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:
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!
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 )
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 :)
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
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| Priya's beautiful family! |
