Status Reports & Other Ramblings

[stock photo that is definitely not a photo of my desk because I don't have time to tie raffia around an artfully arranged vase of carnations and my planner is full of illegible scrawling and usually half-buried under a stack of bead cases and also is that sidewalk chalk in the glass jar? hastag aesthetic hashtag bossbabe hashtag WTF hashtag this is why I'm not on instagram]

Okay, I give up: I am just not good at Mondays. We're going to a weekly roundup, hopefully sometime in the first half of the week, but who knows? NOT ME.

• We are solidly into the ABSOLUTE CHAOS part of December (true story: I scheduled both a dentist appointment and a therapy appointment this week. Their receptionists both apologized for bursting into laughter when I called going HI YES I NEED TO RESCHEDULE FOR JANUARY BECAUSE I WORK IN RETAIL AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT I WAS THINKING) and if you need something custom for the holidays I need to know about it, like... today.
  
  
• Relatedly, holiday shipping deadlines are here. And I mean the part about the exorbitant markup on overnight shipping if you somehow forget about Christmas until the 19th.
  
  
• There is a brand-new subscription program called the Pretty Rocks Club starting in January and I am super excited about it! You can sign up for yourself or give it as a gift to someone else!
  
  
• Earring Club gift subscriptions are also a thing! In 3, 6, and 12 month options! The first pair will be something sparkly, light, medium-length and goes-with-everything neutral unless you know their favorite color/stone; after that they do the preferences survey so I can customize what I make every month.
   
• If you're in the market for gifts and you don't know what to buy (hi, bewildered husbands and boyfriends!) you can always ask the recipient to make a wishlist! Or I can help you pick something out, if the recipient has shopped with me in the past or you can vaguely describe their taste in jewelry/clothing/pretty rocks.
  
  
• For those "okay so we're exchanging gifts this year GOOD TO KNOW" moments, it never hurts to have a stock of these and these on hand!
  
  
• ARGH Shopify if you could just stop logging me out while I'm in the middle of writing a blog post THAT'D BE GREAT, THANKS 

It's Monday! There's a whole bunch of frozen white stuff falling from the sky and school is closed! It's $_WINTERHOLIDAY shopping season! It's... Instant Gratification Monday!  

(OH HAI I have been prescribed a Ritalin and now I like exclamation points even more than I did before!!)

I've turned off comments on the blog because spambots were having a field day, so to place a request, you can email me (kythryne@wyrdingstudios.com) or Tweet at me, or leave a comment on the Facebook post mirroring this one, or send me a message on Facebook. (I don't recommend telepathy, though.) I'll do my best to keep track of everything; if I don't reply in some manner by this afternoon to tell you that I have your request on the list, feel free to nudge me, because let's face it, it's a big internet out there.

This is a choose-your-own-budget adventure; there is a $10 minimum and a $50 maximum and I'm happy to work with you to create something lovely at any point in that range. I'm good at finding ways to stay within any budget, so feel free to ask me for suggestions if you’ve seen a piece that you really love that’s totally out of your price range; I may be able to make you something similar with a less expensive stone or by simplifying a complex design.

Once your piece is done, I will give you a link to a reserved-for-you listing in the store.  If you don’t like what I’ve made, you’re under no obligation to buy it - you just have first dibs on it. I do ask that you either pay for your item or let me know that it's not to your liking by Wednesday morning, please.

Caveats and restrictions: I'm unusually low on all wire except silver (but you can ask, I might have enough to make something) and I'm limited to the materials I have in stock (but since I stock over a thousand varieties of shiny objects, that's not much of a restriction) and I reserve the right to limit this to a maximum of 10 requests and 1 item per person so I can get through all the requests by the end of the day. If I don’t have the necessary materials on hand, I’ll let you know and we can discuss having me order the materials for you; that may involve a deposit and a significantly longer turnaround time. 

Requests are open as of now and will remain open until approximately 6pm (eastern time) on or when we get to too many requests for me to finish today, whichever comes first. Tell me what you'd like and how much you want to spend and I will do my best to make it for you! I will be working through requests in a roughly first-come, first-served basis, starting around noon when I get back from giving a friend a ride home from dialysis.

(EDIT: the international holiday shipping deadline is indeed November 22, not December 22 as this post previously stated. True story: this morning I went to the doctor to discuss what we’re going to do about the fact that my ADHD is no longer even remotely under control! And that was immediately after I’d managed to get halfway to school before remembering that I was carpool mom today... despite having texted the other mom with my ETA as I walked out the door. *facepalm* At least my doctor was very entertained when I presented that as just one of many pieces of evidence to support my NEED MEDS NOW PLS request...)

At some point earlier this year Past Me was SUPER organized and put all the holiday shipping deadlines on her calendar. (Past Me deserves a cookie for this.)

Present Me forgot all about that until she looked at her calendar this morning and realized one of them is this week. So, with no further ado, I present to you the official Wyrding Studios Holiday Shipping Deadlines!

If you live outside the US and/or are having things sent to an address that is outside the US:

• Your deadline for any $WINTERHOLIDAY is this coming Friday, November 22. You might still want to offer up a sacrifice to whatever gods you think have influence over customs offices in your country, though. Just to be safe.

