Creativity...Or the Lack, Thereof

I sat and tried to make a pair of earrings for forEVER tonight and was completely unhappy with every single thing I came up with. :( I literally spent 2 hours on the project, and I just could not do it. I need to make a thank you gift for someone, and it needs to be in certain colors, and the bead I was going to use as the center bead won't work, so I tried another, but that one is the wrong color, so I settled on Czech glass with a pearl and 4mm Swarovski crystal, but instead of looking roughly teardrop shape, it just looks kitschy (there's also a teardrop shaped "loop" of 4mm swarovski framing it), and I don't think that's the woman's style, but I don't really know, because I don't know her all that well, other than her favorite color is pink and she's a big fan of earrings. :( I finally gave up in disgust and watched Calamity Jane, which is like one of my favorite movies, ever, and was on one of the western movie channels. Plus, the outfit Doris Day wears when she sings Secret Love? Awesome! :) I wish I could play that part, too, because all her songs are fun or pretty, and it's a plum role, to boot. It would be tons of fun. :) Another of my favorite movies is Pillow Talk, and that was on a few days ago. I discovered it when I woke up and spent the next hour and a half in heaven. :) I wish Ms. Day hadn't stopped singing and making movies, but retire she did, and founded the Doris Day Animal Foundation, which seeks to educate people about proper pet care and pet health, spay/neutering, and to prevent animal abuse and stop animal testing, which I have been adamantly opposed to for over 20 years. Just doesn't make any sense to me to test mascara on a rabbit, for crying out loud. Rabbits don't wear mascara; people do. I'm working on a line of charity jewelry, and I'm thinking I may add the DDAF to the list. Buy a bracelet, support a bunny...who doesn't go for that? :)

At any rate, it's now after 5am, so I am off to bed.

Bis spater, gator!

Jenie

A Brief History of Copper (The 30 Second Version)

How about some information on copper, since someone I know is making cute pendants out of copper wire, and I didn't do much of anything today, anyway, having had the Rainy Day Blahs...closely related, as you know, to the Monday Blahs. :)

The oldest known metal, copper is believed to be the first metal used by man, approximately 10,000 years ago, and was associated with the Greek goddess Aphrodite and her Roman counterpart, Venus. Copper pendants have been found dating back to 8700 BC, and both Incan and Aztec warriors wore copper into battle, as they believed it increased their agility and skill. In addition to its use in jewelry, Egyptian craftsmen used copper to fashion mirrors for the dead, and the metal has also been used to make crowns, coins, tools, and household items such as candlesticks. It is used in ceramic glazes and to color glass, and even serves as a roofing medium, prized for its green and blue tarnish. (I can vouch for how pretty a roof it makes, having spent an entire month in France, summer of 2003!) Copper mixed with zinc makes brass, and by 2000 BC, both the Chinese and Egyptians had discovered mixing copper with tin produced bronze, leading the Chinese to have mastered the art of bronze sculpture by 1200 BC. Indigenous peoples in America began mining copper in the Great Lakes region 7,000 years ago, and the Michigan peninsula is one of the richest sources of natural copper ore in the world today. Copper is softer than silver, having a rating of 2.5-3 on the Mohs scale. If kept from moisture and water, the metal holds its finish well and is slow to tarnish. It is often attributed healing properties, is inexpensive and plentiful, can be purchased in a wide variety of coated colors, and develops a beautiful green to blue patina as it ages, all of which makes copper a popular metal among many handcrafted jewelry makers.

Ciao,
Jenie

Sometimes a Little Rain is a Little Too Much

It has been raining cats and kittens here for the last week, and the hillside down the street finally gave way last night. Mud and iceplant were everywhere, and where they used to be, there is a huge, gaping maw in what used to be a hillside. The thing that kills me about that - and here is where the landscape designer in me must come out - is that iceplant is specifically contraindicated on steep slopes, precisely because when it becomes waterlogged - as it will inevitably do in a heavy rain - it becomes extremely heavy, which adds to the weight the waterlogged soil is already carrying, thus creating a surplus and causing a slide. Every landscape designer or landscape architect who puts the stuff in should know this. It is his/her responsibility to know it, and in fact, the landscaping bible tells you specifically not to plant iceplant on steep slopes.

And yet, the street up to my house is a vast sheet of mud, dotted with clumps of iceplant, because someone couldn't be bothered to do a proper job. I hate that, and I hate people who are like that. It's just a wonder the entire slope didn't give way, instead of just a very large section of it, because if the whole thing had gone, the people at the bottom of it would have been in sad shape. At 1am in driving rain.

But anyway. I have been on a project that required nights all week, so I have had no time for posting or jewelry making or even inventory. And I am dreading tax time. Aside from that, it's all good, as my coworker Brandy used to say. It kind of annoyed me at the time, but I suppose she was actually right. :)

I have some ideas for some necklaces and earrings, though, so when I can, I will be posting images of those. For now, though, it's off to bed, for 'tis 4am, and I have to get back to a day schedule this week.

