A long absence...

I've been absent from my blog for a long time. I have some excuses, which I will go into, but I do understand that there's really NO excuse, lol. So, my feeble excuse is that I no longer have high speed internet. I have an air card from my cell company, which they CLAIMED was high speed, but their idea of high speed and mine are obviously greatly different. Consequently, loading pictures onto the internet takes FOREVER. I feel like a very large part of blogging is the pictures, so therefore just decided to stop blogging until I got faster internet. I've now come to the conclusion that it just won't happen for a long long long time, so I'm just going to grin and bear it, and just add pictures when I can, from someone Else's computer that DOES have high speed internet.

While I was gone I made a lot of jewelry. I'm still as obsessed with jewelry as I ever was. Maybe more so. I tend to create original jewelry in spurts. In between bouts of creativity, I just make basic chains and earrings and etc, but I'm always making something.

I've not been doing very well in keeping up with the theme challenges of the Wire Artisan's Guild, even though they dropped the challenges to monthly instead of weekly. I just got too busy with the Holidays. I have started back in, though...the last few challenges have been VERY inspiring.

The most recent one was "Affair of the Hearts". I was lucky enough to go to my local bead store (Jack of All Beads on 3rd Street in McMinnville, OR) and find some lovely Valentine themed lampwork beads made by a local artist, Cincy Campbell. Haha, I say lucky, but the bead store actually calls me now, whenever Cindy brings more stuff in...in this case, I feel like a junkie, and they're definitely my dealer, lol. So, inspired by the heart them from WAG, and the beautiful hearts by Cindy, I've so far created two winged heart necklaces: A Clockwork Heart and Don't Fly Away with my Heart (I'll post a link to the etsy listing when I get to a better computer to list it). I'm really happy with both of those pieces, and I have at least one more original piece planned, as well as another version of A Clockwork Heart, using a different bead.

For the WAG store re-opening, the theme is "Stardust", which I've also found particularly inspiring. I've got a necklace drawn out, and I can't wait to get started on it, but I need to finish these heart themed pieces, first, since Valentine's Day is right around the corner.

To that end, I will be at Honest Chocolates this coming Friday (2/6/09) from 5-8pm for Newberg's First Friday Art and Wine Walk. I am one of the featured artists, along with my sister, Jessica (Alternative Rose) and a wood artist that I haven't met, yet. Dana (my boss) will be there with wine tasting chocolates to sample, and her husband, Byron (of Seven of Hearts Wine) will be there pouring his awesome wine to taste. Make sure to stop in and see me if you're in the area...I will have a great selection of jewelry!

I'll follow with a post later with links to recent pieces I've completed. If you don't want to wait, just go look at my Flickr Photostream, or my Etsy Shop.

Summer's almost here!

Today was SO hot! About 85 degrees here. It made me realize that we're gonna be miserable when it gets really hot, lol. The new house that we moved into is actually quite old. Part of it was built around the early 1900s, and the rest probably in the 30s or 40s. Most of the windows, consequently, are basically just there so that it's not pitch black inside of the house. They weren't made to open. We have the huge windows that don't open. That means, no air conditioner. We DO have three doors in our house, so I'm trying to figure out some way to have the doors open without our animals getting out. Unfortunately, one of our chihuahua/mix dogs is a freakin' stunt dog, and can almost jump over me. Admittedly, I'm not very tall, but 5'2" is still pretty high for a 12" tall dog to jump, lol. So, with Terra the trick dog living here, we can't just use basic baby gates to keep her in, because she just jumps over the darn things. I'm hoping that the oak grove right next to our house will get leafy pretty soon and shade the house more so that it's cooler. I'm crossing my fingers for that!



So, today I created a ton of handmade business cards and jewelry tags to use when I go to The Gathering next weekend. Then I took a couple of pictures, organized a little, and then worked on a necklace that I've had planned for a little while. My friend, Alyssa, is a glass bead artist, and I have one of her gorgeous vessels to work around. It's nowhere near done, but this is what I got accomplished today

...basically, I did a lot of twisting wire to make the chain with, then pounding to strengthen said chain. Hopefully I'll get it done maybe tomorrow.

