Gratitude Segue: Thank You For Letting Me Be An Artist

This necklace just sold at the gallery today.  That makes me happy, of course.  But maybe not in the exact way one might think.

First of all, any and all sales are good.  Selling my work lets me continue doing my work, something I thoroughly enjoy (and it keeps me out of trouble).  But my first reaction when that piece sold was happiness that "someone understood what I'm saying". 

I'm not a great communicator.  You'd know this easily if you knew me in person.  I often stumble on words and spend time reaching for the elusive way to tell you how I feel.  then the next person comes along and speaks so eloquently and I'm like, "Yeah, what she said."

So when I make a piece of jewelry that really speaks to me, something that has a subject or a technique that is special for some reason, I feel like the buyer and I "communicated" in some way.

Kind of like they're saying, "I get you, Laura."  And that's a nice feeling.

My jewelry is not speaking in any literal sense of the word.  While there can occasionally be an actual "story" behind the inspiration for making a piece, that's not a given. The communication I am talking about having with the customer is a bit more ethereal.

One of the reasons I tend to make jewelry that I like is because it makes me happy.  I've had jobs where I have to do what others want.  But in my studio, I can mostly make what I want.  I say "mostly" because I do take on the occasional custom order and while I still like doing custom orders, it's more stressful than me just experimenting and creating without a finite plan.

But I digress.  This blog post is my round about way of saying that I appreciate all y'all who look at my jewelry and feel something, whether it's thumbs up for a job well done or a passionate "I have to have that" because I'm telling a story you want to hear.  I appreciate each and every one of you.

So thanks!  When you buy (or even comment on) my pieces that are maybe a bit off the beaten path, it makes me feel closer to being in communication with you. 

Be Judicious With Your Newsletters

A couple months back, a friend came to visit and during that visit we ended up going to a Sur La Table store in order to buy a crème brûlée torch.

At checkout, I was asked my email address.  I was distracted (not difficult to do) and without thinking overly much about it, I gave it to them.

I was not told why they wanted my email address, nor was I asked if I wanted to sign up for their newsletter.

Here is a screen shot showing the unsolicited emails from Sur La Table from Sept 10 - Sept 17 of this year.

I don't know about you, but I consider this obscene.  On what planet would a company seriously think I could ever be interested in reading 2-3 emails from them each day?

Do I blame Sur La Table entirely for overloading my email inbox?  No.  After all, I am the one that stupidly responded to the question asking for my email address.  I'm used to checkouts asking for my zip code (which makes more sense) and I just wasn't thinking too much about what they were asking for.  My bad.

That being said, 17 emails in 8 days is overkill.

So what's my point?

My point is, they lost an interested party.  I had to unsubscribe and/or set up a filter so these all bypass the inbox from here on out.

This means I will never see a Sur La Table newsletter.  Had they sent one a month, or even one a week, I probably would actually read it.  I'd still be a bit miffed that I never opted in to receiving their newsletter, but that seems like SOP for a lot of businesses these days.

So having been on the receiving end of "this is too much!!!"... fellow artists, my advice in regards to newsletter is:

• Make sure your list consists of people who requested to be on your mailing list
• Don't send too many newsletters to your mailing list

This is just my opinion, but I have the feeling many people feel as I do.

I send out one email per month (btw, if you want to sign up for it, here's the link).  I try to make it short and to the point and I try to put something interesting in it.

Do you send a newsletter to your customers?  Do you receive and read/enjoy any particular newsletters?  What's your experience on the subject?

If You're Not Failing, You're Not Trying Hard Enough

Five minutes ago I was in the workroom, nipping and filing some wire to make stacker rings.  Some of my nips were at an angle so I proceeded to file them straight (perpendicular to the piece of wire).

And my mind, in its usual wandering fashion asked, "What if instead of filing the ends of the wire straight up and down, I filed them at an angle?  I'd still be able to solder them together so long as I had two flat surfaces."

And then the other part of my mind responded with, "Yeah, but it's probably not as cool as you think it'd be.  They would most likely just look like you messed up your solder join."

And then the first part gave the response I love: "Maybe, but you don't know until you try."

I love my workshop failures.  They say to me that I am trying.  I'm trying new things, I'm working outside the box, I'm not letting history dictate my work, and I'm eager to innovate.

