New Things To Come

Here is what's to come at Elizabeth Showers.

 

A couple of years ago, I found myself searching for something deeper in my work.  My jewelry was still popular and selling well, my personal life was abundantly blessed, and something was missing.  For the first time in 19 years, I decided to take a step back in my career.  I then had our "End of an Era" sale in the Fall of 2015, which was successful and fun, as I personally directly connected with more customers than ever before!

Since then, as I reflect on my career, I see that staying in the world of jewelry is where I want to be.  I have a passion for creativity, love the art of making jewelry, love rocks and gems, and have 22 years of jewelry experience.

 

I am midway through yoga teacher training, and while my original reason for it was to improve my practice, the culture of this particular training has inspired me way more than I expected.  It has re-emphasized my desire to create a culture of giving back in my business.  Not only does this mean financial giving, but also giving through service.

Alongside this training, I have recommitted to daily meditation and inquiry, giving me more inner space for creativity.

My first tagline was "adorn yourself".  A few years later, I uncovered my purpose of "empowering all women to feel beautiful," shortened to "feel beautiful."

As I relaunch my business, "beauty within" is the new evolution for Elizabeth Showers.  My intent is for this message to remind you of your beauty within yourself, that is already present in the here and now, not found in some future plan, nor in a beauty product, not through your significant other, not through any thing, activity or person outside of yourself.

 

The beauty of my jewelry is to serve as a reminder or symbol to help you remember what you have always known:

your beauty is within.

In supporting this message, we will involve more philanthropic projects with our brand.  In the coming months, you will see I am back with so many amazing new things on the horizon.

Thank you all for being a part of my journey.  I look forward to writing this next chapter with you!

Merry Christmas from Our Family to Yours

 

My Christmas message to you is very simple:

"Feel beautiful" means that my ideal for you is to realize your beauty within yourself, your beauty that is already present in the here and now, not found in some future plan, nor in some beauty product, not through your significant other, basically not through any thing, activity or person outside of yourself.

The beauty of my jewelry cannot make you know you are beautiful.  These beautiful small art objects are here to help you remember what you have deep down always known:

your beauty is within. 

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays to you!

and here's to your best new year yet!

Going Rogue

I went rogue. And I'm so glad I did.

Last September, I decided to take a plunge I'd been fantasizing about for years.  After some sleepless nights, many heartfelt conversations with my partner, Tommy, and close friends and family, and a Netflix binge (I highly recommend these 2 comedy series:  Silicon Valley and Grace and Frankie),
I dissolved ties with most of my retailers and focused on selling direct to customers via my website. I held my breath and jumped in, readying myself for any outcome.  It was a relief - to say the least - when I sold 75% of my inventory.

After a lot of worry and uncertainty, the decision to focus on direct-to-consumer sales was the right move after all! I can't tell you what a good start that made for 2016. I've felt such a renewal of energy, optimism, and excitement about the future.

It could not have come at a better time.  After 20 years of designing jewelry and running a business, I needed a career shift - especially since I'm already living a new personal life with a soon-to-be-husband and stepchildren (Harley and Ethan). 

So many changes!

Oh, and did I mention that Tommy and I are working on having a baby?

We have an unconventional timeline for the things we want to do, but it works for us. For example, we finally scheduled an engagement party for late September, and we've been engaged for a full year already!  We'll figure out a wedding date soon. (Note: my "soon" is different than my mom's "soon.") 

It's been such a period of joy and transformation that it has taken awhile for me to recognize what lies underneath all this hectic excitement:  fear of the unknown.  Particularly where my career is concerned.

Some days I feel like I'm waiting for a burning bush to tell me what's next. But the reality is that I have so many burning bushes right in front of me:

• I have built a brand over 20 years with an important, life-affirming message:  reminding women of how beautiful and precious they already are.
• I have amazing customers who enrich my life. I truly love, adore, and appreciate all of them. ;)
• I have a vast and beautiful portfolio of jewelry designs from the past 20 years....and fun, exciting ideas for revamping them.

•   I have so many really cool loose gemstones, with an opportunity to design one-of-a-kinds with each of them.

• My mom - Jan Showers - and I designed a jewelry collection two years ago, which exists in renderings only right now. She is so well-regarded in her interior design world, and it could be quite an adventure launching a collection together.
• Some smart and talented ex-employees do contract work for me, and they are available to help move the business to its next stage.