Circles and Squares 5/5/08

This bracelet was very fun, and included TONS of sterling silver wire...almost 300 inches of it! It highlights a beautiful lampwork bead. The etsy listing can be seen at http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=11523763

Au Naturale 4/15/08

I finished another piece of jewelry today. My entry for the Etsy Wire Artisan's Guild Street Team special challenge: Earth Day-Au Naturale. Wow. It's so frickin' awesome! I started out knowing that I wanted to create something "beachy", using some of the shells and rocks and fossils that I have picked up through the years on the Oregon Coast. I didn't know exactly how I was going to use these items. And I sure didn't know how the heck they were going to attach to whatever piece of jewelry I ended up making. I thought maybe a charm bracelet? But I really wanted to use one of the nice snail fossils that I had, and I thought they would be too big to dangle from a bracelet, or earrings. So, I was basically boxing myself into another necklace/pendant. Last night, I went to bed with the snail fossil, wire, and pliers, to play with it for a while before falling asleep. I often find that this is my most creative time, but I'm usually too tired to have it be of any use for anything but dreaming, lol. I ended up securely spiralling some silver wire around the snail fossil, forming a pendant. I put it away and went to bed to sleep on it. While I slept, I dreamt of a necklace formed of spirals of silver wire that formed waves, and hanging from the waves were charms of the sea. It was the perfect beach necklace! Of course, when I woke up, I remembered that I had dreamed of making the perfect beach necklace, known exactly how to do it, but couldn't REMEMBER lol. So, I spent about an hour trying out different spirals until I found one that looked JUST right. Everything went fairly fast from there. The necklace is formed of sterling wave-ish spirals. Heavy duty sterling chain attaches to that, and fastens with a heavy duty artisan clasp. Dangling from the waves are: two wire wrapped orange agates, and two wire wrapped green pieces of sea glass. The center focal piece is the fossilized snail, of which the fossil is also mainly comprised of agate (VERY cool!), and dangling from the top of the snail is a teeny tiny perfectly round agate, encased in a silver cage. All of these items are exactly as I found them at the beach, minus the sand, lol. They haven't been tumbled or polished or anything fancy like that. I trusted the sea's perfectionist nature to get it right, without my intervention. This necklace makes me think of something that a mermaid princess would wear to entice sailors, just in case her own charms weren't enough. ;-) What do you all think? This piece is listed for sale, not in my own etsy store, but in my guild's special store, which is opening with a bang on Earth Day, therefore the Earth Day theme. You can see this piece listed on April 22 at www. WireArtisansGuild.etsy.com OK, I'm exhausted, I'm off to bed!

Gothic Bride 4/14/08

I took Friday off of work, since it was the hubby's birthday. We had a good time, most of the night. We went out to dinner at Orchard's Bistro, which as STUPENDOUS food. If you are ever in McMinnville, looking for good food, that's the place to go. They share space with Honest Chocolates (my day job), so stop and get chocolates while you're there, you won't regret it, lol. Today, Jason had to be to work at 7pm, and before he went, we took the kids to DQ. Unfortunately, the one near us RAN OUT OF ICE CREAM. How does an ice cream place run out of ice cream? I don't know, either, lol. I did make a little headway on the Earth Day theme challene the wire artisan's guild is doing...the actual title of the theme is "au naturelle" or something like that. I'm making a fossilized seashell the focal point of my piece. Got that done, don't know where to go from there, lol. Oh, I finished the Gothic Bride theme piece last night, got it listed today. I LOVELOVELOVE it. I hope it sells soon, or I may have to keep it for myself, and where the hell would I wear something that nice? I just stay home with kids, lol. Anyway, a description. It's a 4 in 1 pendant set. There is a Celtic Cross focal pendant, highly oxidized, and decorated with many, many teeny tiny garnets. The cross comes with a beautiful necklace with a pendant holder (also highly oxidized) which can be worn on it's own, and a black, hand dyed silk ribbon, which can also be worn on it's own. It's very versatile, and very pretty, and really epitomizes the theme "gothic bride", I think. My pictures totally don't do this piece the justice that it deserves. As I mentioned, it is listed for sale, and you can see more pictures at http://www.followtheredbrickrd.etsy.com/.