Both my children played youth hockey and I recall one statement by a coach that really stuck with me.  He said, "If you're not falling down, you're not skating hard enough."  It was a simple and profound message.  If you never fail, you're most likely playing it safe, not pushing yourself hard enough, and "safe" doesn't become best.  "Safe" doesn't create new inventions.  "Safe" isn't a leader.

In my workroom I have drawers and drawers of failed experiments.  These are treasures.  While they're unusable, many were stepping stones to some new technique or some new design element that needed to be worked out, thought through, and practiced.

Without my drawers of failed attempts, I would have no progress.

Kitty Help in the Jewely Making Process

The cats are no longer near my jewelry stuff, but ten years ago was a different story. I was recently sorting through some old photos and was reminded how helpful the fur-babies were.

Here's Ten looking all cute and innocent (notice the awesome ears!).

But not so innocent really, and he'd just finished playing with a necklace and batting half the beads down the heating vent.

Asia is a perfect fit in my bead box... no work until she wakes up.

Can take photos in the mean time.  Jag will help by pulling on the camera strap just as I'm about to press the shutter button.

You know they have to try out every box for size.  Ugh!  It's like me trying to get into jeans... I'll MAKE myself fit, dagnabbit!

 

"No, you may not take the mail just yet."

"Photo props?  I thought you brought me presents!"

Nothing like a warm kiln on a cold winter's day.

"Wait.  These earrings are out of place.  Let me adjust them for you."

"Yes, it really is comfortable with my face in your bead bowl!"

No computer work until kitty wakes up.

Kitty is awake... and ready for modeling job.  Too bad I need a jewelry model rather than a silly hat model.

"Oh, but your bags of jewelry findings feel SO GOOOOOOOOD!"

At the end of the day, it's just SO exhausting tipping over bead trays, chewing on postage envelopes, and completely disrupting the photo sessions.

Got photos to share!  Add to the comments section.

The Multi-Tasking Gene or How Weird Our Memories Can Be

I'm kind of proud of myself (it doesn't take much).

Today I peeled and chopped carrots and cleaned and chopped celery and I did with no tv, no kindle, no music even.  Just me, standing there at the kitchen counter, feeling the breeze from the open window, hearing the birds outside, and smelling the quinoa cooking in the pot.

That's probably pretty normal for a lot of you, but not for me.

I have a hard time doing one thing at a time.

There are some exceptions and they usually relate to work.  When I'm torching, etc, I want no distractions.

But I would never do what Monk or Poirot do... prepare a meal and sit at the table all by myself to eat it.  Nope.  I've got to put the tv on while I'm eating AND looking at photos on my phone at the same time.

And for those thinking this is perhaps an effect of the current generation, let me say that one of my most vivid memories of growing up is eating breakfast and reading the cereal box.  I mean everything on that box, interesting or not.  I read the ingredient list and the factoids and the weight.  Breakfast was the only time I could get away with that.

The few times I tried to read a book at the dinner table while eating... ha!  Yeah, no.  My father would have none of that.

I remember reading, many years ago, that there is no such REAL things as multi-tasking.  That our brains can't really do two things and once and what our brains ARE really doing is merely shifting back and forth quite rapidly from one task to another.

That made sense to me.

But what if it's not true?  What if you can allocate different parts of the brains to handle different tasks at the same time?

For example, remember as a kid rubbing your tummy and patting your head? Yes, it took some coordination and even then some people could never get it.  But I think the successful ones were instructing one part of their brain to rub the tummy while another part of their brain handled patting their head.

Not a conscious decision to do both at the same time.  More like one unconscious instruction with an overlying conscious instruction.

I find myself doing this, sort of, when I have something to memorize in a VERY short span of time.  I'll give you an example.

When I'm doing my bills.  I want to transcribe a date, an amount, and a vendor from a website to my datasheet.  If I try to remember all three at once, it rarely works.

Nov 17, $25.60, Amazon Kindle Books

I'll get one or two and then have to flip back to recall the third.

But if I "allocate" one piece of information to a different part of my brain, it seems easier.

For example, my eyes will make "like a photograph" of Nov 17, I'll speak $25.60, then the only part my brain has to remember is "Amazon Kindle Books".

I flip to my datasheet and retrieve each piece of information from its source.  My "eyes" recall the visual image of Nov 17, my lips sound out "$25.50", and my memory was easily able to hold "Amazon Kindle Books".

