pippi's jewelry journey

And Life Keeps Cruising Along!

2011-09-26T13:33:00.000-06:00

Things seemed to go from busy to busier and busier this Summer, and many things (like writing in my blog) fell off the list as I tried to pack in as much as possible during my Summer break. The biggest shift was moving to a new house. I spent much of June packing up our things at our old house, and riding my bike over to the new place several times a week to get a garden planted. I then most of July unpacking and settling in to our new place.

This year ended up being a fantastically productive year for the local fruit trees, so I was canning like crazy to take advantage of the Summer's bounty, and have a pantry full of delicious jams and jellies to show for all my work.

I still managed to make some lovely jewelry pieces in my new studio, but didn't spend as much time working as I normally do.

School started in August, and my class load has kept me hopping! I am taking 16 credits, with two studio classes, so any free time I get goes to studying or working on class projects. Even though I am not making much jewelry, I am reveling in creating in my painting and ceramics classes! I have painted on and off for years, so this is an on time for me, and I have wanted to learn to make pottery since I was a little girl, and I LOVE it!

My next break from classes won't be until Thanksgiving, so I don't know how often I will post here, but I will try to share the fun things I am making with you, even if it is just a few words and some pictures. Hope you all are well and enjoying this life!all the best,~Pippi

1000 Facebook Fans!

2011-06-13T16:12:00.009-06:00

It has been amazing to me to watch the number of fans grow on my Facebook jewelry page! Here I am again at a milestone - over 1000 fans! It makes me happy that so many people get to see my art and enjoy it. It brings me so much happiness to create my pieces, and the internet has allowed me to share my work with people all over the world!

All of your support means so much to me, so I decided to celebrate this milestone with a give-away. I made this paisley pendant for just this purpose,

and have posted an album on my Pippi Jewelry page on FB. Just leave a comment on the album to be entered in the drawing. That's it! I will be drawing the winning name next Sunday.

Thanks again! You all rock my world!
all the best,
~Pippi

Swimming Along - A Dolphin's Tale

2011-06-06T14:08:00.013-06:00

I spent about a week working on my latest piece. The design was inspired by a comment someone left on a picture I posted about my recent bird necklaces. I made the first bird using yellow tourmalines and orange fire opals to match the colors of the western tanagers that migrate through my area each Spring.

The second bird I made I colored after the western bluebird, a favorite of mine! I liked this one so much that I decided to keep it for myself.

This was the one that reminded someone of a dolphin, and I thought with a little tweaking I could make one. I did some sketches, but didn't actually start making it until the day the reporter from The Bannock Alternative paper came to my house to interview me for a feature in this month's issue.

I spent the next several days wrapping gemstones onto the sterling frame to color the dolphin.

I used tiny faceted iolite and aquamarine beads, along with some of the tiny faceted Thai silver beads from my stash, and a flashing blue labradorite briolette for the dolphin's nose.

The gemstone beads are only about 2mm in size, so it took quite a few beads, and numerous feet of hair-thin fine silver wire to fill the frame.

Then I constructed a gemstone chain for it to hang from. I used larger faceted aquamarines, with iolite, keishi pearls and labratorites for flourishes on the chain, and added a length of cable chain on the end so the length would be adjustable.

This necklace is one of the pieces I am making for the upcoming Ketchum Arts Festival. I will not be adding any new pieces to my Etsy shop until after the festival which runs July 8-10, however, you can take advantage of the Moving Sale going on in my shop the whole month of June, as I prepare to move to a new place. It is an especially exciting move as I will finally have a studio of my own! I will begin teaching classes in my new studio starting mid-July. I will post pictures and a class schedule in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

And now back to packing. See you all again soon!
all the best,
~Pippi

Catching Up... (Again)

2011-06-03T12:33:00.013-06:00

Well, here it is, almost 3 months since I last posted. Life has been full of ups and downs, and a few things fell off along the way. After a brief 6 month struggle, my sister succumbed to the cancer, and is now watching over those of us left behind. I miss her more than I can say! I still had the rest of the school semester to get through after her death, so I just packed up my sorrow for another day, and forged through projects and finals. My outlet for my feelings for my sister came through in some of the most beautiful jewelry, and in making beautiful pies decorated with the cookie cutters she sent me. I think of Mary every time I make something, and try to make it extra beautiful, as if trying to make up to the world for losing such a bright, shining soul.

