Mermadebaubles blog

What’s New?

Published on July 16, 2008 in business and life. 0 Comments

I was recently fortunate enought to work with the very talented Joel F. Lester who used some of my necklaces in a photoshoot with an the amazing model, Jessica Pinson. We met him at Starbucks.

I get really nervous about meeting new people and doing new things. IDK why, I just do. I really hate that part of me, but it is me and I am trying to grow out of it. ANYWAY. Josh(the husband) coordinated meeting Joel(the photographer) & got a sitter, even though I was a little wigged out and likely being bitchy to him. I apologized later and I actually cried because even though I am not always the nicest person he always comes through for me when stuff like this goes on. I am a giver upper sometimes and he is more of a go getter… so I feel very lucky that I have him on my side and I am learning to be more outgoing everyday from him. He might not always be the best at gifts and holidays, but knowing someone cares about you like that and respects+encourages your passions is better than any gift.

Anyway, Joel chose these three necklaces to work with:

Gossypium Peony, Splendiferous & Mermaid Whisper

The pictures are incredibly high fashion, and so resplendent. Seeing my jewelry modeled & photographed professionally has really inspired me to raise the bar for myself. I am hoping to have a plethora of new items for Fall, at very latest. I have the designs all drawn out & am working out some exciting new website design changes with Josh, so that my very templet-y website is more up-to-par with the caliber of the new photography. My jaw dropped when I saw the pictures. I wish I was that that talented, because the pictures I take(the ones above) do not do justice to my jewelry. Alas, my talent lies in making the jewelry, not photographing it. I am saving most of the photo’s for the website and other ads, but I wanted to give you a sneak peak of why I am so elated:

Photographer: Joel F. Lester
Model: Jessica Pinson
Necklace: Mermaid Whisper

If you would like to be notified of when new jewelry is added to my website, please sign up for the newsletter when you make an account. Thankyou!
-Jennifer Chernoff
Mermade Baubles

Trying to be artistic…

Published on May 30, 2008 in life. 0 Comments

I am going out of my mind with no silver. All the sad beads are sitting in rows, waiting to be put together. Just like the haircut that I have been waiting on for two years, the silver has been put in the “not a priority” list until further notice. I have been keeping myself busy with exercise and obsessing about healthy food. Not too exciting. I have been blogging on myspace a little and not enjoying the end of what was a very balmy spring. Humidity is not really my friend. Not only because is my hair frizzed out, but I open the door and feel like a wall of heat and moisture hits me.

We went to Belleville to a little art festival. They said it was the #1 art fair in the nation, and it was… ok. The food are was small and not attached to the music area. We are used to the Saturday Market in Portland, Or. and less sun. We got all slathered in disgusting sunscreen. All in all, I guess the most disappointing thing is that they only have it once a year. When we lived in Portland we would just get on the MAX and pop in at our leisure.

Also-our daughter turned six and graduated Kindergarten all in the same week! Go Trinity!

One fish, two fish…

Published on April 26, 2008 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Purchase Here: Mermade Baubles

Adorned for a good cause…

Published on April 16, 2008 in business. 0 Comments

This is now a donation piece…

Frankenstein Helleborein - Purchase Here
www.mermadebaubles.com

Faceted Glass
Mother Of Pearl
Swarovski Crystal
Porcelain Silver Plated Pendant
Silver Wire and Findings
19″ - adjustableI am a huge fan of Hellebores Flowers, and this seemed appropriate to name this sparkly creature of a necklace. It is the perfect Halloween necklace, or just a pretty piece that will make a bland outfit really pop! I had no idea the roots of Hellebores flowers where heart stimulants! I swear I learn so much naming these necklaces! The green color is the inspiration for the name Frankenstein, and I was looking for something to rhyme with that(not an easy thing to do) but Helleborein was the perfect choice because I think if anyone needed a heart stimulant, it would be Frankenstein.

hel•le•bo•re•in

Pronunciation: (hel”u-bôr’ē-in, -bōr’-), [key]
—n.
a yellow, crystalline, water-soluble, poisonous solid, C37H56O18, obtained from the rhizome and root of certain hellebores, and used in medicine chiefly as a heart stimulant.

A friend from high school is a Mentor and is helping to raise money for one of her students to go to Japan. All proceeds from this piece will go to her students trip to Japan.

April Showers bring… Slugs Snails and Mermaid Tails

Published on April 11, 2008 in life. 0 Comments

With April comes the completion of taxes, the blooming of flowers, many lightening & thunder storms and our sons Birthday! This year, he spent the day in the park riding his new bike and playing until exhaustion on the playground equipment. Luckily, my husband’s family is full of little boys so he had plenty of friends to play with!

