars generally have a picture of the dead, their favorite foods and drinks. These altars also have candles and fruits. The altars are also colorful full of flowers either real or made out of paper mache.

Another major element of Dia de Los Muertos is Papel Picado. It is very thin tissue paper cut into silhouettes of skulls, flowers, and other images that reflect the life of the person being remembered and celebrated.

This year, we are looking forward to celebrating the dead. We will be honoring our families that have passed, our pets, and our friends. Who will you be honoring?

 

December showed up so fast and that means holiday meals, shopping, gift giving and receiving. It also means that this season can be a strain on one financially, perhaps even stressful because of family obligations, or getting everything you need to get done by the end of the year. But the best part of this season is being able to think about how we can make my loved ones feel loved. Sometimes it’s through the gift giving. Other times it’s through spending time together. One thing we know for sure is that this holiday season will be even more joyful when we make sure we take care of ourselves. One of the issues that leads to the stress of the holidays is the shopping. We always seem to procrastinate! The powerful Carnelian stone can help you avoid procrastination. That stone along with Flourite will help you be organized so that you don’t miss anyone or accidentally put the wrong name on the wrong gift!

But don’t you worry! We have a solution for you to make this year’s shopping not only easy,  but enjoyable. Come out to this years Holiday Market at the Arapahoe County Fair Grounds this Friday and Saturday. You will be able to find us, equip yourselves with beautiful wearable stones, perhaps even find the perfect gift for your mother in law, sister, brother, and then explore the market with over 100 vendors! You may even finish your list in one place with unique gifts you won’t find in a mall. We hope to see you this weekend!

Running a small business comes with inherent risk. Every decision you make is a risk. Should we create a new line? Should we try a new design? Should we choose this market? What is difficult as a small business is that we don’t have access to the teams of researchers to help us choose the risk with the highest return. We don’t have access to algorithms that let us know what type of style of jewelry run the highest searches. But, what we do have, is our gut, our passion, our keen sense of style ;), and our sense of adventure. We usually ask the question, should we? And we ask the question why not? Well, this past weekend, we took our very first hit. We signed up last minute for a market that was promoted as a home show. I know… why would we think we would do well at a home show? Well, I was following the string of comments and questions that followed to original announcement seeking vendors and there appeared to be many different types of vendors from clothing to essential oils, lipstick, etc. We decided to call them to learn more.

Warning sign number 1: A Home show was looking to fill booths the week before the show.

Warning sign number 2: They immediately offered me a 50% discount on registration.

After hanging up with the woman that was working really hard to sell me on this market, we discussed our options. We thought, what’s the worst that can happen? We break even?

Warning sign number 3: This show was touted on its marketing. They kept talking about the stellar marketing, yet I never saw a single ad.

Warning sign number 4: Their available booths went from only one left to “we’ve opened several booth spots because there has been a lot of interest. ”

To make a long story short, these market producers did market the event well. They filled empty booths with irrelevant vendors like us for the home show, and the traffic was non-existent. We should have listened to our gut. we should have paid more attention to the warning signs and we should have enjoyed a weekend off. But now we know. Every decision we make comes with risk. Sometimes, the risk pays off, sadly, this time, it did not. And tomorrow is a new day and we are so thrilled to be returning to the Dia De Los Muertos festival at the Denver Botanic Gardens. We hope to see you there!

I wrote a haiku the other day in honor of one of our tools that broke.

Oh motor, why now
When we need you so, you go
Oh motor, why now

When you run a super small handmade boutique jewelry shop, it’s hard to plan for the worst. We can’t really afford in space or in money to keep extra tools around especially when they cost hundreds of dollars and are about 4 feet by 4 feet in space. But when one of those tools decides to start smoking and acting up, we start to reconsider.

We never really set out to start a small business, it was more of a hobby, built out of being able to make things that we love. That we want to wear. And then our business grew, and evolved. We started by working one market every few weeks and now we are working at least three markets each month! And the best thing is when we have repeat customers that visit us again. Our tools and machines help us keep up with the AWESOME demand.

Well, why am I going on and on about this? Because a motor on one of our machines broke! One of our most sacred tools. Now we are running around trying to fix it, or finding a new motor. Wish us luck… and we will see you Saturday at the Urban Market in Skyline Park or on Sunday at the Oddities Market at Spectra Art Space.