There's a moment that happens every time I finish a piece. I've spent hours on it, chosen the stone, shaped the wire, fixed the parts that weren't sitting right. And then it's done, and I have to decide whether to show it to anyone.
That part is harder than the making.
There's a whole stage that happens before any of the selling anxiety even kicks in, and that's deciding whether something is good enough to list at all.
Some pieces I finish and photograph the same day. Others sit on my desk for a week while I talk myself in and out of it. Not because there's anything wrong with them, but because putting a price on something you made with your hands requires a kind of confidence that doesn't always come easily.
You start asking yourself questions that don't have clean answers. Is this good enough? Is the price too high? Will people think I'm overvaluing my own work? Is it too low, am I undervaluing it? What if I list it and it just sits there, and that sitting there means something?
And underneath all of it is the more uncomfortable question: what if I'm just not that good?
That one is the hardest to shake. Because you can't fully separate the work from the person who made it. When you're the designer, the maker, the photographer, the seller, and the packer, there's no distance between you and the thing. It's all just you, all the way down.
The reality for me right now is that House of Luna is still very small and very new. Sales are few and far between. So that doubt doesn't just visit occasionally; it's pretty much a constant. Every slow week raises the same question: is this worth continuing? Should I just stop? And that question is exhausting to live with when you're also trying to make things, run a shop, photograph everything, write listings, maintain a website, and show up on social media, all by yourself. There are days when giving up genuinely feels like the more rational option.
Most of the time I list it anyway. Not because I've resolved the doubt but because the alternative is a drawer full of pieces nobody ever sees. And that feels worse.
Handmade is different from manufactured. When something comes off a production line, it doesn't carry anyone's fingerprints, not really. But when you make something with your hands, a piece of yourself goes into it. The hours, the decisions, the vision you were trying to bring into the world.
Which means putting it up for sale, or posting a photo, or setting it out on a market table, you're not just showing a product. You're showing something that came from you. That's a vulnerable thing to do every single time.
The harshest critic is almost never a customer. It's me.
I can look at a piece I made and immediately see everything I'm not happy with. A customer picks up that same piece and sees something entirely different. They don't have the version in their head I was trying to make; they just have the thing itself. And usually they think it's beautiful.
We are always our own worst judges.
The anxiety doesn't stop when something sells. Sometimes that's when it gets worse.
You've packed it carefully, written a note, dropped it at the post office. And then you wait. And in that waiting, your brain starts working against you.
What if they open it and it's not what they expected?
Photos can only do so much. I do my best to capture a piece honestly, but a photo is still flat, still lit a certain way, still viewed on whatever screen the buyer happens to be using. The piece they hold in their hands has weight, catches light differently, exists in three dimensions. Sometimes it's better in person. But the gap between image and reality is real, and knowing that possibility exists is hard to sit with.
Wire wrapping leaves marks. Pliers grip wire and wire remembers. Those marks aren't flaws; they're evidence that a person sat with this piece and shaped it by hand, made decisions, adjusted, came back to it. Every mark is part of the process.
But there's always that fear. That someone will receive a piece, turn it over, spot those small traces of making, and feel like they got something lesser.
They didn't. They got something more. A mass-produced piece is perfect because a machine made it and machines don't hesitate or problem-solve. The slight variations, the tool marks, the fact that no two pieces are ever the same- that is the value. Not in spite of it.
Scale is one of the hardest things to get across in product photos. I include measurements in every listing, but numbers on a screen don't always translate to how something will actually feel on a body.
A pendant that looks bold in a close-up might feel delicate in person. A stone that photographs deep purple might look more lilac in different lighting. These aren't dishonest representations; they're just the limits of the medium.
What I can control is being as transparent as possible. What I can't control is the gap between what someone pictures in their mind and what arrives in their hands. Learning to sit with that, while still caring about the experience someone has when they open the parcel. That's one of the quieter ongoing challenges of doing this.
The people who seek out handmade jewellery are almost always people who want what handmade means. They're not buying from me because they couldn't find something cheaper elsewhere. They're buying because it's made by a person, because it's one of a kind, because it carries something a factory piece doesn't.
Most of the time, the person opening that parcel is rooting for it. They want to love it. They chose it.
That's worth holding onto.
Every piece at House of Luna is wire-wrapped by hand around natural gemstones, made by me from my home in New Zealand.