But Alas, Plans Change...

Last night, I had plans to get price tags on all of my jewelry, but alas, plans change. My price tag labels were not up to par, so I was going to get some printed. Guess what??? My printer was out of ink and I forgot to buy spare ink cartridges when I went to the big city last time.
I used some of my old tags, got a few prices on and then the phone rang. It was Kirt. He asked if I had already picked up the boys and if we would like to go out to dinner. I, of course, said "yes!" Who in their right mind turns down an opportunity to eat out with the fam and not have to cook? I hurriedly made plans to use a different printer to print some price labels off after we got done eating. I would drive back to town when we got home and just print them off. Perfect!
Kirt got home and picked up me and the boys and we drove to Hansel & Gretels to eat pizza and french fries and a few yummies. It was nice. The boys were behaving well and all was good. Soon the conversation turned to GOLD RUSH, a show that we have been watching faithfully on NetFlix, aired by the  Discovery Channel. This is a show that we are addicted to, as a family, that we watch on a regular basis. We only have two more episodes to watch of season 1! The decision was made that when we got home, we would tune in to the last two episodes of this truly addictive show. But, I had made plans to get my price labels done and get prices on all of my jewelry, but alas, plans change.
We drove home and turned on the TV. We tuned into Gold Rush and watched the last two episodes...and I did not get price tags on my jewelry. I have a show tomorrow. I am leaving at noon today from work to go and set up for this show. I printed off price tags this morning and I hope to take a little time at noon to get things priced before I leave to go set up. Set up is from noon until 6:00 tonight, so I think I have plenty of time. I really hate it when I procrastinate! Oh well, it always makes life more interesting.
So, I will be at the craft show tomorrow in Cody at the Cody Auditorium from 8:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. and I hope to have all of my items priced. I hope to see you there and if something is not priced, you truly know the reason why.
So here I am at the end of my blog post and I have a great Daily Wire Transfer for you today. Since it seems like I am really enjoying photography lately, I have decided to stay with this theme for today's event as well. It is another great photography blog and you can escape there now. Just go here- THE DAILY WIRE TRANSFER and have a beautiful, snowy, blessed day!

Crazy Lace Agate

Last night I wrapped a beautiful crazy lace agate in antiqued sterling silver. I love the way it turned out! I love to combine techniques and see where the elements of the design take me. Here is where they took me last night...

 I love the greys and whites in the stone, but I especially love the yellow in the very bottom left hand corner. This stone deserved to be wrapped in lavish style. I can only hope that I did it justice.
Next weekend, November 19th, I will be in Cody, WY at the Cody Auditorium. The Crisis Intervention Center is putting on a craft show and I will be there with all of my jewelry for sale. I hope that you can come. I would love to see you there.
Tonight is a short but sweet blog post, as I have some things to get done around the house. I wanted to come in and at least show you the piece that I did last night, and to give you this...amazing art in photographs. Here is the DAILY WIRE TRANSFER. I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did! The photos are absolutely AMAZING! The colors are vivid and bright and the architecture is simply breathtaking. Enjoy!!

Busy, Busy, Busy...

I have to tell you, taking pictures is an incredible feat if you want to get them right. I worked with my light box all weekend and took pictures for 2 days solid, well until it got too dark anyway. I got up early and fed my passion for hours. I quite like the results. I took pictures of almost all of my jewelry. The light coming through the windows was almost perfect. I took pictures of my rings, pendants, necklaces, and bracelets. I have a couple of boxes of rings to photograph still and the bookmarks and key chains along with the earrings. There are a couple necklaces that I want to do over, but for the most part, Picture taking is almost done until I make something new. I just have to get pictures of the new stuff right away so that I don't have to do this sort of thing again. It is very time consuming.
Would you like to see some of the pictures I took? I have many to show you. Here are my rings, both simple and my CZ prong rings. I love the way the color shows up in the natural light.

The way that the pendants look is simply pleasing to the eye.

 I got a couple shots of my sets...

And the necklaces themselves never looked better.

The natural light brings out the true beauty in all of my designs. The colors in the bracelets are rich and supple.

