1st Frenzy Trend Challenge Winner

Enjoy some of Peeli's beautiful work!

The Promotional Frenzy Team on Etsy recently held its first trend challenge.  Everyone created a new item for their shop based upon trends for April.  We are pleased to announce our first winner, chosen at random.  Peelirohini won with this item:

 Spring Trends Winner

We will have more challenges in the future.  Here is the lovely story of Peeli.  Hope you enjoy her shop!

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Hello,

I am Priya from Peelirohini. My store was born after and named after my baby girl, whom we call 'Peeli' at home -'Peeli' means 'Peacock Feather', and Rohini is a star in Indian astronomical tradition .. I have been using the name Peeli so as to not confuse my customers - our lovely Indian names are confusing enough without me adding a double dose of that :)

I am so thrilled to have an opportunity to be featured in the PFT blog - And before I go any further, let me tell you PFT is hands down the best support team you will find anywhere and I am glad of the day I joined this fabulous Team ! I think we can start our own chapter of AA or NA or anything anonymous really, the support system we have is so amazing and so warm, it feels like family to me !! So Thank You PFT, not only for this feature, but for everything !!

Now back to moi. I lived the first two decades of my life in the lovely and vibrant Kochi - rightly called the queen of Arabian sea - which has a rich and colorful culture and smells like cardamom and cinnamon on warm days and is located in the extreme southern part of India. Kochi being one of the most famous seaports of yester years attracted trades-people from all over the world - Romans, Arabs, Greeks, Europeans. They all left their indelible prints in this land that influenced the way the culture in India and particularly our tiny state evolved! I was lucky to move around to different places in India too, where each day has been an experience and for which I thank heavens every day. My work took me to US and I got another look at a wholly different way of life, a very open and fearless outlook, that I have come to love as much as the life in my little corner of India! I love the openness of this country, how our many friends here have made us feel so warm and wanted and welcome all these years, how this country and its people have embraced a whole lot of different cultures and absorbed them to form this living, pulsating, thriving fabric of humanity, creating perhaps the finest and strongest texture of life ever to be seen, anywhere in the world!

Peeli has amazing pearl designs too! Somebody I know has her eye on this ;D

I have always made things from the time I was a little kid, neither studies nor anything else could keep me from making things when the mood was right; it was perhaps when I was around 10 that I started working mainly on jewelry pieces. This continiued thru highschool, college and even after I became a computer engineer.I always found something to do. However, It was after coming to US that I started creating jewelry with the correct components, ie from components that are meant to be made to jewelry and not perfectly good pieces broken down by me to be reconstituted again!

My husband one day gifted me with this little set of three jewelry making tools and that was the starting point of my creations in a streamlined manner. I started making them as gifts for my friends and the feedback and appreciation they showed in addition to the fact that I had begun to take this very seriously led me to open my own store in Etsy where I have been active since Feb of 2010. I had some local sales before that too but Etsy has given me a venue to reach out to a wider audience.

I initially worked a lot with sterling silver and gemstones, however felt a lack of control on the designs. To have more of that, I tried doing metalwork with Precious metal clay, but found that I was wasting more clay than I should and then turned to Polymer clay to learn the techniques of molding the precious metal clay effectively. That was the end of my work with metal clay ( I still have this one pack of copper clay sitting untouched and that I may perhaps open one day )

Polymer Clay Pendant

I was blown away by the versatility of polymer clay. It took me a couple of tries to get the settings right, the first day I tried it my husband thought I had set our house on fire! I have gone over every book I could lay my hands on in polymer clay and it has been a long learning process, there are a lot of things I need to try.
I absorb the learnings from these, and try to use them in my own way in my design process. My intention has been to create the bigger sized clay sculptures in a wearable form. Right now I am focusing on florals, but plan to branch out to more topics. For every piece listed in my store, both in sterling and clay, there are about 2-3 pieces thats gone unlisted.. I do a lot of the inital designs on paper, however I need to do it once for real to be fully satisfied with the piece, many times, I need to do it again to get the final right look, I know it may not be the most effective way, but it goes for me:). Sometimes, my clay pieces just feel right and get to their final form in a matter of hours. Some take me weeks to complete even after my clay beads are done; they feel just not ready to be set into an earring or a necklace! In such cases, I just let them be and I go on to the next piece and some times, just out of the blue, I find the perfect partners in gemstones for those and I have found that waiting for them are really worthwhile in how they turn out!!

Everything and everyone inspire me to create, the different world cultures, their visible influence in the way of life, the clothes, the jewelry from different ages and times, etc; it may even be just the way someone has draped a fabric over their shoulders! Then nature, the places we visit or see in magazines or tv, sometimes its a picture my now, almost 5 year old draws (by the way, she is amazing with her color skills; I know I may be biased, but I already have plans for us doing clay work together :)

I have this lovely painting of a garden she made for me in a gorgeous sage green and a stunning mellow yellow that I am dying to do in clay! I have kept that right on my work table so when the mood strikes me and I feel a design is just right, I can go ahead and make them! She constantly surprises me with her paintings and use of color ... I mean, when I was her age, I knew nothing about mixing colors, she has already started mixing colors like Teal and others like -Chartreuse which I only recently learned was a color :)

Polymer Clay Pearl Dangle Earrings

I believe every place that a person has been, every one a person has met , and every second a person has lived, however inconsequential these may seem to be at the time, do leave a mark on the person and adds a little bit to the wholeness that is him/her!! Every bit and piece you find in my store has a memory or some incident associated with it ! I cannot make jewelry for the sake of creating it, I have to feel it !! Its not a business for me, its a part of my life and soul ... its been very therapeutic to me when I needed it, especially this past year when I lost my greatest champion ever, my dad, to cancer. Jewelry making and sculpting beads with clay gives me a way to focus on the good things in life ! Its something that I hold close to my heart and will be thankful always to have.

Its been lovely chatting to you! I hope I haven't bored you much with all this talk. (I have had people say about me, "she writes novels where a sentence would suffice!" ... well, that's me alright !! )

You can see me here - www.peelirohini.etsy.com
www.facebook.com/peelirohinijewelry

Priya's beautiful family!