Who am I, really?

Let's give some more information and background about "moi", myself, Denise.
Obviously, I just gave you my name. Nice to meet you, reader.
Once again, thanks for taking the time.

I was born now 30 years ago in a small city by the River Po, in Italy. I was a happy baby, a very fast learner. Could talk by month 6 and walk by month 9. I have always found patience rather boring, although - now that I am older in life - I wish I had more of it. I pretty much just go for things.

A few years later, my family moved in an ever smaller town, in the province of Rovigo. About 3,000 souls. That's where I spent most of my life, so far. About a third of it to be exact.


Growing up, I pursued scientific studies during High School and changed my mind when time came around for college; obtaining a masters in Organizational Communication with emphasis in Advertising.







As silly as it might sound, it gave me the opportunity to win a few scholarships and study abroad in the US; hence why I am ultimately here based in Los Angeles.

I currently work as a media strategist for one of the major online ad networks out there, and I am part of that group of people that contribute to spamming your life with online ads, pages that moves, and videos that play before the content you truly want to watch. But hey! I could be doing worse in life, I am not dealing drugs or killing people, and advertising can do good (sometimes)... plus it keeps the Internet free... so it's a double edge sword. You can bitch about it as much as you like it, but admit it: our society lives on advertising like it or not... and some ads are actually cool. Just a few of them lately, regardless some are.

In my free time I play Capoeira. I got to learn about this beautiful martial art in 2005 when I was studying at UCSB, and I fell in love. If you ever have the occasion, you should try it. It is very spiritual and liberating, and it just looks so beautiful... However, that is another subject. Maybe we can talk about this some other times.

I like chocolate, and strawberries. Strawberries in particular. I could eat kilograms of them. Matter of fact, I remember once when I was about 8 or 9 I had a LOT of strawberries, a full mixing size type of bowl full of them! So delicious... but after a while my skin started hitching. It was the only time it happened thank God, because for a second there, I really thought I could not eat strawberries for the rest of my life. I can... I just have to try not to eat 3 kilograms at once.

As you probably noticed already, I am a pretty random person. I just follow my train of thoughts and talk a lot. I hope you don't mind, dear reader.

I like the colors red and green. I own two cats, Baby and Penelope, and a little miniature pincher called Dido. She is a trip.





I practice Reiki, I will go into the subject more as I do meditate and put positive energy into my creations and also create pendolums. We will expand on the subject one of these days.

For now, it's getting close to time for me to go to sleepy town and get some rest before work tomorrow.

It all started with a pair of peacock feathers...

Dear readers, one day - for whichever random reason - I wanted a pair of peacock earrings. However, I did not like anything out there. Too simple, too expensive, too cheap looking... I decided to make them myself. Just one pair, it could not be that much work!

I started looking at YouTube tutorial and buying random material on eBay. I really didn't know much. I remembered I made some bracelets back in my teenage years and I motivated myself that I could do it. After all, it could not be that hard. All I had to do was to go get some pliers, a pair of feathers, possibly some little beads to embellish the feathers with, and like magic my earrings would have been ready and gorgeous looking!

So here is what I did. I went to Michael's indeed. I saw some green little seed beads, I bought them. I could not find feathers though. I had to buy this little "bouquet" in the flower section that had 4 peacock feathers in it and I still remember was priced at $5.99.
I thought those would do it. I also bought some wire. My original first idea was to wrap seed beads around the tip of the feather and call it the day.
I then realized I needed more material than that. I needed some short of crimps that could hold the feather in place... THEN, I could wrap my wire around.
Ok then... I turned to eBay as a resource. Crimps obtained. I bought some more pliers. Damn, this is getting expensive after all. Who cares! I am having fun.

And here is what I made first:

I liked them. They were cute. My friend Barbara at the time was looking to have some earrings made. She liked these earrings she saw in Italy, and asked me: do you think you can do something similar? I was certainly up to the challenge!

We went downtown LA together, browsing around the beading district. I needed possibly light beads, round, but faceted and with very bright colors. Well, it turned out to be more complicated than I thought to find them. I needed solid colors and most beads are crystals, hence have some sort of transparency or gloss to them. After a few hours browsing bead stores and getting ADD with all those beautiful colors, we finally found the beads!!!


And here is how these earrings were made.

I actually still make these and they can be bought here on my Etsy store. They are some sort of a statement pair of earrings, but if you are into big things and are wearing something simple, this is the pair you want to be flaunting off!

I started playing around and making variations of those too, I like these gorgeous kelly green ones:

Oh! I forgot to tell you. That one day downtown I fell in love with these rhinestone beads.They were so pretty, and green... and blue. I bought them. I thought they could go well with peacock. And I finally bought some better peacock feathers too (which by the way, are really not so cheap).

The combination of those material is what made up my best selling piece to day. A classic, pretty, nostalgic
trimmed peacock earrings with rhinestone beads.

My husband actually gave me a hard time on these. He works on violin so he has a pretty trained eye to cutting things, and he had me practice on pieces of paper for hours, to give my feathers the best cut I could.

:)

More about my adventures to come soon.

For now, thanks for listening, and check out my Etsy shop :)

www.etsy.com/shop/iodenise