I also bought a floor loom, which prompted me to take the Summer off from school, so I could spend time working on my own art, instead of projects for school. I started an ambitious tapestry project which should keep me busy (as if I had a problem doing that!) through the Summer.

And a busy Summer I will have! We decided to look for a bigger house in a quieter neighborhood, and found the perfect place the first day we started looking. The house sits on 1/3 acre, with plenty of garden space,

and a separate studio in the back for my jewelry studio. I will be teaching classes in my studio starting in mid-July!

There is the quick recap. Now that I am back on track, I will post details of my recent projects.
See you again soon!
~Pippi

Pi Day 2011

2011-03-15T00:01:00.003-06:00

Happy Pi Day! Here is my contribution to Pi Day 2011. Lovingly made from scratch using organic ingredients, and decorated with crust cutouts made with cookie cutters from my oldest sister on the birthday of my older twin sisters. Happy birthday, Margie and Julie! Love you, Mary!

Pi Day Pie - Plenty of Pi to go around
14 March 2011

YOJ11 Week 9 - A ring and a flowery earring design...

2011-03-06T21:53:00.003-07:00

This week I finished a ring and started another one in my metals class, came up with two new earring designs, and made one of the designs already.

I am still perfecting my bezels in my metals class, so I have been making rings. This week's ring features a beautiful and unusual Australian boulder opal. I bought a number of boulder opal cabochons a few years ago, but have only used a few of them so far. This one is one of my favorites! The sparkling vein of opal looks like an aerial view of a river. I wanted the setting to accentuate but not overpower the stone. I sketched out several possibilities before settling on this design.

I melted bits of fine silver wire from my scrap container to make the balls on either side of the bezel, and I used a letter "v" stamp inverted to make the design around the edge. The band was cut from 18 gauge sterling sheet, and hammered for texture. I have not oxidized it yet, and am not sure if I will, or if I let it patina naturally. We shall see.

My other project this week started as the flash of an idea, which I sketched into my jewelry journal. I had an idea for a pair of hoops and a new paisley design, and a yummy new string of tourmalines with quite a few in gorgeous shades of dark blue, so I jumped in and started making the hoops. I tipped each spiraled petal with a blue tourmaline, with a green one between each petal.

The blue hoops turned out beautifully, and I loved the design even more in real life. I decided to try one with pink tourmalines instead of the blue, and took advantage of my work (and the perfect light for photography), by snapping pictures of the whole process while making them, so I can write a tutorial for the design.

I am just starting Week 10 today, so I will share the second pair of the lotus earrings and more in my next post.

Glad you stopped by! Thanks!
~Pippi

Alphabet Pie

2011-02-28T22:35:00.008-07:00

"The present is always improved with pie. The sweet breath of pie." ~Brad Severtson

I love making pie in the Winter! The heat from the oven warms the house, while the delicious smell wafts through every room. The only thing better is eating it when it is done. I make my own crust using a simple recipe, and I double it to make a top crust.

Over the years, my crusts have become more and more decorative. I started using my cookie cutters to make different designs for the tops of my pies.

I have collected quite a few cutter shapes over the years, and I was delighted to receive some from my sister in New York. She sent me a set of fancy leaf cutters and an alpha-numeric set! So now, in addition to pictures, my pies can have messages, too. It is great fun! It is like a hug from my sister every time I use them. :D

Pie is love!
~Pippi

Netted Bezel Earrings Series

2011-02-27T16:50:00.010-07:00

I was playing with my beads last week, and decided to try an idea I have been thinking about for a while. I still had a few of the beads from a gorgeous strand of undyed azurite ovals I bought at The Bead Shop in Hailey, Idaho when I was living there. I used a number of those beads to make into rings with netted bezels, and thought that netted bezel earrings would be a nice design, too.

The first pair I made I used the azurite beads and wrapped a fringe of sky blue kyanite briolettes along the bottom of each earring. They were gorgeous, and I couldn't give them up, so I decided to make a few more variations of the design (to justify to myself my keeping the first pair).

For pair number two, I used some azurite beads in the bezel, but this time, I wrapped shaded pink tourmaline briolettes along the bottoms, and tiny rose quartz beads around the edge of the bezel.

Pair number three was made with a luscious pair of pale green jade ovals, garnished with peridot. They made me think of key lime pie, and frosty summer drinks.