I've done this for years.

Now, you'd think someone who can do that could remember meeting people, their names, and their faces.

Maybe I just have memory issues that others don't.  Or maybe my memory just works differently than most.

I can tell you where in a book I saw something. Not quite like an eidetic memory (which some scientists don't believe exists anyway), but I can just visually remember what thickness part of the book it was in, which side of the page, and how far up or down on the page it was.

But I can meet someone at a party and forget their name within one minute.

I can't tell you how many times I've been with a group of people and someone starts to introduce me to someone else and that person says, "Oh, we know each other!  We met at so-and-so."  And I'm just standing there like a deer in the headlights going, "Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhh".  I don't remember them AT ALL.

Maybe that's WHY I have to do those "brain compartmentalizing" tricks when transcribing info.  Maybe I can't retain much.  Ha ha ha!

Our memories are weird things.  I mean, how many times have you been DEAD sure you remember something a certain way, only to be proved completely wrong.  And you're shocked by the revelation because you were SO sure.

That's why witness testimony scares me.  People get things wrong... but they're so sure of what they remember.

The Benefits of Yapping

I always wanted to be the stoic hero.  The cool cucumber.  The person of few words.

But that's not me, and I have to accept that.

I'm a yapper.

I will tell you online if I have a splinter, what I made for dinner, and why I don't like mushrooms.

I try NOT to be the person who does a blow-by-blow of her whole day, but I do like to make comments that I think will spark conversation.

Okay, maybe all the posts about spiders isn't such a great idea, but I meet people and occasionally learn things (like I've got to stop talking about black widows if I want my east coast friends to ever come for a visit).

I do most of this yapping on Facebook.

So my point is that sometimes yapping is extremely beneficial.

Today, for example, I yapped about having a splinter in my heel that I can't get at, can't see, and can't abide.  People I don't know at all responded... and one of the recommendations was "black drawing salve".  I'd never heard of it but in googling it I see it's something that sounds promising.

Once, I was yappying (lamenting) about needing a kiln that would do something my current kiln wouldn't do.  But the kiln I wanted was a minimum of $600.  A little pricey for a new workshop toy.  A few comments later and someone in the Bay Area said she had one she wasn't using and she offered me a price I, not only couldn't refuse, couldn't believe.

A couple years ago, I was yapping about a car that needed to go to the junkyard because it wasn't running.  I mentioned I was thinking of donating it to charity for the tax write-off except that I'd get no tax write-off because you have to itemize and that year I wasn't doing that.  A friend sent me a msg through FB about a place where I could sell the car for a significant amount of money.  A few weeks later, it was a done deal.  I totally owe her lunch (at a minimum).

And the best outcome of all from my yapping was finding another hockey family clear across the United States who took my daughter under their wings for several years as she began her college career, 3000 miles from home, with no car, and knowing not a single other person over there.  That kind of selfless giving doesn't grow on trees.

Had I not been "yapping", none of these wonderful things would have happened.


So maybe I don't want to change myself after all.

Along those lines, I was reading something the other day about another trait of mine that I don't like, but that turns out may be linked to something I very much do like and would not like to sacrifice one for the other (but that's a subject for the book, so don't worry, I won't yap about it here).

[ETA: My internet friend, Kerry, who I wouldn't know at all without my yapping and my life would be the lesser for it... just reminded me I forgot to state the obvious.  My yapping has brought into my world some of the most awesome friends I can imagine.  In this blog post I was focusing on the totally random things my yapping has achieved, but let's totally not forget the non-random things too.  Thanks Kerry, friend, perhaps fellow yapper!]

BTW, if yapping has led to something good for you, big or small, I'd love to hear about it.  Leave me a comment!

But What if Your Facebook Account Really Was Hacked

The other day I blogged about how to take steps to protect yourself from scammers cloning your Facebook account (basically impersonating you) and "hitting on" all your friends.

Today I will address... what if your account was hacked and/or things to do to make it not as bad as it could be.

One of the first things you want to do is go into your settings...

... then click on the SECURITY tab on the left side and once there, click on the edit option for the LOGIN ALERTS...

... This opens up to a window where you can select the option to be notified if an unknown device logs into your Facebook account...

