Awesome Finds!

74 Harley Street

Let’s say after last week’s entry on jewelry swapping with your friends, you started looking at your accessories in a different light. Perhaps you came across a piece of jewelry that you inherited from a relative. You’ve never really worn it and you’re not quite sure what to do with it…

Well, saunter on over to 74 Harley Street (www.74harleystreet.com), a jewelry line that takes vintage treasures and gives them new life. Dress clips are re-fashioned into show-stopping necklaces, skeleton keys combine with pearls and sparklies on vintage chains, broken or single earrings find new life on charm bracelets, etc.

74 Harley Street is the stunning creation of Susan Mayer, mom of four boys under age 7. Carpool, PTA and playdates by day, jewelry designer by night, Susan brings her dramatic taste to bear on re-purposed trinkles.

Much of Susan’s business is custom. Friends and their friends are now bringing her boxes of old family jewelry they inherited from mom/great-aunt/grandma and don’t know what to do with. Some of it is gorgeous, but doesn’t fit the style of today, so it sits… until they collaborate on how to bring them to life. Even the most unsuspecting pieces look great jazzed up with pearls and sparklies.

Susan also scouts out estate sales and antiques dealers…and she keeps her prices reasonable so she can keep shopping. She loves the hunt and is growing to appreciate even the oldest and oddest of baubles.

The next time you eye that broach that’s been sitting in the bottom of your jewelry box, contact Susan at www.74harleystreet.com. She can help you turn drab into dazzling! And who couldn’t use a little dazzle these days?

The Catch 24

Barbara and Vikki. They’re Best Friends. They do so many things together and figured, why not work together? After both starting small businesses, these dynamic and sassy women decided to focus on something that they could do… together. They believed, that regardless of their success financially, they would get to learn and explore whole new realms together – way more fun to do with a best friend!

Their early morning exercise dates turned into business meetings (and inspite of having young children at home, they found creative ways to make time!). Their first business, designing and selling rhinestone tees profiting charities, didn’t really fly. Sitting on a pile of unsold tees forced them to get creative and led them to a new business, the Catch 24, an internet-based, timed sale of hugely discounted accessories.

Get it? Shoppers have 24 hours to catch the deal and then, it’s gone!

http://www.thecatch24.com

Subscribe to their mailing list and get free shipping on your first order!

While the accessories they find and sell are hot and fun, their “can-do” spirit is worn like a colorful cashmere sweater. It makes you admire where they got it.

Let Barbara and Vikki’s story fill your mind with ways to be creative with your best friend…

A Mind Full of Thoughts

Welcome to my blog, The MindFULL Creative! The idea for this blog came from wanting to share years of accumulated information I have gathered (tips, insights, personal musings and awesome folks doing wonderful work, etc.) and to have a place for you to share with me. We have to share. The news is unsettling. However, finding new ways of living can become a creative challenge.

For example, last Winter I heard Jean Chatsky speak and she helped me re-frame my spending habits. Jean said, “It’s not about feeling deprived, it’s about re-framing how you are saving — save ‘towards‘ what you want.” Now, I pass on buying another pair of black shoes and think of how I am saving towards a beach house. It was so helpful and led me to realize how my mind is so FULL of inspirational stories and creative ideas I have heard through the years, as well as how I try and use what I’ve learned to be more mind-fully creative. It’s a way of navigating a new world and a new way of thinking.

I’m hoping The MindFULL Creative will become a space where we can share what we discover along the way. Perhaps you have a recipe that everyone asks you to bring when you’re on deck for dessert. Maybe you read a book, found a website or heard a song that shifted the way you saw things – or simply loved. Maybe some of you have ideas on how we can shop our own closets and recycle what we have into new and creative uses (stay tuned for a future entry on my jewelry swapping party!). My hope is that, together, we’ll find new ways of understanding who we are and have fun finding out what’s going on — and that we will be the better for having been here.

Please send me what you’ve learned. Share your tips and insights. Pass on stories and websites of folks doing something that makes you smile. Together we can circumvent the bad news, and focus on filling our minds with information, tips and ideas that make us the better for being and at the same time, becoming mind-FULLy creative.

Many thanks to my MindFULLY Creative friend, Tamara, who inspired me to create this site. YOU ROCK!