For the fourth pair, I set large faceted nuggets of deep purple amethyst in the netted silver bezels, then hung drops of shimmering moonstone briolettes which flashed the most beautiful blue!

After all of these, I still wanted to play more with this design, but I was using up my stash of briolettes. I chose to make the last pair a little smaller, and so I set denim blue squares of kyanite on point in the netted bezels, and hung a single moonstone briolette from the bottoms.

I am sure I will come back to this design again!
Thanks for stopping in!
~Pippi

The Posie Ring - A Wee Bit 'O Scotland

2011-02-27T16:21:00.008-07:00

After my rounding success with my mom's ring, I decided to go back to a ring I started last year, with which I fought and fought the bezel. I liked how the gallery wire set off the cabochon on the waterlily ring, and thought it would suit the pottery shard I was setting in this ring, too. I cut and soldered the wire for the bezel, and soldered it onto the ring. This time, it went so smoothly I could hardly believe it!

I bought this and several other sea pottery shards from an Etsy seller in Fife, Scotland, who rescues them from the strand, and sends them off to new homes. This pink flowered one was one of my favorites. I love that I am able to incorporate little bits of history into my pieces. This lovely little piece reminded me of the Robert Burns poem, The Posie.

This ring was plucked up quickly by a gentleman for 'his ain dear May', but I have more in the works. You will be seeing them here soon!

Cheers!
~Pippi

A Ring For My Mom

2011-02-21T19:01:00.008-07:00

When I last posted, I had just finished my fairy necklace, and had purchased custom cabochons from Donna Millard, one of my favorite glass artists, to make some new rings.

I made jewelry as gifts for my sisters at Christmas, but didn't know what to make for my mom, who doesn't wear much jewelry. I called her over the holidays and explained that I didn't know what to make for her, and she surprised me by saying that she loved the recent millifiori rings I had made, and would love to have me make a ring for her. Knowing this, when I had Donna make my cabochons, I had her use a particular murini of hers for some of the cabs. The murini is called water lily, and I chose it because of one of my favorite childhood memories.

My mother is a fantastic gardener, and she had several waterlily plants that she put out in the pond in the yard every year. when I was a child, I loved to look for the new buds popping up between the pads of round leaves on Summer mornings. I would run to my mom when I found one (or sometimes two or three) to tell her the news. Waterlilies always make me think of her, so I knew I would make her a waterlily ring.

I used a decorative gallery wire to set the cabochon, and stamped a design around the underside of the bezel platform. I stamped the hammered band with my initials, and backed the cabochon with blue mulberry paper to give the clear ground of the cabochon a watery color.

I just mailed the ring off to my mom on Friday, and didn't tell her it was coming, so it will be a surprise. I know she will love it!

cheers!
~Pippi

Copper Fairy Pendant Necklace

2011-01-30T16:36:00.009-07:00

I am taking intermediate metals this semester, and we have several projects to make for the class. Our first project is a raised copper bowl. There are quite a few people in the class, and 5-10 people all hammering in the smithing room at the same time is very loud, so I decided to work on the second project (a bezel setting) during class and go into the studio outside of class time to work on my bowl. I taught myself how to do bezel setting last semester, but more practice is always good. I decided to go with the weekly theme for the Year Of Jewelry Project 2011 for Week 3 (the week I was in when I started my pendant), which was Mixed Media. As I was going through my boxes, looking for things to incorporate into my piece, I found an old, etched glass fairy stone I bought years ago at the Eugene Saturday Market. I used to take my daughters to the market when they were little, and they loved to buy these glass stones (and of course, I had to buy one for myself!).

I used copper for the setting, to set off the purply tones in the glass. I hand stamped the design on the metal frame, using different shaped stamps. Each mark was made one at a time. I also stamped the word "believe" in the bezel. (I do believe in fairies! I do! I do!)

After I finished setting the stone, I decided to make an eclectic chain using a mixture of colorful beads I have collected over the years. The beads include: faceted amethyst nuggets, turquoise, fluorite, amazonite, azruite, a carved agate barrel bead, lampwork beads by Donna Millard and Tanner Studios, AB Swarovski, faceted clear quartz, labradorite, green quartz with pyrite inclusions, a bone skull bead, an antique Tibetan coin, and vintage cobalt blue glass beads. The chain is 25 inches in length, so I can put it on over my head, and the pendant hangs in the middle of my chest (so I can easily admire it while I wear it).