Aside from that one, I also use the second one, Login Approvals.  If you set this up, you'll have to enter a code that is texted to your phone if you try to use your Facebook account from a device you don't normally use.

Anyway, if you do get an alert that someone did or is trying to log into your FB account and/or if you know you've been hacked because someone is using your account to post or msg things, then the first thing you want to do is change your password.  If you can't because someone else already did, then reset your password (that's like when you click the "I've forgotten my password" button).

You can also report a problem with your account.  I'm guessing that's under "report a problem" (pull down menu that showed you "settings")... but I don't want to go there 'cause my account is okay at the moment.


Maybe also post something on your timeline so any of your friends who check there can be warned not to open suspicious msgs from you or click on video links, etc.

If you want to try to avoid all this, there's one thing I learned about awhile ago that sounded reasonable.

Go back to your settings and this time click on APPS...

... then click on SHOW ALL and start editing them (or deleting them).  You decide what your apps can and cannot see.

So happy trails and safe socializing.  Fingers crossed we all remain relatively unscathed.

[Update... check out my previous post: How to protect yourself from Facebook scammers]

How to Protect Your Facebook Account from Scammers

There's a thing that's happening more and more lately, so I thought I'd address it here, so any of you who want to can take proactive measures to prevent this from happening to you.

First I'm going to explain it so you understand it exactly... then I'll show you what to do if it happens to someone you know... and then how to keep it from happening to you.

I call them scammers rather than hackers, because they aren't actually hacking into your Facebook account.  Although many people do think they've been hacked.  They freak out that someone has access to their Facebook account and they change their FB password, etc.

While it's never a bad idea to change an online password every so often, rest assured that in the scenario I'm about to explain, the scammer has not hacked into your FB account nor do they have your password.

Because there is more than one person in the world with any given name, Facebook couldn't let only one "Mary Smith" be called "Marry Smith" on Facebook.  How would the other thousand Mary Smith's in the world feel?  (They'd probably feel like the thousands of Mary Smiths who don't get to use their name on Twitter or Instagram, but that's beside the point.).

So when you create a FB page, you get a unique identifier, but you can CALL yourself anything (within reason).

So let's say Mary Smith #1 makes a Facebook page using Mary Smith as her profile name.  So when Mary Smith #2 comes along, she makes a Facebook page also using Mary Smith as her profile name, but the URL to her page will be different from that of Mary Smith #1.  But what YOU see when you look at either profile page (more on this later)  is just a FB page that says "Mary Smith" and probably a photo of each respective Mary Smith.

When you want to find someone on Facebook, you search on their name, right?  And more often than not, more than one FB account with that name comes up.  So you either look at the avatar (profile) pic to see if you recognize who you're looking for or you see if they've listed a location where they live, etc.

So what's the scam?

If you get a friend request from someone you thought you were already friends with on Facebook, 99% of the time you're being scammed into "friending" a fake FB account.

What these people do is look around for people whose "friend lists" are public (more on that later too).  Then they just make a new FB account, call themselves your name (remember, your name is not proprietary on FB) and start sending out friend requests to all the friends on YOUR friends list.

Now your friends will most likely do one of two things.  They will either go, "Oh heck, I know her; of course I want to be FB friends with her".  Then they confirm and are now friends with the scammer.

Or... they will go, "Um... she's already my FB friend.  What's going on?"

Three times in the past month, I did this second thing.  Then what I do is notify my friend (make sure you're using their real account when you msg them... find them from your friends list and make sure you see reasonable posts on their timeline).

You can check out the timeline of the person making the friend request without having to friend them.  What you'll usually see is rarely anything more than the fact that it's a new account and they have a profile pic.  There will be no history and their friends list will usually be short... only those friends who have already fallen for their scam.  You can see the scammer's friends list without friending them (unless they're clever enough to do what I'm about to show you at the end of this blog post)... and if you want, you can let these friends on the list know they "friended" a scam artist.  But that's not usually necessary because FB shuts down these scam accounts almost immediately after being reports.

If this happens to your account (someone impersonates you), don't post on your FB wall that you've been hacked.  You weren't.  There is nothing compromised about your FB account.  Someone is just impersonating you.  They do not have any of your private information.

Okay, so what you want to do (and I can't show you screen shots of going through the steps until this happens again) is report it to FB.  Anyone can report it.  I've done it numerous times.  I'll try to recall the steps.

