He ate the light...

"He ate the light..." is a quote from the movie "Jaws." Taken completely out of context, this quote could mean just about anything. For me, right now, I'm in this weird place where I'm trying to find my joy again. I feel like I had this light in me, and now it's gone.

Like it got eaten?

It will make sense in a minute...stay with me...

I saw Jaws when I was really much too young to see Jaws. (watching scary movies at an age where I shouldn't' have been watching scary movies was kind of a theme in my house) As a result, growing up, I was pretty sure that sharks existed in any body of water, and were just waiting to kill me. Can't swim in the lake - sharks. Can't go to the pool - sharks. Not going to take a bath because...sharks.

original photo found here

Fast forward to grown-up me and I've figured out that sharks aren't in my bathtub. I also know they aren't really in pools or lakes and the chances of being eaten by a shark in the ocean are pretty slim. That doesn't mean that a small part of my brain doesn't still think that I'm going to get eaten by a shark in a pool, a lake, or an ocean. There is a tiny part of me that is still convinced that I will die by shark.

Given my lifelong fear of being eaten by Jaws, I'm also strangely drawn to the ocean. I'm fascinated by coral reefs. I love the idea of swimming with aquatic life. Sitting by the water brings me more peace than just about anything else in the world.

Emiquon Nature Preserve, where there is so much water and so much peace.

A lot of the jewelry I make is also inspired by water...specifically coral reefs. The more I started researching reefs, the more I realized that I wanted to someday see them in person. Which means that I would have to figure out how to face my very real fear of getting into really deep water...where all the sharks are. So I signed up to get scuba certified.

I had about 50,000 panic attacks in the water but I finished the course and am now certified to go swim around some coral reefs. And Jaws.

The thing is, when I finally got in some deep water, I discovered that the scariest thing about it (for me) was the nothing. The part of the water where you can't see the bottom and you can't see the surface and you can't see into the distance anywhere around you and you're just sitting there...in nothing.

Which is what depression feels like to me. Like nothing. I've cried a LOT in the past few months, but in the worst parts of it, I wasn't crying or sad...I wasn't anything. I was just there. And I wasn't sure why. But I didn't really care. Because there is nothing. And nothing is actually terrifying.

painting by Jessica Mcghee

Sometimes you start wondering what is beyond the nothing. Sharks? Dead bodies? Ghosts? Piranha? (so many scary movies in my life, so many irrational fears)

So, for me, depression with anxiety is kind of like being in the deepest part of water... in the nothing...and then starting to wonder about what's beyond the nothing...and getting really, really freaked out about it.

It's awful. And it isn't rational. And it doesn't matter, because the tiny part of my brain that believes that I will die by shark is really strong for its size. And the rational side of my brain is now constantly in battle with it. The rational side of my brain sets my alarm to get up everyday and face the world. The part where the shark fear lives hits the snooze button because sleep is better than nothing. When I finally do get up, the shark fear part of my brain tries to convince me to stay in, because if I venture beyond the nothing, the sharks will rip me to shreds.

The depression has been easier to fight than the anxiety. Even now, as I write this, I can feel the sharks circling. Today I'm in a good mood, I'm up, I'm working, I'm functioning. But I'm also alone, which feels very, very safe. Because people are sharks, and sharks are terrifying and if I have to get in the water, I'm only going to get in the bathtub because it's super small and I KNOW the sharks can't fit in there.

I'm getting better. After I wrote my last blog, I was overwhelmed with the amount of support and concern and love that I was shown. So overwhelmed that I got even weirder around people because I was already uncomfortable around them, and now I pretty much feel naked. Of course, since I wrote that blog, now most people in my life know about what only a handful of people knew before. And they're understandably concerned. But the thing is, I wouldn't have even been able to write that 2 months ago. I'm being pro-active about this. I'm trying to be realistic. Monday was a great day. Tuesday, not so much. Today is kind of meh, and the fear of sharks is pretty strong. I just tackle each day as it comes and when it's over, it's over. If  I didn't get out of bed all day (like last Thursday), I didn't fail at life. I just had a bad day. 

I have always been a person that tries to find the silver lining in any cloud. I am trying to find the silver lining in this experience, and I believe I am succeeding. When I first realized that my brain was just going to go off and do it's own irrational thing, I didn't want to tell anyone. I felt like it would give people even more to talk about - like, "see? She's crazy. I told you to stay away from her." 

