A significant part of my business is custom work. Often, a client will see a piece in my case and fall in love with most of it but want a slightly different version. Perhaps the colors aren’t quite right, the scale needs to shift, or they’d like a different gemstone. These small adjustments to an existing idea can be a wonderful way to create something that feels personal while staying true to the language of my work.

I’m home from my first show of the year, my annual trek to the Palm Beach Fine Craft Show. I’ve been doing this show for over twenty years. It’s usually one of my strongest of the year, and over time I’ve built relationships with collectors who return year after year. There’s a rhythm to it. A familiarity. I spend the winter creating new ideas in the hope of surprising and delighting long-time collectors while welcoming new ones into the fold.

This year was the usual whirlwind, with the added layer that my husband also exhibits in the downstairs art section. The weeks leading up to the show become a complicated dance of logistics, packing, problem solving, and caffeine. If I’m honest, I went into this one carrying a fair amount of anxiety.

As many of you know, I’ve been on a mission to whip my website into true e-commerce shape. I sprinted like mad to get most of my to-do list finished before my Black Friday sale—and thanks to your support, it was my most successful yet! That success has given me even more motivation to keep revamping things. Shockingly, the task turned out to be much bigger than I expected, and I’m now fully accepting that this is a slow-and-steady, overtime kind of project. I’m committed to making my website genuinely shoppable: better product descriptions, better photos, and more of them—especially showing how pieces look on the neck, hand, wrist, and on real people.