So while I haven't found the singular "burning bush" I was seeking, I am rich in ideas, but it may take some time to know where all this exploration is leading. I know I am not alone in this - many of us struggle with decisions every day. I would love to hear how you make decisions when options are plentiful. How do you know which one is right?

Even though I lack a crystal ball, here is what I am sure of:

       I am 100% certain that I am soon going to offer a small handful of my bestselling styles of jewelry online (and keep in stock), and offer them at a new retail price that is below the previous store prices. (there are already some available on the site now)

I am 100% certain that I am going to roll out a special order business of my 100 bestselling styles from over the past 12 years.  I already have special orders from many of you for jewelry styles that I haven't carried in awhile. (We actually just uploaded a handful of bestsellers for special order that are now available on the site. Check it out!)  

I am 100% certain that very soon I will launch my Itsy-Bitsy Hope Star collection that includes several precious NEW Hope Star styles that I think people will love.

The most exciting part comes now, seeing which burning bush has the biggest fire, and what will happen next. I hope you'll stick around to see!

Vintage is Back

Before my blog post, I have some REALLY FUN NEWS! Though it has been years since we at Elizabeth Showers Studio have sold our Vintage Collection, that’s all changing this Thursday, when we will begin offering a few styles from our classic collection online for a limited time.

During our (incredibly successful) moving sale event last month, my staff was thrilled to uncover a treasure trove of our beaded Vintage Collection!  What a surprise!  Customers ask for these designs all the time, so we were so excited to find them. We hope you’ll be excited about them too.

Be sure to pop in to elizabethshowers.com on Thursday to check out the Vintage Collection!

It’s been great looking back through this collection that meant so much to my career and development. Holding these pieces in my hands really got me thinking about the history of my business, its humble beginnings and its not-so-humble aspirations.

The necklace I have on below (at age 26) is the first necklace I ever made, all the way back in 1997.

Okay, this is actually the first unique necklace I ever made. 

I made my first piece of jewelry in 1996—an anklet made of super-cheap round, smooth amethyst beads. It was nothing special, but it was enough to get me hooked.

That first unique necklace was made of 24kt gold leaf Venetian glass beads, which I popularized in the late 1990s. At their peak, I couldn’t design enough styles using Venetian glass gold leaf and silver leaf beads.  Although very simply constructed, they were so popular and distinctive. If only online shopping had been mainstream then!

I started my business at age twenty-four, driven by a mostly-unexplored talent, blind optimism, and a passion for designing and selling jewelry. Like everyone starting out, I was a portrait of youthful naiveté and cluelessness about how to build a successful business. Though I didn’t have anything approximating a sales strategy, nor anything so straightforward as a written business plan, I possessed an incredible surplus of focus, time, and determination.

My first mission was to make my mark with unusual materials that others weren’t using. When I discovered Venetian glass beads, I understood right away that I had found my breakthrough. Specifically 24kt gold leaf Venetian beads in clear (my favorite) and in colors stuck out like magic in the jewelry scene of those days. They were so distinctive and fresh. I knew I was at the beginning of a fun adventure.

I started selling wholesale at Carol Quist showroom in The Apparel Mart, and southern US retailers started writing orders for my jewels right and left. I was a real designer!

Tootsie’s in Dallas was the first retailer to sell in my hometown. Susie Calmes, the buyer there at that time, is a friend of my mother. She called me and said, “When do I get to see your collection?”

I said, “I need more time to prepare for you. Maybe we could meet in a couple of months.”

She said, “Okay, I will see you this Tuesday.”

It was totally nerve-wracking. It would be an understatement to say that Susie has good taste and high standards.

Tootsies in Dallas

Naturally I was terrified of her reaction to my work. But I’m still so grateful to Susie. I’ll never be able to thank her enough for pushing me to be ready before I was. I showed up with my jewels in Ziploc bags with no price tags, and she bought almost everything I took with me that day.  What a life-changing and affirming experience! It really was an occasion to remember.  Thank you, Susie!

All that was just the beginning of the uncertain road that eventually led to my selling at Neiman Marcus, and onward down the path to a lasting business. 

Some of those early pieces I still love as much as the day I made them. In some others I can see the beauty and the good instincts, but they don’t represent me in quite the same way. But all of them are a part of me, part of the work that has led to this moment in my trajectory.

This is me modeling my jewelry!

I’ll talk more about the progression and development of my business in a future post.