And then I had a good day and I decided to write about it. And opening up about this has prompted other people to share that they deal with a lot of the same things. And it sucks. And it's exhausting. And it's isolating. And embarrassing. And if anything, we should not feel embarrassed by this and we shouldn't feel like we're alone in this battle. We should not be ashamed. 

artist unknown

I do have to say that I am far braver on paper than I am in person. I feel like I am oozing confidence all over this blog post. But in about 3 hours I have to go to work...I have to throw myself into the middle of the ocean, and I am quite sure it's infested with sharks. And I'm terrified. But I'm going to do it and I believe that, eventually...someday...I will again have as much confidence in person as I do on paper. I will get back to the place where I can just enjoy the water, and not be so sure that everything swimming around me is a shark.

Effie Trinket Inspired Party Dress

For Halloween, I found this lavender clown wig in my closet, stuck some holiday decorations in it, covered my face in glitter and wore my birthday dress from the year before...which was actually my wedding dress, re-worked. I don't know what I was trying to be, other than dressed up, but someone decided I was Effie Trinket a la the Hunger Games, so I just went with it. 

I throw a big party every year for my birthday, and always wear something over the top (because why not?). This year I decided to keep the Effie Trinket inspiration going and make a dress inspired by the Capitol City crowd.

On a budget, of course.

I found a deep blue version of this dress at a thrift store for $5.99, with the original tags still on it, marked down from $90.00. (I had pictures of the original dress, but all was lost when my phone exploded)

I bought a bundle of teal holiday poinsettias for $6.50, originally marked at $13.99.

Tulle is basically my favorite party dress accessory ever. Every dress is a party dress with tulle. I bought two rolls, at approximately $2.50 each.

White feather butterflies and glitter teal butterfly floral picks. The butterflies were the most expensive, at about $1 each.

I already had the butterfly punch. The glitter paper cost $1.99 per sheet.

I basically scrunched tulle up and sewed it around the neckline of the dress, making it as poofy as possible. I sewed strips of tulle to the skirt of the dress, making that a little bit poofy, as well.

My sewing skills are terrible. I hot glued the poinsettia leaves, butterflies and floral picks onto the dress, hiding bad sewing and using the tulle to cover the glue marks and anchor everything in. I glued myself to myself approximately 17 times in the process.

I glued the paper butterflies absolutely everywhere.

Glitter, fake eyelashes, fake hair, and more butterflies. I ended up taking the fake hair out - in an outfit that was designed to to be over the top, the fake hair made it TOO over the top.

 More glitter. Our house looks like a glitter bomb exploded, but the dogs are feeling very shiny and pretty.

 My dress held up all night...from posing for pictures at 7 pm....

to dancing on chairs at midnight...

...to floating in cages at 4 am...(???)

The total cost for the dress was just under $40 and almost everything on it can  (and will!) be re-used for other projects. Not a bad life for a party dress, right?

It's Like Trying To Eat the Entire Pack of Starburst at Once...

...because you love Starburst so much that you just want to eat all of them, right now. And then you end up with a huge ball of Starburst in your mouth that you can't chew and and it's actually stuck in your mouth and rainbow drool is dripping down your chin and everybody that you love is looking at you like a giant idiot because everybody knows that you're supposed to eat Starburst ONE.AT.A.TIME.

This is my life. I am forever trying to cram the entire pack of Starburst in my mouth. And when you cram the entire pack of Starburst in your mouth, you usually end up having to spit it all out just so you don't choke to death on the giant wad of rainbows that's lodging itself in your throat.

 I am forever trying to cram everything that I love into every single day. I have a bar/restaurant that I love and I have so many big plans for it but wait!  Because I volunteer with dogs and I have big plans for that but I have a store and I have big plans and a freelance job with really huge plans and a community association with so many big plans and I just started wholesaling and AND THERE ARE SO MANY BIG PLANS!!!!

I can't breathe. I am choking on all of these rainbows.

I have taken on too much and instead of getting everything done, I am spitting all of my rainbow flavored candy into the garbage and am accomplishing very little.

So, it's time to scale back. Everything that I am doing is doing ok.  The bar, the store, the dogs, the community association, any number of other projects...they're all hanging on. But not a single one of them is really living up to it's potential.

I am a part owner of Blue and I work there but I have never really helped manage it. My husband has always managed it and I've always had something else going on.  Blue deserves two managers and my husband deserves a little bit of a break. Our customers deserve more from both of us and our primary business deserves a little more focus.

I own Hey Lola and have had it in some capacity for 10 years now. Once I re-opened the retail location, I quickly realized that in order for it to succeed, I would have to really be a retail store manager. Which means I create less. Which is why I started Hey Lola in the first place. So while Hey Lola the store is doing fine, I'm not really sure what I'm doing here anymore. Especially since I am receiving more and more requests for custom work that are continually being delayed because I have to run a store.

