Monday

I am sitting at my kitchen island catching up on emails and there is a new carton of strawberries in front of me and they smell sooooooo good. I love this time of year when these types of fruits are in season. I even ate 3 raspberries off my little raspberry bush today. It didn't produce anything last year because it was so small so it's exciting stuff! We also have two trees full of tiny growing peaches.mmmm

On a random note-I gave my hair the chop a few days ago. I wish I could have long hair someday, but apparently not as much as I like a good drastic change. It's back to a super short pixie and once I go that short I always feel like I need to be blonde to make it more feminine. So, two bleaching sessions and 3 toners later I finally got a result that I liked. Sheesh! maybe I will post a picture here in a day or so. I am curious-question for the ladies: Do you like to change your hair or are you the kind that wears the same style and color forever? I had a somewhat recent phase where I let my natural color grow out and started growing my hair out and I thought I would never bother with coloring and all that stuff again. But, when it comes down to it-I just like change.

Anyways, I thought I would also share a few necklaces that I finished up a few minutes ago. A sweet lady asked me to make her some stamped disc necklaces for her sister in laws. I haven't done much disc stamping and so I thought it would be a fun project.

Have a happy Monday!

Made Over the Weekend

I made a plain sterling silver band a few weeks ago and I knew I wanted to attach it onto something, but I just didn't know what. I started playing with a piece off copper over the weekend and intended to make a pendant or a piece for a bracelet. Once I soldered the feather design on I happened to look at the ring shank and thought,"ooh, this is what I should attach!" It's a pretty big ring and I love how it turned out. I purposely made the copper portion not perfectly rounded to give it a rustic feel and banged it up a bit on the edges.

I also made a few pairs of earrings the same day.
I played around with different tools to see what kind of marks they would leave on the metal. The first one was just supposed to be a test piece and when it was done I thought it looked kind of neat and made it a friend.

 I think I am calling the pair below-stick earrings.

PS. I just made homemade rice krispy treats and I foresee me eating way to many in the near future! 3 ingredients and so stinking yummy!

Me and Mose

Rings

 Raw Amethyst

 Rutilated Quartz

Try to ignore my dry nasty hands! ;)

Stuff

 *My mom told me about the show Doc Martin. Have you seen it? We both have Netflix watch instantly and I am always looking for new things to add to my que. I love a lot of the BBC movies so I started watching Doc and I am a bit obsessed.

*I was reading this book until I watched a documentary about Frank Lloyd Wright and realized where this love affair was heading. It's REALLY gruesome and depressing and I moved onto this book. Which is depressing, but interesting. Have any recommendations for the next book I should pick up?

*I have been playing around with wire and wire wrapping a lot in the past few days. I made this really fun wrapped reticulated quartz ring that I will share with you eventually and have been making some earrings as well. I absolutely love silver-smithing, but I just can't really afford to work with the sterling silver sheet right now. Discovering wire wrapping and really just working with wire in general has been a really nice distraction. I also love shopping for new stones and beads to work with. I feel like I am 10 again adding new rocks to my rock collection.

 *My husband is building us a fence! It is almost finished, but here are some pictures I snapped last weekend

side note- My husband is awesome! He can build and fix anything. Seriously-ANYTHING! It's amazing and I am so blessed he has these talents!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Starting Out

I am no expert at all on jewelry making, but I think one small piece of advice I would give to someone wanting to make jewelry with beads and stones is to only buy beads and stones that you REALLY like.

Long ago in my teens when I first started wanting to make jewelry I went to the local craft store and bought a bunch of cheap beads in every color. I thought that if I had them in every color then I was covered for whatever type of project I wanted to do. The same went with ear wires and other things like that. Cheap.
Even when I became an adult I kept buying ugly cheap beads because I didn't want to pay more for the better stuff. I always wondered why I never liked the final product.

What I have come to realize is if you start with pretty materials to begin with you really don't have to do anything fancy to end up with something nice that you will actually want to wear or give as a gift.

I am thinking about this right now because I just purchased several beads from various Etsy sellers and can't wait for them to show up in the mail. I received one of the packages today with several large nuggets of turquoise. I took them out and instantly wanted to make something. I whipped up this wire wrapped ring and I love it. It's so simple, but when you are working with stones you love you can let the stone speak for the piece on it's own.

I am off to make some dinner!

Rainy Day

Reading this
Listening to this
Just finished these