Yes, I believe that natural light is the key ingredient. The light box is wonderful at capturing the light needed to take great photos. It was easy to build and I can use my displays with ease. I found the instructions to build my own light box HERE. If you need to take great pictures and don't want to spend a lot of money, I suggest the light box. I think my photos speak for themselves.
I am sorry I didn't get in here to get a post written yesterday, but as you can see, I was quite busy taking great photos. I want to share with you the DAILY WIRE TRANSFER today. I think it is pretty cool. Some people just have incredible imaginations, as this woman, with her vision of a Dandelion Ceiling. Take a look at today's DAILY WIRE TRANSFER and have a wonderful day!

The Daily Wire Transfer

I thought about something today that really appeals to my senses. I really want to make my blog fun and exciting. I thought of ways in which I could do this and I came up with the idea of The Daily Wire Transfer. I want to post things of interest here so that you all can see them and read about them. I want to post new postings about my jewelry, of course, but I want to do more than that. I want to post things of interest, in all forms of art. I want to celebrate artists in general as well as tell you about the cool things I am working on.
I am an artist through and through. I believe in the arts and therefore, I believe in supporting other artists. There are so many forms of art in the world, and there are so many different ways of expressing it. I believe that art should be celebrated and this is what has inspired me to post The Daily Wire Transfer.
I want to explain what The Daily Wire Transfer is. I have decided that I will post the latest things I am working on, but at the end of my posts, I will give you The Daily Wire Transfer link to click on. This will take you to another blog, or website that I find interesting in some form or another. I chose the name The Daily Wire Transfer because I am a wire artist. I think that giving you The Daily Wire Transfer is only appropriate as you will be taken from my blog, that discusses wire and wire jewelry, to another blog that discusses other things of interest. They may be about wire, or they may be about photography, or they may be about something else, but my guarantee is that you will want to click. They will be interesting and refreshing and this is my promise to you.
So, this is the first day and since I have been busy with marketing and I did not make anything new last night, I give you this instead~ the very first DAILY WIRE TRANSFER!
I hope that you enjoy what you see and that you come back tomorrow to see where I send you next. Don't worry, I will keep you informed of what I am doing and where I am going and the challenges that I may face in day to day life as a jewelry artist, but I want to give you more than just that, so I am going to implement The Daily Wire Transfer...  so enjoy!

A Little Celtic Necklace

It worked! The idea in my head came out in wire and stones. I, once again, was able to take the idea out of my head and fashion it into a lovely piece of handcrafted art. Would you like to see it?
Here it is...

 Once again, I am quite pleased with the way the design came out. It worked out the way that I saw it and I think it turned out very pretty. What do you think?
I used sterling silver and made the base swirls and curls, I then wrapped the stone and added it to the base. I absolutely LOVE antiqued sterling silver. I love the way it looks and the fact that it is NOT shiny. It appeals to me in many ways.
After I finished the pendant, I decided to make the cord. I chose a brown hemp, as I thought that this would do a nice job complementing the stone. I wrapped sterling silver around the cord where I wanted the sterling silver beads to stop. I am happy!
I call this particular necklace A Little Celtic Necklace. I called it this to have a little play on words. It is a smaller pendent, therefore the word little came to mind. It also holds a hint of Celtic design therefore, I could use Little Celtic Necklace with two meanings. The green in the stone reminds me of the colors of Scotland as well, so you can take the name to mean whatever you want it to in terms of the design. This was my intention, and I think that I succeeded.
My mind is at peace for now. In fact, I worked on marketing more tonight than anything else. The Fighter may just be ready to give me a break...? I really don't plan on counting on this, because it tends to show up when I least expect it. (I really hope to be able to sleep tonight!)
It is finally Friday tomorrow, my favorite day of the week. I have plans to take pictures of jewelry all weekend with some natural light and get some more things posted in my Etsy shop. I am not really pleased with the pictures of the rings I have posted in my shop now, so I really want to work on fine tuning my pictures so that I can make my shop stand out. I will keep you posted...

The Amethyst Lace Agate Necklace

After creating the Snow and Ice Necklace the other night, I decided that I was not finished with swirling wire for the evening. I wanted to keep going, I wanted to do more. I just couldn't throw in the towel yet. I needed to do at least one more necklace to feed the appetite.
I chose a stone that I purchased from Here. I like to use cabs and stones from other artists that are trying to make a living doing what I do, creating trinkets from their passion. Laura is a person that has a passion to create lovely cabochons. I love to buy from her because she truly is a passionate person and she really cares about her customers as well as the items she creates. I purchased a lovely piece of Amethyst Lace Agate from her and I had to do something with it.
Keeping with the rolling, scrolling wire designs that I have come to love, I made the base form. I then took the Amethyst Lace Agate and wrapped it. I combined the two~ the wire base and the wrapped stone~ and I created this...