Hey Lola the store is competing with Hey Lola the merchandise and at this time, they can't exist together. They just can't. In order to keep loving and nurturing Hey Lola into the romantic and recycled and beautiful line that I KNOW it can be, I can't spend my days trying to be a shop manager. Especially if I need to spend my nights being a bar owner.  So Hey Lola the store is closing it's doors in the middle of January.  Not because the location isn't great - because it is. Not because business was bad, because it isn't. It's not fantastic, but we could have stayed here indefinitely and been just fine. Our customers are loyal and wonderful and add a bright spot to every day.  But I need to focus on the creative side of Hey Lola, and I'm losing quite a bit of that by trying to maintain the store.

We are fortunate enough to have studio space in our home, and that's where I will continue to work. Hey Lola merchandise is already being carried in 3 stores here in town and is available online. I hope to expand that, so that these beautiful pieces are carried everywhere. I am slowly building our Etsy shop back up and hope to be able to incorporate that with this blog and our website and create a real online home for all things Hey Lola. I have already made plans to take part in the Riverfront Market next year and will more than likely be taking part in other vending opportunities.

My husband and I are lucky enough that our customers at Blue have supported us through this journey and that we can afford to make decisions like this. I think in the long run, that this will benefit Blue, Hey Lola and the neighborhood in general. I am still committed to Renaissance Park/West Main and I still think it's a great place to locate a business.  Even more so, because I've now had two here, both of which have been successful and one of which isn't going anywhere.

I recently read this in a Forbes article and it struck a chord with me - (It's about Kathy Ireland and I LOVE Kathy Ireland.)

"Not every move you make is going to be a winner. So what? Pick yourself up, learn from it, and move on."

Opening a retail location at this time wasn't the right move, but it's a move I learned from, so it was important. In the end, closing the store wasn't even a hard decision to make, because it is so clearly the right decision. I just need to take smaller bites, so I can really enjoy everything life has to offer and focus on what's important - so I can do a great job instead of an ok job. I hope you understand and I hope that you'll continue with me and Hey Lola as we continue this journey. You are all appreciated so very much!

Why Shop Local?

The big cry right now for lots of people is "shop local!" ...but why? If Big Business donates thousands of dollars to a local charity and a small business barely squeaks by but does nothing to contribute to their community, why shop with them over big business? Shopping local is great but it's better when it means something.  I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you the story of my business and the businesses around me and what it means for us when you shop local.

This is The Gaslight, a tavern my husband and I bought 4 years ago. 

It used to be run by drug dealers and murderers until the FBI and the DEA came in and threw everyone in prison. 

 This is 100% true.

It was closed for 8 years after that, until new people came in and tried to start over. It didn't work. The bad element never went away. Drug dealers still wanted to hang out and after a year, it closed. Then somebody else came in and tried it. It didn't work. They kicked out the bad element and there was no one left to buy anything. They closed after 3 months.

My husband and I are apparently crazy, so we thought we'd give it a try.

We decided if it had even a chance of success, we had to change everything and we had to do it with almost no money. Because we're crazy.

We used a lot of blue paint...so we called our bar "Blue."

This is Blue.

Blue has been here for 4 years. My husband and I work almost every night and we don't let drug dealers hang out. Not even in the parking lot.

These are a couple of our customers.  They work for the local public television station.  The guys behind them are from a local church. They just finished a community clean-up because...

If you're going to locate your business in a struggling neighborhood, you should sponsor clean-ups. So we do. Every month, April through October.

We were incredibly excited when the guys from Excel and Urban Artifacts decided to take an old boarded up building down the street...

And convert it into retail shops, artist studios and two art galleries...

I liked this idea so much, that later on I decided to locate my own store right here!

My husband liked it so much that he decided to locate James McGhee Photography here:

Urban Artifacts and Excel decided to give us money to help with the neighborhood clean-ups. With more neighbors and more financial support we decided to take an empty lot...

And start a community garden.

When a business that had been here forever decided to close, we were disheartened.  Until somebody came in and opened the amazing Broken Tree Coffee in it's place! 

This is a mural in progress on Broken Tree's outside wall...The owner works on this in between running his shop, being a father and husband and helping out with the community garden and neighborhood clean-ups.

Meanwhile, across the street, we were looking at this...

Which was pretty depressing...

Until...

The Main Statement opened! Owned by a young couple with a brand new baby, they carry work from a large variety of local artists and help out with neighborhood clean-ups and the community garden.

