A Walk In the Woods

Every morning the three of us go for a walk. Lately we've been going through the woods near our house. There are trails to the inlet, but it has been very muddy and slippery there, so we've been sticking to the "overland" route. In an attempt to make the walk more hike-like, we decided to forge a new trail. Rick armed himself with a machete and I continually yelled for Jet to get out of the way. I don't want him to find out the hard way that a machete is dangerous!

We found some concrete survey markers with brass plates dating back to 1922. For some reason, this excited me to no end. To think that my little rustic neighborhood was being explored back then kind of gave me the chills. Who were these people that did the surveying?

This is the first one we found:

If you can't read it, it says US Coast & Geodetic Survey. Click on the photo to get a larger image and you can read the rest of the information.

Here's the second one:

Kind of cool if you ask me!

COLOR!

I don't know about you, but I love color. I love almost all colors and I love most of them together. Some of my most popular earrings feature what some would consider bizarre color combinations. Even when these pieces are not big sellers, they are certainly eye-catching and draw customers to a display of all of my jewelry, like at a craft show.

This is what I'm talking about:

And this too:

If you really want to learn about color theory, get some reasoning behind why these combos work (or don't) you need to head over to my friend Brandi's blog. Not only does she explain color theory in perfectly understandable terms, she offers up some really delicious color palettes based on lovely pieces of art. She also talks about design and photo editing. Trust me, you'll like it over there. She also has a fun Facebook page here.

Working on a New Design

Every once in a while an idea strikes and we must drop everything and work on it RIGHT NOW. That exact thing happened one day last week. I was literally in the middle of making a pair of earrings when an image of this pendant popped into my brain. I had to try and make it.

I planned it all out: used a Sharpie to mark where to drill the holes, made 3 copper headpins with the torch (quench them in ice water to get that pretty pink color), cut the lengths of sterling and brass wire. Of course, the last hole I drilled didn't go so well and I scratched the sterling disc very badly. That's OK, this is only the prototype.

The part I didn't plan at all was how to finish the piece. In other words, the back is a mess! The copper headpins became rivets and they are neatly hammered flat on the back. The other wires? They're just there. I'm thinking I need another disc, a bit larger and made from copper, for contrast, that I can rivet to this main piece. I will do it with a spacer of some sort so the wires on the back have a place to hide.

If you have a more creative and artistic idea for how to finish this, I would love to hear it!

New Earrings and a New Keyboard!

My online activities have been limited for the past 8 days because my keyboard broke. No, it didn't break all by itself. Jet was under my desk, the cable got stuck on his head somehow, he got spooked and ran. The keyboard suffered.

I went directly to amazon (On my iPad because without a keyboard, going anywhere online is difficult. Couldn't believe amazon.com WAS NOT in my browser history!) and ordered a new, wireless one. It is a dream!! And it wasn't even expensive.

In the meantime, making listings on etsy was tricky business. I had to create the listing on my iPad and save it to draft mode. Then, I would go to my computer and add the photos to the listing. Tedious to say the least. What I learned is that it IS possible, just very inconvenient.

Anyway, here are a couple of pairs of earrings I listed in the past week.

Iolite Briolettes with faceted labradorites alongside.

 

Garnet Briolettes topped with garnet cubes.

Rubies dangling from links of peach moonstone and citrine.

 

Green Rutilated Quartz and textured circles.

 

You can click on any of the captions or the photos to go directly to the listings in my etsy shop!