About the Artist8/24/2009 5:13:00 PMHi! My name is Lise Spence-Parsons, I am a half Brit, half Swede 42 year old woman living in the cold winter wastelands of America, otherwise known as the Midwest. I have been living here in Minnesota since April 2002, prior to that I was living in the northern home counties of London, England. I was born in the Swinging 60’s in London and grew up in that area with my Swedish mother and English father and sister Bella.
Anyway, to get to where I am now, I opened my business, Lottie’s Trinkets, in late 2004, with a public launch in January 1st 2005. It took me a long time to “release” the artist that is within me, the trigger for me being our relocation to the US, prior to this life I was an accountant for 17 years in the advertising industry and worked for several large global ad networks in London. I come from an artistic family on my father’s side; he is a graphic artist and his mother an artist in many mediums and concert pianist.
I really enjoy designing my pieces of art jewelry and only make each design one time only, so each is unique and made to my best ability and attention to detail. Each piece has design, function and form and I feel that each piece must be balanced in shape, color, size and texture, so even the smallest piece can sometimes take an age to design. Most necklaces stay on the “drawing board” a number of days, with me adding a piece or taking a piece until I feel it’s ready to be “born’. Each of my designs are “born” and are all given a name, photographed from many angles and then placed on my websites, for sale. Inspiration and ideas come from many places and usually from the weirdest situations. I read a lot and in particular have a fascination for Tudor/Elizabethan history, some might call it an obsession; I call it fascination! The colors and the fabrics and display of opulence in the Tudor court was something to behold and a lot of my designs try to capture that richness and depth of color of that era. Also, sometimes I find myself staring at women’s necks to see what is “in” and also look through the mountain of women’s clothing magazines that arrive daily, looking for color trends and shape and size and length.
I strive to find the best “ingredients” I can for my creations, I scour antique shops, online outlets, estate sales, garage sales, liquidation bead shop sales. I use semi precious stones, vintage crystals and components, Swarovski crystals and pearls, freshwater pearls, high quality glass (currently I am using Czech). I adore handmade lamp work beads and commission some local bead makers to make my beads for special creations. I try and use the best I can find, in the most imaginative ways I can and hope to give life to something wonderful.
I also work with a Special Needs Group; I teach the children beading and design that enables them to make and sell items to raise funds to help facilitate other activities. I find this both a lot of fun and very rewarding and have met many great children and young adults through this group. I can no longer go to my local grocery store without someone shouting out “Lottttieeeeee” and come running towards me!
I was also recently featured in my town’s local monthly color magazine, which was a great deal of fun. It involved giving an interview, yes I was nervous, and then a photo shoot in the downtown Minneapolis publishing house. It’s a weird sensation being in a magazine that lands in 35,000 mailboxes, I am hoping that this will bring me some exposure for the upcoming Holiday buying season.
One of areas that I find overwhelming sometimes is the marketing of myself, I am getting better at this and I find that each year I get a little more confident in my own abilities and now even find myself dispensing advice to others………scary! I work hard at getting into juried art fairs and try to do these all year round in my small patch of the northwest suburbs of the Twin Cities. This year I have/will be attending 12 juried fairs, some are full 2 weekends which are exhilarating but tiring and I feel totally drained after those, most are one day affairs. I would recommend to someone starting out to try a mix of fairs and selling online to get a good throughput of items and also find out what sales medium suits you and your product best. Another piece of advice I’d like to offer is the importance of branding, you are your brand, your brand is you, you cannot separate the two. So pick a “look”, a style, a color that is you and stick to it on all merchandising materials. Also never ever give up.
You can find my designs for sale on my site, Lottie's Trinkets and I also sell through an on-line marketplace, MadeItMyself, . Both venues have the same items, just whichever format suits you best! I can also be reached by phone on 763-607-3824. I am also open to custom orders and am happy to provide references upon request.
Well, that’s about it, thank you for reading and I look forward to maybe meeting some of you online or maybe in person at an art fair.
Lise Spence-Parsons
Owner/Designer
Lottie’s Trinkets
www.lottiestrinkets.com
763 607 3824