[Jewelry making - Article 00318] - Re: [Orchid] Jeweler's former lives

[Jan McClellan]

========[ Invite a Friend - http://www.ganoksin.com/invite.htm  ]========

    Can't resist any longer - have to chime in even if my past lives
    were very un-noteworthy. 

    I've been drawing and painting ever since I was a small child, took
    lots of art classes in high school and then again in later years. 

    Dropped out of college to marry and raise a family - 6 kids later it
    seemed I should go back to work to help educate the brood. 

    Had several clerical type jobs, one of them working for Weyerhauser
    Co. in the forestry department where we set up a new system on the
    computer in order to keep a better inventory of the trees out there
    in the forest. I worked on maps and coding the data brought in by the
    guys in the field - computers were very new at the time - sound
    exciting? The map work wasn't so bad except that it went on for 3
    months every year - updating the tiniest boundary change in the tree
    stands - the coding meant putting the right numbers in all the
    little boxes on the code sheets. What is that line drawn across the
    paper? That's me, falling asleep, dragging my pencil behind me.
    Rather than lose what little mind I had left, I took an evening class
    in metal etching at our local college. My teacher, bless her heart,
    talked me into learning jewelry fabrication and I knew then, this is
    what I want to do! 

    So I continued on my own off and on for several years, finally
    retiring from my last clerical job and doing the jewelry full time. I
    began to do art shows on the West Coast and did that for several
    years (I needed to make enough to support my habit). My husband had
    taken early retirement because of several heart attacks and he helped
    one of our sons set up a computer business in our home. believe me we
    had computers all over and strange people sitting at our dining room
    table pecking away. The computer business found its own home, but a
    couple of years later, when my husband died, I still had several
    computers.....and my own personal tech guy. I continued doing the
    shows, then one of our tech buddies told me that I too could build a
    website. So I did - spent 3 months learning how to write html and set
    everything up. Lo and behold, I began to get sales and requests for
    custom work - its hard to do both the show circuit and all it entails
    and get the custom orders done in a timely matter so I sold my booth
    and my van and have been tied to this machine and my shop ever since.
    Good thing since no way could I put up that tent and haul that
    display anymore. 

    I was in my late 50s when I started my business full time and in my
    60s when I started my website (just in case anyone thinks they are
    too old to get started in this) Now I'm half way through my 70's and
    going strong. 

Jan McClellan
www.designjewel.com
____________________________________________________________________
T h e   O r c h i d   L i s t
Open Electronic Forum for Jewelry Manufacturing Methods and Procedures
____________________________________________________________________
Orchid FAQ:
~ http://www.ganoksin.com/orchid/faq.htm
Orchid Archives:
~ http://www.ganoksin.com/orchid/archive
Orchid Galleries:
~ http://www.ganoksin.com/orchid/gallery.htm
Invite a Friend:
~ http://www.ganoksin.com/invite.htm
____________________________________________________________________
Tips From The Jeweler's Bench - Article Archive
~ http://www.ganoksin.com/borisat/tip_sear.htm
The Jeweler's Selected Bibliography List
~ http://www.ganoksin.com/jewelry-books
Buy Orchid Jewelry:
~ http://www.ganoksin.com/shop
____________________________________________________________________
-Unsubscribe:
-Email: orchid-request AT ganoksin.com Body=unsubscribe subject=blank
____________________________________________________________________