I love the markings in the stone. Laura does amazing work doesn't she? You can tell that she has a passion for the stones she creates. They are absolutely beautiful!
So, here is the second necklace created on the same night as Snow and Ice. I just can't stop with the swirls and curls.
I have another idea that appeared to me today as I was getting ready for work. I can't wait to design it! I will use a couple of different techniques that I have learned and I hope it turns out as well as the idea in my head. If you are an artist, are you consumed at every moment with ideas and plagued with a Fighter such as I am? I often wonder what other creators have as a driving force in them. Maybe I will have to do an interview with one someday to find out. That would make for an interesting blog post, wouldn't you say?
I hope to begin working on the new design idea tonight. It is hard at times not to just go home at lunch time and begin a project. I know if I did that though, I would be late coming back to work, if I made it back at all. No, it is better to restrain myself and the Fighter and work on these things in the evenings after I get home.
I know what I will be doing tonight, and thinking about every second until I get started. Stay tuned and see if I can create what I so vividly see in my mind.

Snow and Ice Necklace

OK, so I am watching TV in my chair 3 nights ago and I fall asleep. I wake up at about 11:30 P.M. and decide to go in and actually go to bed in my bed. I am tired and I feel as if I am ready to just collapse into a deep sleep. I lay down and close my eyes and who should appear?... The Fighter! Man, I wish that I could control the monster inside my head!
I began to think of ways to do a wire wrapped necklace with one of the druzy agates I have acquired in my travels picking up lovely items to create with. I was consumed with ideas of swirls of wire and the agate hanging like a pendulum from the bottom of the design.
I lay awake until about 3:00 A.M., but I had my idea! It was clear to me and I had to really concentrate so that I did not give in to the Fighter and go to the work table and begin creating at that very moment.
I lay awake trying to clear my head and think of NOTHING! Have you ever tried to do this? It is quite difficult. As I try to think of NOTHING, SOMETHING always takes the place of NOTHING! In my case, that SOMETHING is usually what I am trying to forget about while I try so hard to think of NOTHING. The necklace was consuming every aspect of my senses.
I finally staved off the urge to create and fell asleep. I woke up before I actually had to the next morning and guess what, there was the image of the necklace bright and shining in my minds eye. I got up and got ready for work early (5:30 A.M.).
I went to work and worked all day. I did not draw out the necklace because I believe that part of me wants to RULE the Fighter and show it that I am the one in charge. I would decide when I was going to do this design that was nagging at every nerve ending. I would choose...I would decide! I was able to stave off the Fighter for a total of 2 days~and then I gave in.
Last night I decided to bring the design in my head to fruition. The agate in the idea in my head was one of the black agates, but I asked my Cache Man to pick the one that would make up the focal piece of my necklace. He picked one of the blue ones instead. I will show the Fighter~one way or another!
I chose to go with what Cache had decided, instead of giving in to the Fighter and working with the black one, I picked up the blue one. The design elements would be the same, so I knew I could pull it off. I sat down and began to bend the wire. I knew where I wanted the wire to go and I knew what I wanted the piece to look like. It did exactly what I wanted it to do. Do you want to see what the Fighter possessed me to create?
Well here it is...

This picture was taken without flash.
This is what it looks like with flash...

This piece has been dubbed Snow and Ice. I chose the name because of the colors and the crystals in the agate. The ice blue crystal accents helped with the idea behind the name as well. I coiled the neck wires, as this has become something that I really love to do. Needless to say, the Fighter has proved right once again.
I never tire of the fascination of how I can create these items with just my two hands and a few tools. To see something so vivid in my mind and work it out into wire and beads or stones simply amazes me. I can't draw drawings that I see, I can't create animals or plants I see out of elements such as clay. So why is it I  can create what I see exactly as I see it as long as it is with wire and beads, rocks and crystals? This simply baffles me. I see other things just as clearly, such as an elephant or bird, but when I go to create these things out of clay or draw them, it simply turns out crappy! I guess I was just intended to do things with wire and beads, rocks and crystals...to make pieces of jewelry instead of fascinating drawings or clay masterpieces. I am just glad that God gave me this gift and that the Fighter just keeps egging me on...