03.11.08
My Interview with Jodie, Owner of Blinking Mouse
Please meet Jodie, Owner of www.blinkingmouse.etsy.com
Where are you located? In the West Midlands in England
What do you design? I mostly make jewellery for women where I use buttons, beads, Fimo, etc. I’m obsessed with buttons at the moment and everyone seems to love the results. I really like to use materials that people say can’t be used to create sophisticated “grown up” pieces and use them to create jewellery any adult woman would feel beautiful wearing. This weekend I went on an earring spree so I might turn my attention to a different form soon. I also have lots of paper craft stuff lying around waiting to be busted out and I’d quite like to start making cards again soon. I also love to customise t-shirts.
Where/How did you learn this? I started by making elastic bracelets with plastic beads when I was 16 and in my angry creative girl phase, which thankfully I’ve never fully shaken off. As I got more interested in “proper” jewellery making, I started buying bead magazines and hanging out at Craftster (www.craftster.org) for tips. I’m a pretty DIY kind of learner, but I do love part-works and I think they’re great for learning specific techniques.
Favorite Artist who inspires you? I wouldn’t say artists inspire my crafting but I do have a couple of favourite artists. I’m pretty mainstream and like Dali and Picasso but I’m not so much into names when it comes to painters. If I see something and I like it I might explore that painters work, but so much of my love of art is made up of glimpses of isolated painting in galleries. I also recently met a great artist who sells on etsy called Paula Koran, and you can see an interview with her at my blog http://prettylittleloveobjects.blogspot.com
What do you do to combat creative block? I try to leave it alone. If you try to force inspiration to work for you it will run away, but inspiration is clever-it doesn’t want you to come looking for it so it leaves a crude animated dummy in its place. You think you’re still cooking with inspiration, drawing with inspiration, laughing at a dumb joke with inspiration but really, it’s hackery you’re joshing with. In a few days when you look back at a project you’ve created by trying to push inspriation on you’ll realise that.
Inspriation sometimes just needs a little space-stop crowding it and it will come back.
Where do you design your creations? I moved back to my parents house after university. When I wasn’t working full time I used to create downstairs while they were out and then tidy up quickly, but now I work during the day so I create everything in my room. It’s a bit cramped and super messy but I have a box for storing finished crafts in so it’s not too hazardous. Sometimes I do get wire stuck in my foot though.
What does your work space look like right now? There’s a ton of earrings and a button necklace lying over a Lakeland catalogue and all my projects in process are laid out beside that. The new craft supplies I bought last week are sitting in their jiffy envelopes to the right of this space and behind all this are the two space saver boxes I store my finished crafts in.
Best advice you received when starting your own business venture? Promote everywhere but do it for free! Everyday is full of opportunities to get your face out there for nothing and you need to make sure you’re not missing them.
Favorite part of owning your own business? I love that Etsy lets me feel like I’m running my own little shop, standing behind my own counter chatting with cutsomers.
Least favorite? Having people constantly ask you how your shop is doing and then trying to be sympathetic if you haven’t made hundreds of sales that day. Rome-built in a day-I think not.
How do you relax? I like to read and this year I’m concetrating on the classics, although I still have a massive love of contemporary fiction. When I have money, I love to shop. I’m also a drinker like any good British lass should be and I like to pretend that I can both dance and sing when I’ve had a few. I used to find pilates really relaxing but had to give up my regular class because of work commitments. I would love to be able to start that up again. Finally, I like to go to my weights class to burn off any extra tension and re-energise myself.
Favorite color? Green-I look so good in it and it has hundreds of shades.
Does this color show up in a lot of your work? A fair bit as you can see from my button necklace. One of my favourite colour combinations is green and pink, which I think works really well together in a range of shades.
If there were more hours in the day, what would you be doing? So many things! I’d be writing the many book ideas crowding my head, learning how to make shoes, bead stitch properly and bind books, learning to ride, taking foreign language classes, completing my first knitted project (a two colour scarf), scrapbooking, more crafting for sale, reading tons and tons of books, exercising more, actually working on my marketing project for evening classes (yeah right), promoting even more, writing columns for Estellas Revenge (http://estellasbooks.blogspot.com) and other places-the list literally is endless. Of course watching less TV might help.
A sample of Blinking Mouse products. For all products, please visit Jodie’s website.
Jodie said,
March 12, 2008 at 3:22 am
That’s great, thanks for doing that and so quickly too! Off to share this link everywhere.
Administrator said,
March 12, 2008 at 8:39 am
Thanks for sharing! It is entirely my pleasure.
Kelly
Cindy (Polymer Clay Nut) Lietz said,
March 12, 2008 at 11:53 am
This is a great interview! I love to read that someone has been a making stuff since they were a kid. I have always believed that what you loved doing most as a child is probably what you should be doing as an adult. What’s in you, is in you… It’s best not to fight it! I love your designs Jodie, simple and beautiful! Keep it up.
Cindy Lietz
“I learned by making mistakes… Now you don’t have to.”