My next bezel project will be a ring for my mom using a custom cab by Donna Millard set in fancy gallery wire, and a small, tube-set sapphire. Of course, I will post pictures when it is done.

all the best!
~Pippi

2011 Year Of The Seahorse

2011-01-11T20:48:00.014-07:00

Happy new year, everyone!

I started the year by joining in the Year Of Jewelry Project 2011. I have followed the YOJP for a number of years now, and this year I decided to take part myself. I started the year off by making a number of my signature seahorses using a string of gorgeous tourmaline beads I found toward the end of last year. I picked the darkest greens and blues from the string to make a special gift for my sister, who is dying from an inoperable brain tumor. My first thoughts of seahorse jewelry were inspired years ago by the "Live Seahorse Family!" she bought through the mail from an ad in a comic book. Unfortunately, all but two of the seahorses were dead on arrival, and the last two joined them soon after. My sister dried those last two, and wanted to figure out a way to make them into earrings. Oh! How I wanted them! They were so delicate and lovely! Flash forward to just a few years ago. I had made a pair of wire wrapped earrings with a spiral on the bottom, and five people in one day told me they reminded them of seahorses, and I thought, "SEAHORSES!" So after all this time, and all the seahorses I have made, I decided to make a very special one as a Christmas gift for my sister, and the daughter she will leave behind.

After the holidays were over, and things settled back into a normal routine, I thought again of making more seahorses. there were still a good amount of the tourmalines, so I went to it!

New Year's Day saw the birth of a lovely pink tourmaline seahorse with a beautiful keishi pearl dorsal fin. I loved how the pearly soft colors looked together, and carried more of the pearls into the wire wrapped gemstone necklace chain.

The next day, another green tourmaline seahorse came forth. It was of paler greens, and I used a prasiolite (green amethyst) briolette for its dorsal fin. A friend who has been wanting one of my seahorses, but was waiting for the right one, saw it and immediately claimed it for her own.

The third seahorse, made on 3 January, was made in shades of yellow, and went to another friend who has been wanting one of my seahorses.

By this time, my supply of tourmaline beads had dwindled, but I thought I could squeak out one more small one. The stones that were left were in shades of pale pink, with a few watermelon tourmalines. As I was looking for just the right briolette for its fin (I settled on a beautiful, faceted watermelon tourmaline briolette), I found part of a string of tiny, pale pink rose quartz beads, and I decided that they would look fantastic with the tourmalines, so I used them instead of my usual silver beads to fill the body of the pendant. The results were delightful!

It always makes me happy to make these little creatures, and I feel a few more waiting to be born. I ordered more gemstones with seahorses in mind, so you will be seeing another flock of them soon! As always, I donate a portion of every seahorse sale to organizations working to protect and conserve these magical creatures. Jewelry with a conscience! I love that! I will post them here and on the YOJP blog. Thanks for popping by!

Wishing you all a wonderful 2011!
~Pippi

Project Seahorse: http://seahorse.fisheries.ubc.ca/index.html

The Seahorse Trust: http://www.theseahorsetrust.co.uk/

Weaving Like A Mad Woman

2010-11-30T18:34:00.012-07:00

All semester I have been super busy with homework for my art classes, so you would think that having finished up my one weaving project due right after the Thanksgiving break, I would just relax and enjoy the time off. Instead, I thought, "I could use this time to make two rag rugs on my loom before I start my final project for weaving class!" (My friends say I am an over-achiever, but I just want to try to make as many of the ideas I have in my head as I can while I am alive.) Of course, I had to take into account the blizzard on Tuesday, and being out of town from Wednesday through Friday. "I can still do this", I thought.

On Sunday night I finished up the last bit of my tapestry, and sat down with a scrap of paper to figure out the warp for two 30" x 48" rugs. I wanted to use the same warp for both, but different weft materials to see how the difference in fabric patterns affected the striped warp. Also, it takes a while to dress the loom, so I got two pieces for one warping job.

I went in to work on my project on Monday, and got all of the warp measured and tied on to the front of the loom, and the warps threaded through the reed and about half of it threaded through the heddles before I got hungry and went home to eat. I thought I would be able to go back in on Tuesday, but ended up staying home and watching the blizzard through my front window.

We packed up our skis on Wednesday and drove up to Sun Valley to visit our daughter for Thanksgiving (and to ski). We drove back on Friday afternoon, and I spent several hours on Saturday working on the loom. I left that day with the loom completely warped, and the twining done, so when I went in on Sunday, I spent the while day just weaving away! I took the two finished rugs off the loom by 9:45pm, and headed home satisfied with my work.

