News RSS

I am a silversmith, and although I primarily hand fabricate sterling and fine silver jewelry, I love natural and enhanced beads to bring beautiful color and texture to jewelry pieces. Beading is also a nice diversion from soldering, sawing, stamping and general studio mayhem from time to time!  When I attend gem shows, it is really just impossible to walk past table after table of gorgeous strands of beads like you see in the photo without taking some home with me.  I hand string all my necklaces myself, they are on a good quality lightweight beading wire for added strength,...

Yes you read that right - 65 million years old!  Well, maybe the earrings I made aren't exactly that old, I just finished them last week, but hear me out! The Ammonite fossils in these newest earrings are from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods of our earth's history; they went extinct about the same time as dinosaurs did.  They were prolific breeders, and therefore are some of the most abundant fossils that are found today. They do have a surviving relative in today's world, it is called the Nautilus, which is currently found in the western pacific ocean. The spiral you...

So... as often happens in my creation process, plans evolve, and this one did too! The spiny oyster stone I was planning on using ends up being cut too shallow for the depth of bezel needed for this ring.  And yes - it was always going to be a ring!  Eight individual pieces of silver were reticulated and soldered onto a second inside band.  One by one..............   This piece of free form cut turquoise seemed to be a good match so here is the final result!

This past week I spent working on a piece using a technique called 'reticulation.' This involves using sterling silver, which contains both fine silver and copper.  The silver is heated to an annealing temperature, and air cooled.  This has to be done about ten times, and then the metal is ready to reticulate.  Once ready, I 'paint' the metal with my torch, chasing the metal around the piece to create a unique pattern in the metal.  It resembles a molten crust, and each piece is unique and individual to what Mother Nature dictates on that piece at that time at...

So, admittedly, it is snowing again here in Conifer, so this is wishful thinking about now.....but when the sun is out and the sky is blue, I love riding my little Aprilia scooter when I'm not making jewelry! I'm not afraid of parking with the big boys (yes I'm the little red one) and also own a Honda Shadow Aero 750 motorcycle.