Buenos noches,
Jenie

Monday Blahs

I didn't do much of anything today. Still feeling a little under the weather. Cleaned my grandmother's jewelry, which was a nice activity, as I miss her, and cleaning all her old butterfly pins made me feel a little closer to her (she passed away in 2003). It's amazing what cleaning several years of dust off of a piece of jewelry will do for it. :) She had these Monet goldtone pins, one butterfly and one bumblebee, both with white enamel around the edges of their wings and on their bodies. I could not believe the HUGE difference cleaning made. They're practically like new. :) She also had three necklaces I'm going to break apart to use the beads for other projects. Two of them date back to the 70's, and one to probably the 60's. (There's a third, but I love it so much, there's no *way* I'm breaking it apart.) I wish I could find out more about that one. It's of really neat pink glass beads in two strands, strung on delicate chain, and the ornate pieces at the ends of the strands are silvertone and say Tobe' on the backside. If anyone knows anything about it, I'd love to know. If it's a collector's item, I probably shouldn't break it apart. I doubt it is, since I can't find it on the web, but you never know. The others are of amethyst-colored glass beads I just like and will use for other things, since they're vintage. Bookmarks, maybe. I don't know yet. And I found my great grandmother's watch. That's pretty neat, because my mom had the copper bracelets GG used to wear that I played with when she held me in her lap, and some loser punk kids broke into Mom's house in Arlington and stole them. So this watch was in with all the pins and stuff, and I looked on the back, under the grossgrain ribbon band, to see if there was any kind of markings, and it bears GG's monogram. So that's really neat. :) I'd love to have it cleaned and see if it still works. She must have really loved copper, because the body of the watch is copper, too. :)

That's about it. Have a good day!

Jenie

New Earrings & the Friday Finds...a Day Late

My new buddy KJ has a family member in critical condition. If you could send your prayers/energies/well wishes/good vibes, I'm sure she'd appreciate it.

So, I finally got around to placing the new earrings on Dragonfly, and it seems I've completely blown my sleep cycle, in the process. I'm naturally a night person, but I'd managed to get myself back onto a day schedule - mainly by pulling an allnighter that required going without sleep for about 35 hours - where I was in bed by 1 or 2am and up anywhere between 9 and 11, though truth be told, it was a lot closer to 11 much of the time. Then I had to go and get engrossed in cleaning images, and the next thing I know, I'm up till 5am two nights in a row. ::sigh:: You people who normally fall asleep by 11pm every night have no idea how lucky you are. My entire life, it seems I've struggled with being on a schedule utterly at the reverse of everyone else's. Even as a small child, I railed against bedtime and would stay up reading under the covers for HOURS after Mom forced me to bed. And yet, the woman never figured out how it was I was exhausted every morning at 6am...go figure!

At any rate, I have photos to post now, so here they are.



These are called Catalina, because the peridot and amazonite make me think of that island on a summer day. :) Cheesy? Perhaps; who cares?! The stones free float on 22-gauge sterling silver wire. I am amazed how sinuous these are, actually. I normally wear really tiny earrings, but these are really graceful, light and fun. I am actually keeping a pair of these for myself; they made this tiny-earring-tomboy feel all sexy and girly. :)



These are made out of a cool stone called muscovite, which used to be used in the Muscovy province of Old Russia as window glass. The base is clear, but it's filled with specs of mica and impurities which give it color from silver to green to shades of browns. These are a really rich, red-brown or maroon color. I haven't seen a lot of other jewelry out of this stone, and it's kind of a mystery to me why not. It's kinda cool. :) I named these Svetlana to give a nod to the Russian province...plus, they look to me like the kind of earrings a girl named Svetlana would wear. :) The wire is 22-gauge sterling silver, and they hang from french wires. The dangle is about 2 - 1/4" long. These are the Svetlana earrings with pink jade and really gorgeous rose-pink teardrop-shaped pearls:



These hot little baubles are named for my friend Hope, who loves long, dangly earrings and got me started on this design in the first place. I usually make 'em with a round Swarovski crystal at the bottom and can't keep them in stock long enough to even get a picture of them; I can not believe how insanely popular this linear earring design is, these days. Pretty as the Swarovski is, I think I like 'em even better with briolettes at the bottom, and these are made with briolettes of amazonite, one of my favorite stones. I can also do them right now in rose quartz or pink jade briolette; muscovite, quartz, or pink jade teardrop; new jade marquis; or the aforementioned Swarovski, in round, teardrop, or cube. The chain is sterling silver, with little flat-oval links that really shine. The cool thing about this particular chain is that there's a gold-filled version of it that doesn't cost too much more, so I can do these in gold-fill for about the same price, and that is awesome.



And finally, I took pictures of these labradorite and Swarovski chandelier earrings a long time ago, but somehow never got around to posting them to the site. Maybe because the photo doesn't do them justice. I just could *not* capture the color of the labradorite, which is a marvelous olive color, with brilliant flashes of beautiful aqua light. It's paired with Swarovski aquamarine crystal with satin finish and little glass seed beads in a cool ocean blue. I'm interested in doing these in other colors and beads, because I think changing the colors would really change the feel of it. This particular pair has a very Earth Mother feel to it, so they are named Gaia, for the ancient Greek goddess and word for earth.