Jonas on his fourth Birthday and on his first Birthday!

I finally got in to the DMV this week and took three exams in order to get my IL driver’s license! I am looking forward to exploring the area for bead stores! We where in Alton, IL the other day and passed the first bead store I have seen since we moved from Portland. It will be so fun to shop there with out my little monkey boy hanging off me. I have been keeping myself busy by making little mermaid sculpture magnets. They where inspired by the koi in the Japanese Gardens in Portland, the vintage mermaids that seemed to live in my Grandmother’s bathroom, and several statues.

Here is a Mermade Baubles Mermaid and a Statue from the STL Museum of Art

Mermade Baubles Website…

Published on March 30, 2008 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments

Josh and I hung out in the house all day with the kids making this…

The “Grand” Re-Opening of Mermade Baubles! I am so happy how it turned out for such a template-y type thing. Check out all the fantastic pics of the generous ladies who sent me photo’s of them wearing something I made! I made the icon and picked the colors and he just put it all together. The hardest part was ALL the repetitive data entry to get all of my items up there. Go write me a review, or twenty!

Other worthy but not as exciting events included brownies for dessert and a ridiculously LOUD thunderstorm, complete with lightening. It was seriously like one lightening strike after another which resulted in the thunder sounding like it was rolling!

Life’s little pleasure’s…

Published on March 12, 2008 in life. 0 Comments

It snowed. I got some cute pictures….

We made a fort:

We got a package from Marina, in Korea…

“Haroo’s Bench” notebooks, they have adorable little poems on them like:
Are you tired, my friend? I hope to be your good rest time now.
AND You are the sky, I’ll fly to the sun. Cloud is our bench, and we’ll have a good time.

She sent us a “crunky” chocolate bar. Our box came smooshed.

Saturday we all met Carrie, my fabulous new friend & devoted Mermade Baubles customer. Since we moved to the mid-west she’s been a very supportive person, and I was so honored to meet her and hang out. We went to this place called “Einstein Bros. Bagels” I have never been there before, but I decided to try it. It is ran by the same company as Noah’s in Portland. I noticed it when Josh took us out for lunch at India’s Rasoi across the street.

“Meeting the Maker
Mar. 8th, 2008 | 08:32 pm
My reason for coming to St. Louis this weekend was to meet Jen/blamedstarlie, who has made the majority of my jewelry, including the one in my avatar. Who would have thought that meeting random people over the internet just because you admire their handiwork would lead to “Hey, you’re cool, let’s hang out.” I also got to meet her cute husband, Josh, and her two kids, Trinity and Jonas. If we ever have kids, I totally want a daughter like hers. What a personality for a 5-year old! Anyways, we strolled around a nice, trendy downtown area and chatted. Had some good coffee, chatted some more. Went back to her house, chatted some more, and threw pillows around with her kids. It entertained them, and it was something to keep them giggling, which entertained me. I need to remember to send Trinity some Hello Kitty stickers for her stickerbook since I have a bazillion. Jen showed me current project, her beads, and how she does her wire work. Totally cool!

We didn’t do anything super exciting, but it was so nice to have her show me around the area, and keep me entertained while the boys were playing their games. Mostly, it was great to finally meet her in person. I feel lucky to have a friend like her. It sucks we live so far apart.

So, thank you Jen, for spending your Saturday with me and welcoming me into your home. And for the my special gift!!!! I can’t wait to wear it. I’ll take a picture when I do.”

Josh and the kids went to the zoo and Carrie and I walked around the south central neighborhood in St. Louis, looking for the gallery that I was so excited to show her with the artistic jewelery. Ten blisters later, I relented because I couldn’t find it. It was fun to just walk around and chat though. We stopped at the “Creperie” to recoup our hawtness. Carrie bought me a latte and we talked and talked, which was super great. Then we actually made it home(which surprised me cause I have never navigated St. Louis with out Josh) fairly easily and I asked her to come in and hang with us. We lazed around and had fun, letting the kids entertain us. They loved visiting with her.

Carrie & Chance in their Mermade Baubles necklaces!

Today, Josh mailed the Mermaid De Milo that I sold and picked up a couple of packages after getting himself a hair cut. One of the packages was a Kuler T-shirt that Adobe sent Josh for free, and the other was a package from Chance, who made us some cheery little amigurumi & a grocery bag in the prettiest color!!!

