Mothers Day —> Now

Wow. It has been a while since I have posted an update. I have sprinkled my website with some new drops of random projects that I have done since the Christmas bazaar season. I had an itch to do a bunch of Mother’s Day pendants and then grabbed a random assortment of stones and just got to creating! I love putting on shows, music or audiobooks as I work because it takes me out of my own head and I can freely work.

I have recently realized that I have been suffering from anxiety and panic attacks. It is something that is new to me that I have been trying to navigate. So that has been an unfortunate development! I am thankful for friends and family who have reached out with support, tips, tricks and recommendations for therapists in the area. I hope with a mix of these suggestions that I can control this before it starts to control me.

I have been able to sneak away from Fairbanks every Saturday for the past month or so to look for agates. That has been such a fun experience! I have taken some friends up to the Yukon River and we just hang out, talk and search for cool rocks. It has been such a stress relief and I dream about rocks and that river. It is just so beautiful and powerful! I want to own a boat and go up and down the river all summer just looking for rocks. That is probably a little ambitious at this point but it is something to consider for the future.

Anyways, back to what you’re here for! After my random assortment of jewelry— meteorite, opal, emerald, native copper chrysocolla, moss agate, cameos, variscite, etc. I had a little idea of cute fish rings or pendants! I loved the idea of piecing together a heart for a tail, pear shape for the body and then use 3 different sized blue stones for the bubbles. The one thing that held me back was how expensive all the stones would be! I seriously had them in my cart for months. Then one day I just said, “F*ck it. Let’s do this! It is a great idea and if it doesn’t work out, you will have more faceted stones in your inventory for future projects.”

So here we are. The final product is not exactly what I had in mind as a final product— I had to adjust how the pendant attached to the chain. The jump rings that were soldered onto the pendant took away from the design and they weren’t the strongest joints. I was afraid that they would eventually just break and that was not ok with me. The price of these were going to be so much higher than anticipated because I was using natural and lab grown stones! To be honest, it doesn’t really matter if it is lab or natural because it is all expensive. So it couldn’t break easily. I ended up using some really sturdy jump rings to hook around the fish and then attach the chain to those jump rings! I like to think that these fish are swimming through dip nets.

(They turned out so cute and I was so happy with the final product. The way I had them hanging just before the final design made it look like…not a very appropriate thing! It actually made me laugh quite a bit but I couldn’t sell them that way.)

During this whole process, I had the mad idea to place ANOTHER order for stones and materials for an even BIGGER project. I took another leap of faith and I have all the material to start those next. I am not quite sure if you are familiar with the book series Dungeon Crawler Carl?? Well, it is quite hilarious and the audiobooks are phenomenal. I was very moved with some characters in that series and I am going to make things that represent it.

Princess Donuts Crown— amethyst and natural diamonds.

Desperado Club Knife— meteorite blade, etched copper handle and a tear drop faceted garnet at the bottom.

Carl’s Heart Boxers— faceted garnet hearts.

Mongo— sterling silver velociraptor with sapphire eytes.

Samantha— sterling silver doll head with sapphire eyes.

I also want to create negatives with these designs without any stones! I am so excited about it and I cannot wait to start creating. My next feat is being able to cut the meteorite down to size— so once that is done, I will be able to start producing these pieces.

As always, thanks for sticking with me! I appreciate all the love and support that is given to me as I create artwork and put it out into the world. It is never not intimidating. So thank you and I will see you at the next drop!