After all that rush, I went in to class on Monday morning to discover that the teacher was stuck in Salt Lake City and class was canceled, so I spent that class time tying the fringe on my rugs. I just have a bit more to do on the second one to finish it tonight, and then I will plan the plaid pattern for the scarf I will make for my final weaving project.

Stay tuned for my latest jewelry adventures coming up later this week. (I should have my newest ring done by then.)

cheers!
~Pippi

My First Attempt At Tapestry Weaving

2010-11-23T15:19:00.010-07:00

As many of you know, I am taking an introduction to weaving class this semester. Our second project for the class was to weave a 12 inch by 12 inch tapestry. As usual, I chose a really challenging design, then wondered why as I struggled though it. I always do this to myself, but 9 times out of 10 I am happy in the end, even if the piece doesn't turn out exactly as I planned.

I decided to make the tapestry a pictorial sampler, using different techniques within the piece. I love the beautiful mountains here in Idaho, with the huge blue skies above them, and the quirky magpies who live there, so that was what I chose to depict in my piece.

The first step was to draw a full-size cartoon of the piece. I had a photo of a magpie who lived in the big tree next to our old house in Hailey, so I enlarged it, then traced around it to get the shape just right. Then I drew in the mountains and sky behind him, and planned the different techniques I would try in the different areas of the piece.

As the work progressed, I realized what a task I had set for myself! It was tricky knowing where to cross the weft threads and where to leave a slit between, and because we wove the tapestries on our floor looms, it was impossible to secure the cartoon behind the piece in progress, so some of the proportions ended up being off. Also, because there were so many color changes, there were a huge number of tails to sew in at the end. Overall, though, I am tickled with how it turned out.

I found free plans for building your own tapestry loom online, so I plan on making one for myself over the Winter break, because even though tapestry weaving is time consuming and tedious (why am I always drawn to crafts that are like that?), the result is worth it! ...and it will keep me happily busy until I can get or make a floor loom of my own.

Thanks for stopping in!
~Pippi

Rings Are The Thing!

2010-11-21T14:31:00.010-07:00

As I said in my last post, my metals and jewelry class is my favorite (no surprise there!), and our latest project was to make a ring. I knew I wanted to do a ring with a bezel setting, but that technique is not taught until the second semester. I was determined to go ahead with my idea, however, and so I looked up articles on how to do a bezel setting online, and went for it on my own.

I did several practice rings before starting my ring to turn in. My first ring was a copper band with a design stamped on it. I am still pretty new at soldering, and I figured it would be cheaper to screw up on copper, rather than my silver sheet.

After I finished that one, and started to get an idea of designs, I did a couple of silver stamped bands for my daughters. Once I had done those (and melted one of my attempts), I felt I was ready to take the plunge, and started on my silver ring. I bought a number of cool, vintage glass millefiori cabochons earlier in the year, and decided to set one in my ring. I cut a simple flower shape, and bezel set the cab in the center. The first time I soldered the bezel on it soldered on perfectly (I thought), but popped off when I put it in the pickling solution. The second time it stayed on, and I burnished the bezel down over the cabochon. There were a few gaps that I could not get to go down, so my teacher showed me the trick of getting them to sit flush with a rounded steel tool and a rawhide mallet. Then I filed and sanded all the tool marks off, and viola! a beautiful new ring!

I wanted to practice setting some more, and I loved the flower ring design, so I did my usual thing, and made two more rings in the same design, but in different metals - one in copper and one in brass. They are so cute! My final project in that class is my choice, so I have been working on a tribal-style necklace design, using a big, beautiful onyx cabochon a friend gave me. There are only a couple of weeks of classes after the break, so I will have to be ready to go on this piece as soon as the break is over. I will, of course, post pictures of it when it is done.

Thanks for stopping in, and letting me share my work with you!
cheers!
~Pippi

Coming Up For Air

2010-11-21T14:05:00.013-07:00

This semester has been super busy, and I have only been able to look as far ahead as the next assignment due. I didn't even realize that we had the whole of Thanksgiving week off until a few days ago, when I looked ahead to see what was due next. What a welcome surprise! I thought we only had a 4-day weekend like when I was working at a regular job. Of course, I still have school projects to finish up, but I have been enjoying waking up without the alarm.

