I don’t often have sales, but this year I decided I would offer one!  This offer is good for use on my website here or in my etsy shop here. 

~~SALE~~

Friday 11/28/08 - Monday 12/1/08  All orders over $40 will receive free shipping and a Lucky Penny Keychain!  Shipping will be refunded through paypal after your order has been completed.  Thank you and happy shopping!!  

…is that you actually have to start on it!  It all goes by much quicker after you take that step

Those are just a few things I’m inspired by right now.  Little handcut flowers seem to be popping up on my pieces, and so I’m creating more and more things to put them on!  I’m also doing more stonesetting.

This is a piece that embodies several of my current themes:   Overgrowth

So several fall art shows have come and gone, my fall quarter classes have ended, and I even have a new baby kitten!  With my new time to breathe I have also found new inspirations and the time to create.  One collection I’m particularly fond of is a series of landscapes.  Most of these landscapes are based on local coastal scenes (such as Tybee Island and Skidaway Island)  A few of these pieces will make it into my online shops, but largely I plan to have them in my co-op gallery, Gallery 209.

(Morning Fog on the Marsh, sterling and 18ky)

(Tybee Sand Dunes, sterling)

(Tybee Sunrise, sterling and 18ky)

All I can say is that today I joined the rest of civilization and got a cell phone.  Here’s to spending more time on the phone!  (I’m actually very happy to have a cell phone, especially for emergency car-breaking-down type situations.)

My new phone is a silver Razor.  (whatever that means…)

Today’s post has absolutely nothing to do with jewelry.  Instead, I wanted to share a website that is like a radio station.  You tell it a song or group you like and it will play other music that it thinks you will like too.  With each song it plays you can give the song a thumbs up or a thumbs down.  Doing this will fine tune your station into exactly what you want to hear

The site is free, but it is only available within the USA (due to liscensing agreements)  You can create as many different stations as you want and listen to it as much as you want.   I find myself listening to it whenever I’m in my office–and I’ve discovered a lot of great bands I’d never heard of before now!

http://www.pandora.com/

Lately I’ve gotten the bug to enamel.  I’ve working on enameling a lot of new pieces, mostly nature inspired.  My newest favorites are dogwood blossoms:

The shapes are hand cut from copper and the enamel was applied using both wet and dry techniques.  The patina on the chain and edge of the metal flowers really helps the colors to stand out.

Available in my etsy shop.

I spent the bulk of yesterday working on some enameled necklaces. They were a bit of an experiment in several ways, and I am very happy with how they turned out. While in the studio I took a few pictures to show a glimpse of the process….

The enamel is powdered glass. There are many different ways to apply the enamel, but one of the most common methods is sifting. The picture below was taken right after sifting the enamel into place. (You can see the nuts that supported the metal and the outline of where the pieces sat.)

After picking them up, they are set on trivets which will support them inside the kiln. The following picture was taken right before they went into the kiln.

Freshly out of the kiln, the glass has all fused together. The red appears to be black, but as it cools down it will become vibrant red once again.

And with some finishing and little bit of magic, the necklaces are finished! These have sterling silver chains with handmade hook clasps. I gave them a patina to make the colors in the flowers really pop.

And on these necklaces, there is a bit of a secret….in fact, that’s why these necklaces are part of a collection called, ‘My Secret Garden’… You’ve seen the front…and now here is the back! (each one is a little different, I was experimenting after all!)

If you’ve been watching my etsy shop, you may have noticed a series of fruit!  It’s one of my newest collections and I’ve been having fun with figuring out the best ways to represent each different fruit in terms of silhouette, texture, form, and leaf shape. Keep watching for a few more, there may just be a peach and an apple (hint, hint!) 

This necklace came about following the death of my beloved furry friend and studio mate, Summer. I used to draw little angular sketches of her, like the one you see on the charm.

I realized soon after she was gone how much I wanted something to remember her, and I also realized that many other people go through the same type of loss and want something for themselves.

This necklace was born of those realizations. I crafted the charm from wax using my hands and a few primitive tools. Once it was finished, I had it cast and molded. The back of the pendant has room for you put your own pet’s name, or maybe the first letters of their name (if you have more than one dog to hold close.) The pictured charm is being kept as my own, which is why it reads “Summer” on the back.