I’m in the midst of an insane deadline this week and next (if I owe you an email, I apologize!), so in lieu of Friday Bits, here are some of my Instagram photos this week. I know some of you have missed Wendy, anyway. I downloaded the Vsco app, which is pretty awesome, if you haven’t used it.

ps. This is amazing, and I will be talking more about it later, when I can come up for a moment to breathe.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Two fun things I’ve been featured in this week that I wanted to give thanks/shout outs to:

Daily Candy featured For Me, For You as one of the top jewelry designers in LA, a honor I’m pretty jazzed about. In related DC news, did you notice their amazing new illustrations? All thanks to the fine talents of my buddy Samantha Hahn. I can’t think of a more perfect partnership.

*There are still necklaces left in the shop! Brass drops will be restocked next month*

Page 26 of the April/May issue of Modern Ink magazine features a gigantic Kate Miss photo and feature, and I share my 10 must-haves on their blog.

The preview is now up for the For Me, For You jewelry shop update. Tuesday at 5pm PST!

The next For Me, For You jewelry shop update will be this coming Tuesday, May 1st, at 5pm PST. Like I mentioned previously, I’m down to my last stock of brass drops so this update and the next might be the last chance to get the brass drops in this exact design and price as I’m forced to redesign it using much more expensive methods. The brass drops have been more or less the same for about three years (!) now, so I think change is good. I’ll tell you more about that later, though!

As usual, a preview will be up sometime Monday that I’ll post about and an email will go out to the newsletter subscribers as a reminder.

I’m excited to announce that I will be taking For Me, For You jewelry to my very first in-person event in Austin, TX this fall – Feliz! Put together by the talented minds of Abby Powell (who you may remember as half of the brains behind Portland’s Little Winter) and Natalie Davis, I decided to take this show on the road because I think what these ladies are putting together sounds fantastic and perfect for my line. Plus, who needs an excuse to go to Austin? I’ve never been but it’s been high on my list of places to visit.

The event will take place on November 2-4th at the Palm Door (which looks amazing) in downtown Austin – see you there? They’re taking applications for the remaining vendor spots, so you can apply for the sale here.

After much consideration and stomach aches, I’ve decided to put an end to Pinners Be Crazy. It was short lived and I still have tons of submissions that never were published, but I have my reasons. For the most part people gave me positive feedback and it made a lot of people laugh. I love making people laugh so that made me feel awesome. Some people even told me I was doing good work at calling people out for the terrible things they said to strangers on Pinterest, which also made me feel awesome. But slowly (or quickly? the internet distorts my sense of time) people came forward to express their qualms with the site, and slowly I started to agree with them to some degree. Some people were kind enough to email me and have an honest, private discussion about it, and some chose to voice their opinion about the site in the comments on other blogs that I came across. To each his own, either way I became aware of the issues some people had with it and it didn’t sit well with my conscience. The biggest argument that I came to agree with is that I’m being a hypocrite by making fun of people who are making fun of people. Another is that it serves no real purpose and my motivations are fuzzy – is the point to make people laugh, or make a stand against cruelty? In the end I couldn’t answer that completely, so I decided to stand down. Also, it was SO DEPRESSING going through submissions. People are so awful, you guys.

Maybe this is more explanation for a stupid tumblr than seems necessary, but I want to make it clear that I’m not stopping because someone hurt my feelings or that I can’t handle some people disagreeing with me. I don’t take criticism well, I’ve stated that before here, and not everyone needs to agree with me and be into the things I do in life, but it’s much more than that.

I also want to make it clear that I really, truly am sick and tired of the way some people treat each other in the comment sections online and I think that saying it’s just the nature of the beast is a cop-out. When I read vile, disgusting things in the comment section on Pinterest it makes my blood boil. I hope to explore other ways to take a stand against this, so stay tuned.

Thank you for being so awesome, my dear blog readers. And omg, did you know that some people didn’t know that the Titanic was real?? Corgis reenact these tweets. Sorry, I needed to end this heavy post with something lighthearted.

UPDATE: I’m closing the comment section because I just feel that this conversation is over and we don’t need to weigh the pros and cons of the blog anymore, but thank you for all of your input!

So, you guys, instead of doing Friday Bits today I made a tumblr blog that has been stewing in my head for months now. The topic: crazy/mean/hilarious comments on Pinterest. I’ve seen a lot of blogs cropping up lately on the topic of crazy things people pin, but I’m not interested in that as the gold mine for me is the comment section. Therefore I give you: Pinners Be Crazy. Please send me any good submissions as dragging through Pinterest for two hours has left me with no faith in humanity for at least another three days. I was going to be anonymous in my creation of this, but I’m not trying to be a mean girl, I’m really trying to focus on things we can all agree are downright mean or ridiculous, or insane overreactions, not make fun of people who are just from a different world than me.

I’m not on top of blogging this week because I have to take 2.5 days off next week so I’m making up for it this week (blah blah blah), but I’d like to take a moment to say: cold brew coffee, where have you been all my life? Not only are you so delicious and dangerously strong that I feel like I’m partaking in an illegal drug, but the lower amount of acidity it results in makes my stomach thank me. Normally coffee destroys my stomach, but like hell I’m giving it up because of such discomfort. Coffee is like a small business owner’s mascot, you know? So anyway, go make some. Now. It’s worth the wait and hilarious amount of grounds it requires at once.

I used Alana’s Ethiopian beans I got through my subscription to the LA Coffee Club.

The preview for Sunday’s update is in the shop now! Playing around with using some suede cord for a few of the clay necklaces, and some beautiful vintage Czech glass and some colorful vintage ceramic beads from Japan in the woven necklaces. I think they’re my favorite ceramic wovens yet.

Also trying out a new way to photograph the jewelry on a background I made, as they photograph so much better on white, but I can’t be satisfied with plain white. Not sure if it’ll stick around but it’s a step in the direction I want.

photo by Riel

I finally had a moment to edit photos from the show we had last weekend. I’m kicking myself for not realizing I hadn’t taken a single photo until the last 10 minutes, therefore I have ONE photo of the opening and two that Bianca managed to snag. So it looks rather sad, like we had an opening and we just stood in the rain alone. But no, lots of wonderful people came and it was a great time. And I can’t kick myself too much because I had so many great conversations catching up with new and old friends that I’m glad I didn’t hide behind my camera all night. Have you ever had an event and spent the next day regretting not talking to enough people? Always the worst. My voice was almost gone the next day.

The film was projected gigantic on the outside of the building so you could see it as you were driving up, and then smaller in the backyard with sound and magical christmas lights and an AMAZING tarp our friends erected just in the nick of time for the downpour. It was a pretty great team effort.

Thank you to everyone who braved the freezing rain to come and hang out! We are grateful to have such amazing friends. All the work below in the gallery was made by Will except for a few things in the case (which he also made!) that I made.

photo by Bianca of my cousin Taylor and I and some awesome blog readers who came all the way out from Playa Del Ray! So amazing of them.

If you couldn’t make it out, the film is now online! You can watch it here, or below.

Cosmic Sands from William Steinman on Vimeo.