Do you know what would be really great next to The Main Statement? An artist studio and gallery....so Russ Joseph opened one...

He keeps late hours and is helping us form a neighborhood watch program. His gallery compliments the already existing Backspace Collective, a "space for contemporary art and ideas."

In the meantime, the local karaoke bar shut down, leaving an empty storefront in the middle of all of our hard work....

Until....

Pitch Karaoke opened! The guys from Pitch not only help out with the clean-ups and the garden, but they also raise money for cystic fibrosis and the local humane society!

With more and more businesses coming into the area, we took on a couple more projects...

 This corner needed some work...

So we're working on it...a little bit at a time...

These planters always end up neglected...

So we clean them up...

The more we all do, the more people seem to want to be a part of it...

Like Jessica Ball, from The Art Garage!

(photo via Peoria Life)

Jessica Ball and her family help with the clean-ups, the garden, the landscaping and recently adopted a dog  through Foster Pet Outreach.

With all of this activity, we decided to start The Renaissance Park Community Association - a group of all of the volunteers, neighbors and businesses that are working so hard not only to build their own projects but to build this neighborhood into a community we can all be proud of. Other businesses in the area that have contributed to all of this hard work include the amazing neighborhood staple, The Costume Trunk and Mr.G's (now owned by the same people who brought you One World Cafe!).  We've even attracted help from businesses outside of the neighborhood, like Heading Om Yoga and Top Hat Productions!

And me? I volunteer for the local humane society, Foster Pet Outreach, Crittenton Centers and am one of the founders of The Renaissance Park Community Association. Don't be surprised to find me picking up trash and pulling weeds at midnight around here - surprisingly, it relaxes me.

So this year, when you think about shopping local, think about why...and hopefully you'll think about us!

 XOXO,

Lola

Make your own mannequins/jewelry displays

When I first opened my store, I had a budget for fixtures of somewhere close to 27 cents. 

Maybe a little bit more, but it was definitely a very limited budget.  I wanted to invest in some jewelry displays, but I didn't like most of them and the mannequins that I wanted didn't work with that tiny budget that I mentioned.  I did some research and decided to try making some of my own and am actually really happy with the results!  Here's how I did it:

Supplies needed:

A person, dress form or mannequin torso

plastic wrap or grocery bags

masking tape

cardboard

old newspaper

brown paper bags

White glue (I bought a gallon at Lowes for around $13.00)

Paintbrush

Large bowl

I used a display torso that I already had, but you can also use a dress form or even a person! I tried to recycle as many materials as possible for this project, so I used grocery bags to cover the mannequin torso.  If you use a person as your base, plastic wrap might be easier.

I used masking tape to tape the bags together.

Once the torso was covered, I used masking tape to cover the torso.  You can wrap the waist and the neck by just going around the torso, but the breast area seemed to work best when done in a criss cross pattern.  You'll have to play around a little to get it just right.  Make sure every part of the torso is covered, leaving the bottom and the top f the neck open.

Some websites recommended duct tape.  I played around with it but in the end decided that for the cost and the desired end result, that masking tape was a better choice. 

When the torso is completely covered, cut a straight line through the back with a pair of scissors.

Peel the "shell" away from the torso carefully.

When you've removed the shell, pull the seam back together, put your hand inside and press against the seam and use your other hand to press a line of masking tape against the seam to "sew" your shell back together.

You'll then have a very flimsy mannequin/jewelry display.  I stuffed mine with old newspapers until it felt firm.

I traced the base of the torso on a piece of a cardboard box and cut it out.  I used an old candle holder that I had as the stand. I did use duct tape to secure the base to the form and to the candle holder, as I wanted it to be secure.  

Once the stands and the bases were secure, I decoupaged each form.  I happen to have a huge stash of grocery bags that were overstock from our other business, so that's what I used.  I tore each bag into strips and soaked the strips in water.  I filled another bowl with the white glue and painted each torso, a small section at a time.  I wrung the paper strips out like a sponge and applied them to the torsos.  I went over the strips with the glue after they were applied, repeating the process until each torso was completely covered.

These are the finished results! I made the edges of each display rough and uneven, as I felt it looked better.  I also painted some of the candle holders and glued moss on to others. I do still need to go over each one with some really fine grit sandpaper, but overall, I'm happy!  Plus, the whole project cost me about $25, which is over $200 cheaper than the displays I was originally looking at.

To see how someone else created their own dress form using a person as their model, check out this post at Verily Magazine.

If you tried this, I'd love to see your results!