In the meantime, please remember to stop by elizabethshowers.com on or after this Thursday to take a look at the pieces that started it all for me.  You just might find the perfect thing you didn’t even know you were looking for!

Feel Beautiful!
Elizabeth

Finding Beauty Beneath Ugly Self-Talk

From age thirteen to twenty, an eating disorder controlled my life and informed nearly every decision I made. After seven years in the throes of what some call 'The Beast,' I know what it is to be shackled by feelings of darkness and self-hatred. I empathize with people currently struggling to free themselves of those destructive feelings. Too many people are alienated from the truth about their own beauty.

 

 

The self-hate dialogue I fed myself for so many years went like this:

 

“You overate again. You’re disgusting. You don’t know how to control yourself. You have no willpower. You are a failure.”

 

“Your body is gross. You will never be enough. No one will ever love you with the way you look.”

 

Without looking back at my old journals—which I still have—these are the thoughts I recall most vividly. There were many, many others. I know there were even worse things I said to myself from which I am (thankfully) so far removed that I can’t remember.

 

Even today, I’m not completely free of body-centered negativity. One of the residual symptoms of an eating disorder is that I still struggle daily with pernicious thoughts like:

 

“My body could be so much better looking.”

 

“I’d look so much nicer if I lost five more pounds.”

 

“This shirt doesn’t fit the way I want because there’s something weird about my body.”

 

A younger version of myself thought the best plan was to simply ignore negative thoughts or to try to shut them out. But I found that when I did, they persisted and made me feel bad even when I thought I knew better than to give negativity power over me.

 

 

 

Over time, I learned the solution was to counter destructive self-talk with messages of positivity and self-love. Therefore, whenever my self-generated ugliness began, it triggered me to reply with thoughts such as:

 

“My body is beautiful exactly as it is this very moment.”

 

“I cherish, love, and adore my body. ”

 

“I am so grateful for my healthy, wonderful body.”

 

“Look at all the amazing things my body does for me!”

 

This new way of dealing with harmful thoughts became my self-made path away from days charged with masochistic, ineffective thinking. I'd finally discovered how to free myself from some of the most poisonous unkindness in the world: the unkindness that comes from within.

 

Of course, it didn't happen overnight. "Fake it 'till you make it," became my motto. After years of ACTING as if I believed the positive affirmations I was taught during: 12-step programs, treatment, therapy, positive mentors, uplifting books, and body image/nutrition counseling, I'd made it.

 

"We are flawed creatures, all of us. Some of us think that means we should fix our flaws. But get rid of my flaws and there would be no one left." 

-Sarah Vowell, Take the Cannoli
 

Why is negativity so much easier to believe? At first, it's hard inviting positive words in... especially when affirmations can initially sound slightly hokey and silly. But, you know what? Everything changes when you let your guard down. I was amazed to find when I believed something beautiful about myself, I began to heal.

 

I remember feeling so FREE and RELIEVED when it finally clicked. I had the power to change my thinking! I realized: those made-up thoughts? They were just that. Made-up.

 

It was essential to start feeding myself regularly, giving my mind the healthy fuel necessary to reflect on the impact such negativity has on the body and soul. Without a healthy relationship with food, my mind would have remained locked in a vicious cycle of negating self-talk.

 

Once I started really being in my life knowing that to be human is to be imperfect - that flaws are part of the deal - I loosened up. I started to love and trust myself; which empowered me to LET GO of voices telling me otherwise. The hardest but most important lesson I learned is that within imperfection IS perfection. It is simply perfect to be imperfect.

 

My profound wish for you? Believe the tried yet true cliché: "beauty comes from within."

 

"I think happiness is what makes you pretty. Period.

Happy people are beautiful. They become like a mirror and they reflect that happiness."

- Drew Barrymore
 

Embracing your uniqueness applies to attaining true physical beauty as well. What makes us unique, may also be things many don't like about themselves: a crooked nose, a gap between two front teeth, curly or straight hair, or a loud laugh. These "things" make us individuals. However, self-regard for our distinct lovability is tarnished when ugly thoughts control our minds. We're all too uniquely beautiful to let negativity win.

 

Try it and see how you feel. Let your negative self-talk serve as a cue to tell yourself something you love about you. I’m willing to bet it will make something beautiful happen in your life.

 

“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”

- Confucius
 

We have the option to see the beauty in ourselves.  Empower yourself to see your own beauty and how precious and singular you are.

 

Feel Beautiful,

Elizabeth