So what have I been up to all this time? Well, let's see. I had another portfolio critique for drawing class. We did some really fun drawings for this last portfolio, and I was pleased with how they all came out.

I finished my rug in weaving class and started on a tapestry piece, which is due the Monday after the break, so I will be going in to the weaving studio a couple of more times over the break to finish that up.

Our final project in Creative Process class will be a book, and I have been brainstorming ideas for that.

I saved my favorite for last - metals and jewelry class. Our second project in that class was to make a ring. I made several practice bands, and played with stamping and different textures before making my final ring to submit. I will save the details for a separate post. :)

More soon! I just have to organize my photos for the next post. :)

Canning Nature's Bounty

2010-09-26T18:49:00.002-06:00

I love it when Fall rolls around, and the trees spill over with fruit. When I lived in Hailey, We had several fruit trees in our yard, plus apricots and plums from the neighbors, so I had plenty of free fruit, but this is my first harvest season in Pocatello, and we have a teeny tiny yard. The only tree on the whole property is a crabapple tree by the curb. It was filled with such lovely red apples that I had to make something with them! I had read that crabapple jelly was easy to make, so I picked a bunch and tried it out. True to what I'd read, it was super easy to make, and was the most beautiful shade of pink! I knew my daughter, Grace, would absolutely love it, so when she decided to come to visit for the weekend,I knew we would make some.

As Grace and I were picking the crabapples yesterday morning, we laughed and talked. She mentioned how the crabapples reminded her of rosehips. Then later that afternoon, we drove to the spring to fill our water jugs, and growing right next to the spring was a clump of wild rose bushes covered with ripe hips! We were on a bit of a schedule, so we only picked a few cups, but we decided to go back today to pick more. This time, we took bags with us and picked a couple of quarts or so to make jelly with. I had never made rosehip jelly before either, but I have been canning long enough to know what to look for in a recipe. I found this rosehip jelly recipe, and modified it to suit my needs.

Grace and I planned to make a bunch of smaller jars of the rosehip jelly to give as holiday gifts. Both of the jellies have such unique, beautiful colors! The jars look like glowing jewels!

So far this year, I have done pretty well with gleaning fruit from trees in this neighborhood, even though living in a new town. I am hoping to find some apples in the next few weeks to can up quarts of apple pie filling for the winter. I love canning, and had fun teaching my daughter this wonderful way to save the bounty of nature.

Happy Autumn!
~Pippi

Portfolio Time

2010-09-21T18:01:00.011-06:00

I can hardly believe how quickly the semester is going at school! Our first portfolio for drawing class is due on Thursday. I spent several hours over the past couple of days getting my drawings together, and I took my camera to the studio with me last night, and took pictures of most of the pictures I will be submitting. Drawing 2 is a lot more fun than Drawing 1, as the teacher gives more choice in our drawings, and also free choice in what medium we use for many of the drawings, so I have been playing with pastels and graphite, in addition to the usual charcoal.

The apple drawings were drawn from the same apple. The first drawing was a homework assignment to draw an apple from life. The next class, we took the same apple and changed its form somehow (I cut mine into flowers), and drew it again.

We did several drawings working with cross contour and negative space, and the final drawing (which I don't have a picture of yet, as I am still working on it) combines both techniques.

I am going to have to buy more fixative for my drawings after doing this lot. :)
And now, back to work on my brooch design for metals class. See you later!
~Pippi

Summer has come and gone...

2010-09-08T16:53:00.004-06:00

...and I didn't write a thing in my blog! The first weeks of Summer I had some excuse. I took 12 credits of Summer classes, and all I had time for during those six weeks was homework and sleep (with a meal or two thrown in for good measure). I guess the overload of writing and thinking made me not want to even think about writing for the rest of the time. So now that I have settled into the first couple of weeks of my Fall classes, I thought I should tend to my poor neglected blog.

I will have to look through my jewelry journal to see what you all missed while I was slacking. Luckily, I date my journal entries, and take pictures of pieces as I make them, so I should be able to catch you all up on my doings.

Hope you all had a great Summer! See you again very soon!
~Pippi

More Variations On A Theme

2010-06-26T15:21:00.016-06:00

My favorite way to explore a design that I like is to make a series of variations on that design. I usually become single-minded (read obsessed) when I do this, and will crank out 3 or 4 variations in a matter of days. One design that I played with a while back was a tribal-style hoop with rolo chain wrapped onto the bottom and gemstones wrapped onto the other side of the chain. I did several of these hoops in silver, and had been wanting to try the design again for a while.

