I finished a new custom tree of life pendant today. This one is on a carnelian cabochon. I'm pretty excited about how it turned out. This one was a bit different than my others. It has the most wires/branches I think I've ever done, which was quite a challenge actually. There is only so much room on the frame to tie to ;) To make matters more difficult, I wanted no space between wraps, to define the canopy, while leaving..enough space between branches to be visually appealing, and not utter chaos. Easier said than done. And all those roots! Sheesh that was roots a plenty. Not sure why those were such a struggle, but they sure were. I just could NOT get them right! 3 or 4 tries/scraps later and we had winner winner chicken dinner. The biggest difference with this piece was the woven bail. I didn't want the round, orange stone to end up looking like a pumpkin,, and I felt the regular bail I make on my trees just screamed pumpkin stem on this one. I also had to be careful not to swirl anything with this bail. Pumpkins have those swirly tendril things...don't they? Hmm...now I'm not as certain as when I was making it lol. Either way...NO PUMPKIN TREE! I also wanted to make sure it could be worn on my customer's viking knit chain. I feel viking knit needs a bigger, more intricate bail. Looks pretty cool on that bad boi chain,, yeah? I've only done a woven bail on a cab tree once before, and truth be told...I didn't love it. Weaving on square wire is not like weaving on round wire, which is what I use when I weave. Square is more...cumbersome. Less flow, I guess. Darn corners and all. Anyhoo, the last piece looked alright, from the front, so I thought I'd give it another shot. But the back side of that piece... I don't know. I just didn't love it.. And the bail wires ran the full length of the stone. My customer likes to play with their stone so I didnt want to cover it so much this time. Plus, this stone is somewhat see thru, and I wanted as little showing thru as possible. So I redesigned it and I think it came out just right for this piece.
All in all, I feel like its a perfect Samhain or October Hunter's moon piece. Which...wasn't actually what I meant to make but...*shrugs*... the tree is what the tree wants to be. How do y'all like it? Iz good? I'd love to hear your thoughts. :)
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Daughter came for a visit. Yaaaaay! I feel like I hadn't seen her in forEVER! We had such a great time. We hung out, had yummy food, and I took her to some of the new places I've discovered. Twas awesome. We saw lots of beachy wildlife things, like egrets and herons and sea gulls. Oh my! And beautiful sunsets. I took her to Oceanside to hunt for agates... ...but sadly, the ocean had dumped a bunch of sand and either covered them up or swept them away. Still not entirely sure how that works. But, no matter. It was fun, and absolutely gorgeous. As we were leaving, we started finding some, finally. We both managed to find a pocket full, so yay for that. I think daughter was well pleased. Then we took a scenic drive thru Siletz, to Newport, had lunch on South Jetty, went to the Marine Science Center, then beach walked another beach I go to quite a bit down in Gleneden, and sat and watched the waves for a bit. The hightlight of the trip was the whales. Daughter had never seen one before. A couple of days before she got here I was sitting by the side of the road, watching what must have been 5-6 of them. I took that as a good sign and was quite hopeful she'd at least see some spouts. So, I took her to Depoe Bay, and sure enough...spouts! After watching for a bit, I decided to take her down the road were I had seen so many before. She got her 1st up close whale sighting. We sat a long while, watching them feed right next to the shore. She got to see spouts, backs, fins and at last count...5 tails. When they began moving south, we followed. It was getting pretty dark by then and we didn't see them anymore. Just when we gave up and got in the truck to leave...he surfaced again, rolled on his side...and waved her goodnight. It was SO GREAT! We had such an awe inspiring time with the whales that we decided to go back and see if we could see more. Chances of 2 whale shows are pretty darn slim but thought we'd give it a shot before she left. O.M.G. I'm so glad we did. What we got was a whale show so good, we could have been at Sea World. it started with 3 whales. Swimmin' around and feeding. Then the 2 big ones left, and what had to be a young one stayed behind, playing in the cove. He was amazing. And so close! This time, I was able to get some pictures of him. His spout, making a rainbow... His fin as he spun circles, feeding and playing in the surf... And even his little whale face! I got a pic of a whale's face. His friggin face! Never in my life have I seen such a whale show. I tried lots of video, but was too excited and overwhelmed by the awesomness of it all to actually take any good videos, and, ya know, get him in the frame. Videos are hard! Lol. I did manage this little teaser tho... Eventually the 2 bigger ones came back for him, and they swam off. We decided they must habe been a family pod, and the parent whales told the baby whale to stay put while they went over yonder. He was a good baby whale and stayed right where they told him too, and he had a whale of a time while they were gone. Teehee :D An hour and a half he played there. Gave us all quite a show.
