just in

Just in - gorgeous new sterling and fine silver pendants from California artist Shirley Price. Already popular with JOOLZ shoppers, Shirley has sent us 3 new pendants, all of which come with a handmade sterling neck ring and feature her signature single pearl. Get ready to be wowed!

Citron chrysoprase from Utah

Mookaite from Australia

Turquoise from China

april 30 glass jewelry artist lecture at the MAG

New Hampshire artist Linda MacNeil will be giving a lecture, open to the public, at Rochester's Memorial Art Gallery on Thursday, April 30th at 7:30pm. Everyone is invited to attend! Specializing in the fabrication of glass jewelry, Linda is a featured artist at the MAG's current show, GlassWear.

JOOLZ is happy to help underwrite Linda's lecture on Thursday. We love glass jewelry and have a good selection right now, with more coming in this spring. Each glass jewelry artist finds a unique vision, some very contemporary and others a little more mainstream. Whatever your taste, it will be interesting to learn about Linda's artistic process and see what can be created with a material we all take for granted in our daily lives.

Hope to see you there!

learn as you go

This business has been a learn-as-you-go effort for me. While I've been aware of retail my whole life, I've only been a part of it for the last two years. In my past life I was a full-time mom, a community volunteer, an ambulance critical care tech and a registered nurse, whose first degree was in art history. Somehow all that came together to form JOOLZ, but there are many aspects of the business that I have to pick up as I go along.

One of those is viral marketing and advertising, which to my medical mind sounds almost pathologic but is instead a way for friends to tell friends about something through an internet connection. We all know that word of mouth is the best advertising and viral marketing is just another way to do that.

My weekend (no rest for the weary) has been spent trying to get up to speed on Facebook. While Don gave me a very good start, I've spent hours uploading, connecting, creating, etc. Now I've just heard from the advertising team at Facebook that my first JOOLZ ad has been accepted. It's targeted to women within 50 miles of Rochester, Buffalo and Syracuse. If it shows up on your page, send me an email. I'd like to know if it catches your attention, cuz I'm still learning as I go...

facebook newbie

I spent some time this morning with Don Stevens, co-owner of Canandaigua's Wick-edly Sent Soap and Candle Company. Don is a social networking guru and he understands all this Facebook and Twitter stuff. I don't. I've just published a JOOLZ page on Facebook, but still need to figure out the URL to link everyone to it. I think it's going to require another brief consultation with my resident guru. Stay tuned for further developments...

happy birthdays

Back in my child-producing years, April was a busy month for this mommy. Our oldest daughter was born on April 20 and six years later our youngest was born on April 22. Each year I like to think of April 21 as my Day of Rest. (We also have a son in the middle, and while we got the "begins-with-A" part right, he didn't arrive until August).

The birthday girls are now grown and have flown the coop, the oldest to LA where she is a naturopathic doctor, and the youngest to Denver, where she is an HR manager. Next month I'll fly cross-country to visit with them both, a combo Happy Birthdays and Happy Mother's Day trip. What could be better?

retail master

Today I had the honor of introducing Randi Zabriskie, the owner of Jane Morgan's Little House in Aurora, NY, to an audience of 230+ women gathered for a spring fashion show.

Randi worked at Jane Morgan's during her college years at Wells, married a townie and stayed in Aurora to raise her family with her husband, Steve. She purchased this small retail women's clothing store from the original owner, Jane Morgan, and has grown the business to be the outstanding success that it is now. Women flock to tiny Aurora, on the shores of Cayuga Lake, to shop til they drop.

The clothes are classic but updated, very wearable, very affordable, very "now." Randi knows what works and what doesn't and she makes it all look so easy. Those of us in retail know it is anything but easy, but Randi is a master. She knows her customers, she knows her brand and she knows how to mesh the two.

If you're in the area, give yourself a treat and stop in at Jane Morgan's, meet Randi and tell her Francie sent you.

temptation lurks

The packages have started to arrive...new joolz from Shirley Price, a California artist who works with cabochons, silver and a single signature pearl....and glass joolz from two artists new to the mix at JOOLZ. We'll show you pix and tell you more in a bit. Temptation lurks...

Right now we're concentrating on the Spring Cleaning Sale, trying to make room for all these new goodies. Come on in and get some great bargains. We've already had several lucky customers who have done just that!