Open the scammers timeline (just click on their name, don't accept the friend request), then look for the extended menu next to the "Message" tab (see first red circle).

In the extended menu is an option to REPORT.  Click on that, then you'll see options (now here's where I'm going off my memory).  I think the one I pick is "this person is impersonating a friend" (or something like that).

Go through the questions... it will ask you the name of your friend (I usually just put the URL to my friend's true FB page).

When I report these to Facebook, the scammer's account is shut down within minutes.  WTG, Facebook!

The only time it might not be a scammer (that other 1% of the time), is if my friend, for some reason, created a second FB account for themselves.  So I usually msg my friend and ask before I report it.  If they say they haven't created a new FB profile recently and requested my friendship, then I go ahead and report the scammer.


So back to unique FB identities for a second.

Let's say Mary Smith #1 created her FB page a long time ago.  She may have the URL (to her FB page) as something like: https://www.facebook.com/marysmith

And her page (her timeline) will say Mary Smith next to her avatar picture on her FB banner.

When Mary Smith #2 comes along, she won't get the URL that says Mary Smith.  Her URL may even look more like this: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100012083678532&fref=jewel

But her page (her timeline) will say Mary Smith next to her own avatar picture on her FB banner.

Let me back up and show you what I see if I search on the name "Laura Bracken".  Here's what I see...

Notice there are four "Laura Bracken" FB accounts right away.  They all have avatar/profile pictures but only two have locations.  Sometimes it isn't easy trying to find someone you really want to find.  People looking for me might not know which one of these I am... unless they knew I live in Penryn, CA.

Anyway, now I'm going to show you how each of these "Laura Bracken" accounts look different.

Here's the URL to my account.

When I started my FB account, there was probably a question asking me what my name is and another one asking me what I want to be known as, or something like that.  (Sorry, I don't feel like creating a fake FB account right now just to demo the process.)

But anyway, you can see, my name (Laura Bracken) shows up next to my avatar, but my URL is something different.

Here are Laura Bracken #2, #3, and #4.  BTW, I'm not exposing anyone's secret info... these profiles are all open to the viewing public.

I'm showing you these four profiles to show you that there can be many "Laura Bracken" FB pages, but we all have unique URLs (the red rectangles).

So what these scammers do is create a new FB account, add YOUR profile photo to their account (photos are easily stolen from the internet... it's as simple as left-click, save as) and give themselves YOUR name.  To the casual observer, it will look like YOUR actual FB page.

To the trained eye, it looks like a scammer if it's a new account (next to nothing on the timeline... no posts) and they don't have many friends (hopefully, they haven't had time to scam too many of your friends yet).

So that's what they do and how you can try to differentiate a real friend request from a scam one.

If you get a friend request from someone you thought you were already FB friends with... HUGE red flag.  Don't just "confirm" their friendship.  Investigate, notify your friend, report the scammer to FB.

Now, lastly I want to show you how you can try to avoid being scammed yourself.

What these scammers want is access to your friends list, so let's just take that away.

The first thing you do is go to your timeline  and click on your FRIENDS tab...

Then click on EDIT PRIVACY...

This brings up a pop-up window.  Use the pull-down menus to select your choices.

Then click DONE.

If you select "Only Me", no one can see your friends list with one exception.  People who are my friends and your friends will be listed as "mutual friends".  So your FB friends will always be able to see who you and they both have friended, but your FB friends will not see anyone who is your friend but not their friend.

I don't know why FB has it set this way, but it's better than nothing.

So there you have it.

If any part of my explanation is wrong or confusing, let me know via comments and I'll see what I can do to fix this.

If this info helps you in any way, let me know via comments.  I love knowing that taking a chunk out of my day to blog stuff like this is actually useful to some people.  :-)

NEW INFO: To help you see what it looks like if someone who is already your friend gets their account cloned.  The spammer will send a friend request to all of the person's friends (because he has access to that list).

For any friend request I get, I do a search on their name (I have a lot of FB friends and can't remember then all). If two profiles show up for the person and I'm already friends with one of their profiles, I click on the name of the new request then I can report it. All I have to do is put my real friend's name in the form and then FB contacts them to confirm they did not create a new profile.

[Update: check out my follow up post: What if your Facebook account really was hacked?]

Later!