Whales! How cool is that?! So that was our visit. Beach walks, wildlife, agate hunting, and whales. Good times. *dusts off blog* Oh my.. *cough cough* It's been so many years since i've blogged anthing, i'm not sure i remember how. Lol And i'm trying from my phone, with no auto correct, on an app I've never used, sooooo that's fun. Please forgive the spelling errors ;p Anyhoo, hi! Welcome back! I have so much going on that i want to tell y'all about, that I figured...time to dust off the old blog and get to tellin'. For those of you who don't know, I had a major melt down mid-life crisis, got rid of almost everything, bought an RV, and ran away from home to live on the Oregon coast. It has been amazing. I came here to open a jewelry/bead store, but that hasn't panned out yet. Instead, i've spent the last 6 months trying to get my head screwed back on right, and learn how to live my life, for me. And it's been marvelous. I knew i liked it here at the coast, but never dreamed I'd love living here quite this much. I should have done this years ago! Last week, a big milestone happened. I turned 50. The big 5-0. I thought that would freak me out, but it really doesn't. Well, a little maybe, but mostly I'm just really excited to start this new phase of my life. I feel like a different person over here. Everything runs on a very chill beach time here, and I've slipped into a chillaxed state pretty easily. That surprises me, considering what a high strung, chronically ill, stress case I was before. Now, if I start to feel off kilter, I just grab the dog and go for a walk on the beach. Not much of a hardship that!
I don't stress much anymore tho. But I do walk that beautiful beach a lot. I try to go every day. For a walk. Me. Walking. Who's ever even heard of such a thing! It's just not done! Beach walking does a body good. And a soul too lol. Well, I guess thats all for me for now. I have so many things I want to blog about: jewelry store meetings, new shinies, birthday trip to Cannon Beach, whale watching...the list goes on and on. But daughter is coming to visit today, and I have much to do before she gets here, so I'd best get crackin. I'll be back with shiny RV beach life stories. I promise. Later taters! Well, vacation is over. What a nice, relaxing, productive vacation it was. I'd planned on going over to the coast for a week or so, to decompress, destress and relax, but...things didn't work out that way. Truth be told, as much as I wanted to, it seems I wanted new gemstones instead. Many gemstones. Many many. A gazillion I think. But, in my defense, just loooook at how shiny some of them are! Emerald and sapphire and topaz, OH MY! I'd have probably been ok to still hit the beach, for a few days at least, but while working on a new earring idea, I ran out of chain. Thinking I could just go pick a little up at the bead lady's place, I headed out. When I got there, it turned out she had more new shinies. And, I went apeshit. Again. But, I couldn't help it. I mean,... OMG BIG FACETED LABRADORITE DROPS!!!!!!!! I've never had such things before. I dream of them often. So, in my excited frenzy, I spent the rest of my vacation money. I mean, come on, what's a girl to do when confronted with that? Needless to say, I did not make it too the beach. Instead, I stayed home, pet all my new shiny, and began preparing for my new life as a jewelry maker. I am quite pleased actually. I used my time to... - Build a new website (how's it look?) -Got all caught up on some pieces I made a while back but never listed, like my ancient greek glass earrings... - Made, and listed, a few new pieces, like these little tourmaline babies... - Worked on reorganizing my new studio and started my bead wall... - Finally got caught up on some custom orders I've been struggling with... -Aaaaand...reopened my gem shop on Etsy..... ...because, lets be honest, I have a few too many gemstones..
Phew. That's a lot of stuff!! What a wonderful, very busy, very shiny, vacation. Go me.
It's been so long since I've blogged anything, I'm unsure how to even start back up. I guess the best thing to do is just...jump in. So, here goes.
I've been pretty scarce lately on the shiny front. I have decided...this is not ok. So, I'm diving back in, full force, and shakin' things up. Way up. Like pulling out of my day job type of way up. In 2 weeks, I'm turning the tables, and making my day job my hobby, and my shinies my day job. Mostly anyway. I cut my hours to part time to free up more days for shiny making. The end goal is to make shiny full time, and open a brick and mortar jewelry and bead store. It's going to be so great. So so great! I am so darn excited I can hardly stand it. To kick off my new work plan, I'm taking a long, 2 week vacation, starting tomorrow. YAY! During that time, I have much to do. I've got several new pieces ready to list (hopefully this weekend), then I get to go meet with my old bead lady who will be coming back from market on Monday with a big ol' pile of shiny new gemstones of awesomeness for me, and then Tuesday...it's my birthday. Happy Birthday to meeeeeee!:D After that, I'm hoping for a vacation of jewelry making. Maybe with some fall photography trips intermingled throughout. That would sure be great. I thought a good way to celebrate all of this would be to have a shiny giveaway. Being September, I thought a sapphire tree would be a good choice. Sterling silver, sapphire and aquamarine tree, to be exact. :)
Want it? :D :D Of course you do!!
Let's play giveaway!! :D There is just a couple things to do to enter, the more points you rack up, the better chance of winning.
That's all there is too it! Easy peasy.
Ready, set, let's play! |
AuthorHello, and welcome. My name is Freia Inguz and I'm addicted to shiny things. Archives
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