And now, a day late and most probably a dollar short, the Friday Finds. :)

This cool silk "karate wrap" by Elaine Perlov. This is the kind of thing I picture myself wearing in my fantasy life - you know, that brilliant life where I weigh like 25 pounds less and hang out a little black dress or oh-so-svelte black outfit with other so hip-it-hurts fashionistas, sipping tea in the hottest tea room in Paris or London or New York, and our table is the one everyone wants to stop at just so other people will notice them and think they know us. As that will never happen - and probably wouldn't be that much fun anyway (cough, cough) - I will just look at it and pine. A little.

Oh, the irony of a $78 acrylic knit scarf bearing the words "I (heart) my thrift store".

The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp; Paul Newman's camp for kids with cancer and other life-threatening diseases. They have a wish list page, where if you're the kind who prefers to send items than money, you can send stuff like construction or drawing paper, fabric paint, and scissors.

Felix Doolittle's cards are a breath of fresh air and nostalgia from the past. I love them, despite their higher-than-average pricetag; boxed cards run anywhere from $2.60 - $4.50 a card, depending on the card style and design.

Sunshine Scarves are not inexpensive, but 50% of the proceeds from sales benefit kids who are in need of prosthetics. If you're going to go all out dropping money on a fun new scarf you can twirl at all your fashionista-friends, why not make it one of these? They're hip *and* cool. :)

Have a good weekend!

Jenie


currently listening to: a mix tape, as always
song currently playing: vonda shepherd - i know him by heart; from the lp "heart & soul: new songs from ally mcbeal"

Hills are put here to torment us.

I just finished editing a boatload of images, and it's 3:41am. I was going to post one or two here, but now it has to wait until tomorrow, because frankly, I'm too tired to enter them into my shop, and I should probably do that first. So you must wait, fellow babies. Sorry!

I rode my bike for the first time today, which is cause for the title of this entry. See, I have not been on a bike in literally 20 years. This bike I actually won 10 years ago, for selling the most wine and cheese samplers at a restuarant I worked in at the time. I was head and shoulders above the next closest person. In fact, I sold like 50 more than the next 3 closest people, combined. I'm actually kinda proud of that, because I'm not a salesman. But I really liked those wine and cheese samplers, so when people sat at my table and I greeted them, it was easy to motivate them to buy it. All I had to do was tell them about it, I liked the darn thing so much. The cheeses were really complimentary to the wines, so even the whites were good, and I do not normally like white wine. So I sold over 220 of the things in a one month period and got a new mountain bike outta the deal...which promptly sat in a box for almost 10 years, but the point is, I won the bike. :) Which moral would be that you should really believe in a thing if you want people to try it, because if you do, it'll show, and if you don't, well, that will show too.

But I digress. My wish for Christmas - the only thing I asked for - was a new bikeseat and air in my tires so I could ride my bike and get in shape. That wish finally came to full fruition today, so I went for a nice exercise ride. Which I should have known better than to do, because a) I didn't actually feel very good today, and b) we live smackdab in the middle of very hilly terrain. But I was all psyched to have the bike and the nice shiny new bike helmet my mom gave me for my birthday at the beginning of December, so I cruised merrily off.

And ended up pushing the bike the whole last half of the way home, with my heart threatening to explode out of my chest like something from Alien, a hideous burn in my throat, a metallic taste in my mouth, and feeling like I was really going to throw up and pass out, not necessarily in that order. You know those hills we live in the middle of, here in Woodland HILLS? Yeah, they're steep. Like, Tour de France steep. Not all of 'em, to be sure, but the two that did me in, yeah, and especially the one I barely managed to push the bike up. I do not know how Lance Armstrong does it. Seriously. That man is not human, because Hoh-lee Pyrenees. That's all I'm sayin'.

But I have a temp of about 100 now, so I should really hit the hay. It's cold in here, and I'm tired. See ya tomorrow with the Friday Finds and pictures. :)

Ciao,
Jenie

currently listening to: Train - Drops of Jupiter

I did not clean today. I organized nothing. I made earrings! And that is a study in wirewrap frustration, but not right now, because it is way past my bedtime. More tomorrow...toodles.

(gawd; did i just say toodles? shoot me. shoot me now.)

Night,
Jenie

Bead Boxes

I am organizationally-challenged. I admit it. But even I had to acknowledge that my bead hoarding was getting outta control and needed to be corralled. As in stowing my beads neatly out of the way, not as in stopping buying them, of course! So it was that I went to Michaels and bought a bunch of bead boxes, and today, I spent much of the day putting things away. And a good thing, too, because I have three whole boxes just of pendants and drops! I have these rolling towers of drawers, but they were really getting full, and I didn't like them all that much, because the beads slid across the bottoms and knocked into each other every time I pulled a drawer open, and not only did that scratch some of the softer minerals, but it was beginning to be difficult to find things, what with all the mounds of beads and pendants piling up in each drawer. So now most of my beads are put away in nice little neat compartmental boxes, and tomorrow I can sort through and organize all my stringing supplies and findings. Maybe then I'll be so motivated, I'll clean off my desk. I kinda doubt it, but you never know. :)

Ciao,
Jenie