We've sold our house and will be moving into our much smaller camp very soon. I've been restless for some time now, wanting to simplify my life and spend more time at home in our woods. It amazes me how much crap I've held onto just because I had room for it. I've emptied cupboards and drawers of items that I didn't even remember owning. Anyway it feels really good to be finally moving forward with our plans. I'm very excited to move into our little camp, I love it there and can't wait to be settled there.

This will be the first time in many years that I will put work on hold for a few weeks while we work towards finishing our camp addition and moving all of our stuff. We hope to be moved by April 1st so time is running out to get going. Wondering how the move will effect my work....new studio space and new surroundings.

 Inspiration....where does it come from? I get inspired in many ways and often wish that my brain would stop so I could make all the ideas before more come to push them out of my mind.

As I look at my cabochons, they often tell me what they might like to be. The dichroic glass cab shown here is quite large and I love the colors. In January I put this cab on my silver bench and started thinking about what to do with it. I definitely want to bezel set this cab so the first photo shows that started. Bezel is usually fine (pure) silver and I make a bezel then solder it to a piece of sterling sheet to create a bezel cup that fits the cab perfectly. Many times I draw some ideas as I have here. I think that this will be a kick ass cuff, I have drawn an idea for the bracelet cuff on one side of the cab and think that I will go with this. I'll continue the photos of this project so that you can see the progression. Right now I'm working on Valentine orders but will get back to this soon, it keeps calling my name and I find it hard to ignore.

HeartHeartHeart....

Love this bracelet, all the hearts are made from heavy gauge wire, hammered, bent and soldered into shape. I'm thinking about putting a 'heart jewelry page' on my website as I do alot of hearts. I'll have to run that by my webguy and see what he thinks.....

Feeding the Need....

Every now and then I have to 'feed the need' to create something colorful! I wrapped these Paula Radke dichroic glass beads while working at the Gallery 812 last month. At the time I wasn't sure if they were going to become a necklace, bracelet or just components for several pieces. Then I decided to focus on some small and more delicate swirls than I usually make. These are made from round wire that I hammered flat on one end and then started the swirl there so that the center is more defined then just rolling up round wire. It's a subtle difference but I like it. The necklace has come together quite nicely and when I get more beads I'll probably do some variations of this for a similar bracelet.

Turquoise love affair

I had so much fun setting turquoise cabochons this past fall, everybody loved them. Most of the work was traditional in design and execution. It seems that turquoise will never go out of vogue.

Well I finally have the ability to work on my own website, it feels so good to be able to change pricing, dates, text and add new items to keep the site fresh. It's no where near as difficult as I had imagined. Now I just have to schedule in website time on a regular basis each week.

More Relei glass

Just got another package from my favorite glass artist, Carolyn Relei. I had to set a couple of them right away, the colors are so deep and rich.

I spent most of the day yesterday working on customer's orders, Josh was here working on some chains for me, so together we kicked the hog in the ass. Feels good to get some more orders done, the shows will keep me pretty busy after July so I'm trying to get caught up while I can. This weekend I'm going to Constable Hall for their annual craft show on Sunday, it's a good show that I look forward to each year. I've been attending it as a vendor off and on for 30 years. The first time that I was there I was pregnant with Josh and he was born a few days later. I was making jewelry then and later attended with my grapevine and tree root baskets, then my reed baskets and now back to jewelry again for the past several years.

Meet the Artist event in Massena

I'm excited about attending the 'Meet the Artist' event at Seasons Gift shop located at 27 West Orvis St. in Massena NY this Saturday, June 13th from 10-2.

Seasons Specialty Gifts http://www.seasons-gifts.com has been a wholesale customer of mine for several years and I'm looking forward to visiting their store and meeting the other artists that will be there too.

Yesterday I was photographing several of my new pieces to add to my website. My webguy Terry has started making some much needed changes to my site and I'm gathering new material for him to add. Several of my new pieces are selling before I can get a photo of them though, not a bad problem, I'm just sorry to lose some of them so soon.

Most of my work is one of a kind and I've always been hesitant to put their images up on my site as I cannot usually reproduce them but have recently decided to put them up anyway. I think that most of my customers know me well enough to understand that and they can get ideas from the images and I can create something similar for them.