If you live in the US and/or are having things sent to an address that is in the US:

• If you would like your shinies to arrive before the first night of Hannukah or Yule/Solstice (Sunday, December 22), the order must be placed no later than Monday, December 16. Also please remember I have no control over the postal service, much as I might wish I did, so earlier is ALWAYS better.
   
• if you would like your shinies to arrive before the last night of Hanukkah (Sunday, December 29, you've got a little bit of wiggle room, but I would still highly recommend going with the previous deadline. If you like to procrastinate, the absolute latest is Tuesday December 23. No exceptions. I have latkes to fry for Jewish Christmas.
   
• If you would like your shinies to arrive before Christmas Eve (Tuesday December 24) the order must be placed no later than Wednesday December 18.  Again, no exceptions; I am not a Time Lord.
   
• If you somehow manage to forget about the existence of Christmas until December 19th, as someone inevitably does every single year (how? how is that possible? do you live under a rock??) your options will be a gift certificate or a larger gift certificate.  (Unless you want to pay $40 for overnight shipping, and yes, that is an exorbitant markup because I charge extra for things I don't want to do. Now you know.)

These deadlines are for things I have already designed, i.e. things what are already on the website. If you want custom work, now's a really good time to tell me that. (Yes, there will be at least one Instant Gratification session, but I don't know when because Past Me didn't schedule that.)

Other news of note this week:

• The anniversary sale is over but there are still some good deals lingering in the clearance section, including some $14 earrings because I'm too lazy to put them back to whatever price they were before.
  
  
• Those really pretty glass roses are back in stock now and I have enough to do some custom work with them, plus I also have them in shimmery clear and very pale yellow and a blue-purple color that a couple of Earring Club folks got but hasn't made it to the website yet. You'll probably see all of them by the end of the week, though, because I am plotting things. 
  
  
• I came downstairs Saturday morning and found the Tiny Evil Genius and her BFF had made earrings at some point during their sleepover, and they're pretty adorable and they made six pairs and FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING PLEASE DO NOT EAT THEM I KNOW THEY LOOK TASTY BUT THEY AREN'T. (No I did not lick them why are you all staring at me?)
  
  
• This is your annual reminder that I don't participate in Black Friday either as a retailer or a consumer. Instead I keep my prices reasonable year-round and run sales pretty frequently! I also move things that haven't sold in a while into the clearance section on a regular basis, so a thing that you love but can't afford right now may well become cheaper at some point (although you do run the risk of someone else yoinking it first) and the Oracle of Random Numbers pops up every now and then to pass out discount codes to all who petition.
  
  
• Another $WINTERHOLIDAY reminder: there is a wishlist function! You can send a link to your wishlist to anyone who asks what to get you! Or put it in your questionnaire/profile/whatever if you're doing a Secret Santa/Switch Witch/gift exchange! My basic packaging is pretty darn nice all on its own if I do say so myself, but you can also add a gift bag to your order for a little extra fanciness, or I can wrap it for you in very sparkly gold paper if you don't mind that I'm not good at wrapping things in anything that isn't wire so it may look like I let the nine-year-old do it. (I may, in fact, have let the nine-year-old do it, since she's slightly better at it than I am.)

...and to reward you for reading all the way to the end, here's a photo of Smol Panther informing me that the nice soft fuzzy blanket I thought I was buying for myself was, in fact, for the cat and not the human:

Anybody over the past two weeks: "Hey Kyth how's your day/week/month going?"

Me: "#%&*$^#@! MERCURY RETROGRADE!!!1!"

Yesterday I managed to misplace my chainnose pliers, which might not sound too bad because surely I own many pairs of pliers, right? YES, YES I DO but the chainnose ones are used in every single piece I make, which means that I effectively can not work without them. After tearing the house apart for an hour and a half - including going through the trash three times and even looking in the refrigerator and dishwasher and the medicine cabinet because I'd exhausted pretty much every other possibility - I eventually found them in the box where I store photography backdrops. How did they get there? I HAVE NO IDEA.

And then today I tried to do markdowns! Which was apparently too much of a challenge for my elderly MacBook, because the spinny rainbow beachball of doom promptly appeared for several minutes every time I tried to load a page! Oh and also my car's airbags have been recalled! IT'S ALL VERY EXCITING AND I WOULD LIKE A LITTLE LESS EXCITEMENT PLEASE.

*deep breath* ...if you need me I'll just be over here with the hematite and obsidian for a while.

Anyway! I did eventually convince my computer to behave, and many markdowns have been done and there are a couple of REALLY good deals in the clearance section as a result. Plus a whole lot of $14 earrings, so if you like earrings or you know people who like earrings this might be a good time to stock up. All the rest of the anniversary sale stuff is still going on too, including coupon code 14YAY for $14 off $41+ and the $14 mystery pendants.

(The sale ends at 11:59 eastern time on Thursday, though, so don't dawdle or you might turn into a pumpkin.)

...I really am going to go play with hematite and obsidian for the rest of my work day. I particularly need to restock a few of these new designs, because apparently I'm not the only person who's very DONE with this month.