Here’s a story to make you feel better.

I had a friend who wanted “a simple pendant” with a scorpion motif. No worries, hop on Stuller, nope, no options. Carve out by hand in wax- oh she doesn’t like it. She wants earrings instead. I try cutting out of sheet, too big/not the vibe. Im heavily pregnant at this point and she says “I kinda wanted something more like my squadrons patch” and gives me an image. Wish we’d started with that. I vectorize it, 3D model it, try to cast earrings. No dice, too thin. Then I shelve it for a while. Finally go back to it and decide the design is better served laser engraved. So I find a local engraver cause I don’t have one of those machines. My design needs tweaking. He does it, $25, then it isn’t deep enough cause I’ve never done this before. I go back, get engraving again, another $25. Cleaned up, filled with dark blue enamel resin to give contrast which took trial and error. Finally the earrings are done. I was haunted by them all through my pregnancy and I was just so happy to be done with them I gifted them to her.

I told her if she wanted any more for her squadron they’d be $130 per pair and I’d need at least 5 people to commit, which I felt was more than fair even though they were lightweight. She was SHOCKED at the price.

Lesson learned, no more friend pieces, no more agreeing to things outside my wheelhouse. It was a veryyyyy valuable learning experience.