I cut Jonas’s hair, and he kept shouting at me: “It’s too dangerous!!” haha. I have told him that scissors are too dangerous for him to play with. I don’t know how I will cut it anymore, he hates having it cut. Then we made muffins…

Cheer Up Emo Kite!

Published on March 3, 2008 in weather. 0 Comments

We where greeted by some unexpectedly warm weather this weekend. It allowed our tremendously exciting agenda of grocery shopping to be wrapped around a trip to the park.

Trinity, our oldest had Monday off for Pulaski Day. Upon hearing about the impending deterioration of weather, we looked for school closures on the news. Fox news is as good as SNL for a weeknight dose of laughter, so when they over-dramatized the sudden shift in weather, the level of Emo gave Josh and I the laugh we where in search of.

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Just when we’d thought the funny had ran out, Fox brought it yet again with this little gem:

Sentiment about Sediment

Published on February 29, 2008 in life. 0 Comments

I kind of did a photo day in the life(DITL), but it is rather uneventful. (see it here, and another one here.) It is FRREEEEZZING outside. It is supposed to be 10 degrees tonight. We have had the door open almost all day long cause they started fixing the sewer and they had to plug in the JACKHAMMER!!!! The sewer pipe is located directly underneath the concrete garage. Not awesome. I did happen to take a picture of that too. haha.
I couldn’t help but humming John Denver’s “Annie’s Song” during all of this. Thankfully I didn’t have to smell anything bad, it was more of the sentiment, or rather sediment. LOL. It turns out that the sewer line for the laundry and kitchen is separate - so I could’ve been doing dishes and washing clothes guilt free! !!!! They are still working on the toilet/shower line. We got home today and I did TWO loads of dishes. It was liberating, I tell ya

A few custom orders to re-invigorate the senses, haha

I have been working on necklaces. I started a custom piece that ended up taking more time than I thought. It is finally almost done, and it looks phenomenal. I am not going to do such an involved piece until I get a desk and organize my supplies. All of my supplies are in ziplock baggies stored away in duffel bags, or in pyrex pie pans and casserole dishes, stored in a curio cabinet. I don’t have a desk yet, since we’ve moved across the country. The pictures aren’t great, but they are so adorable! The fuschia one has a larger link and some of them have beads on the links for added sparkle! I probably won’t make another with larger links for a while because it took SO much time. I did them all by hand, and usually it would make it a lot easier to have some sort of jig or even a pencil to wrap them around clamped on to a desk… but the desk is the first step, haha:

For now the kitchen table will serve as a desk and a mirror works for a bead board.

Miss America - My Two Cents

Published on February 29, 2008 in tv. 0 Comments

I watched Miss America Reality Check. They where looking to find a “real” Miss America. The first thing that bothers me about this pageant is that all of the contestants are very young. I feel like Miss America should be representing women all over the world, but yet here we are with a 19 year old. I am sure at 19 there are many things that make a person mature and wonderful. I prefer to see a winner who can appreciate life, because she has lived it.

Each contestant was allowed to introduce themselves and some of them where quite amusing and really grasped the change with their wit. Miss North Dakota briefly warmed us up to the famous accent that most Americans have only heard in the movie Fargo. Miss Utah joked to the crowd that the population of Utah would be compromised if the Osmonds moved out. After I blinked, I realized I missed Miss Alaska’s introduction. I was rooting for her, but I don’t even know what she said. They begin the announcements for the “winners” and Alaska’s Cari Levya was not mentioned.

Each contestant was given a screen clip to describe something special about them. My interest was feigning, but as I recall none of them mentioned anything about writing, art or reading. They where all trying to hard to be cute. When you have to watch cartoons before you go to bed, that sounds more like something you should save for your therapist, not the um.. entire world. They are competing to win scholarships, yes? Letting us know that your favorite Author is Gabriel Marquez, or that even through your hardships of affording college you are an art aficionado and have started purchasing a small collection of art that you love, or that you like to watch indie movies based on advocacy to inspire your love of gardening, or that you take photography classes because you want to learn to capture the beauty in the world, and are fond of photographers that have achieved this, or that you are a blogger and put a lot of work in to making sure what you write is captivating and useful are all acceptable an respectful.

I guess I should have payed more attention to really write a substantial report, but after Alaska was eliminated I stuck around long enough to see the awesome Clinton Kelley pass out dessert, then I changed the channel. After wasting all my time watching the Reality Check series, I feel a little duped. They had a great idea, but the ones that shone through out the series seemed to fade on the stage. In an America that is gaining support for a diverse Presidency, it is a minacious sign of converse politics when a panel of judges finds it difficult to explore unconventional beauty and unexpected quirkiness.