When my husband and I went to Oregon last month, I took advantage of being in there and went to my favorite bead store: Harlequin Beads.I had some 14K gold-filled wire at home that I wanted to use, so I bought some gold rolo chain with the idea of returning to this design for more exploration.

The first set of the hoops I made were paired with faceted green onyx beads. It was my first choice of stones to use because of their rich green color, which looked fantastic against the gold wire. I also wrapped tiny round gold beads in the spaces between the gemstones, to give the wire work more of a granulated look. This pair has already been sold in my Etsy shop.

For the second variation, I used faceted amethysts along the edges of the hoops, and spaced them closer together to give the hoops more color.

After I finished the second pair of earrings, I started thinking about wrapping more than just beads around the edge of the hoop. By creating another wire aperture, and wrapping it on the outside edge, I was able to create a more structural piece. I love the way turquoise looks when set in gold, and I wanted to play some more with those yummy green onyx beads, so I used both in the third variation. I made the hoop frames smaller, so the finished earrings would not be too long or too heavy. They turned out beautifully!

I will have to wait until I make my next supply order to buy more chain and wire, so I am done with this series for now. You can be sure that I will be making more of this design in the future!

Tschüss!
~Pippi

A Good Point

2010-06-14T15:27:00.008-06:00

I have always loved making things, so most of the things on my "to learn" list are learning how to make different things. One that has been on the list since I was a child was learning how to make stone tools. Pretty random, I know, but I grew up in a university town, so grade school field trips to the Museum of Natural History were de rigeur, and the Native American exhibits were well stocked with magnificent specimens of stone awls, arrow heads, adzes, et cetera.

My father grew up in Wyoming, and when I was twelve years old we went to visit my grandmother there. She had an old grinding stone (a big basin-shaped stone used by the native people for grinding grains, dried fruits and meats, and the like), which she had found while digging in her garden, and when my father took us out to the family sheep ranch in the Big Horn mountains, I actually found a couple of broken arrow heads myself hidden amongst the sagebrush and rocks. I was thrilled! Making stone tools moved back up to a higher spot on my list for a while. I would look for likely pieces of flint near my home, and try different methods of hitting them with a rock to shape them. And while I found that making precision pieces like the ones I'd seen and found was not easy, I did manage a few rough flakes that were quite sharp, and could be used for cutting sticks and grasses. I kept wishing there was somewhere to take a class to learn this skill.

Fast forward to today. I signed up for a basic Anthropology class during the Summer session here at Idaho State University, and when we got to the chapters on stone tool technology, and the professor told us that there is actually an Anthropology class where we could learn stone tool making. I know that I will soon be signing up for that class!

This past weekend, my husband and I drove to Oregon to go to my younger daughter's graduation, and we stopped in a restaurant in John Day for brunch. The restaurant had a mixed western/outdoorsy theme, with old sinew-tied wooden snow shoes and wooden skis hanging on the wall next to Western prints and fishing lure guides, but what caught my eye was a display on the half wall between sections of the dining room. There I saw the most amazingly beautiful, contemporary obsidian knives with antler handles. They were exquisite! I asked our waitress about them, and she told me that they had been made by a local man who had worked for the forest service for years. She also told me that when she was a young girl, this man had come to her school and given demonstrations. Sadly, he passed away last year, so I could not look him up to pick his brain. I did take some pictures of his beautiful work, though, so I could share it with you.

Rest assured that you will be seeing a post from me again in the next year or two with examples of my attempts at this wonderful art!

cheers!
~Pippi

The Latest Jewels

2010-05-30T11:45:00.014-06:00

As promised in my last post, I took pictures of some of my latest projects and purchases to share with all of you. I have several pieces in the works right now, and have mentioned a few of them in my posts on my jewelry page on FaceBook, so I thought I would start with those.

I started making a Mercury-themed pendant, inspired by a pair of mercury head dime earrings a friend had made. When I was a little girl, I found a Mercury head dime buried in the garden, and thought it was the coolest thing! So I bought a few of them recently to make into jewelry. The pendant I am working on will be in the shape of a caduceus, the winged staff carried by the god, Mercury. It is a short herald's staff entwined by two serpents in the form of a double helix, and is sometimes surmounted by wings. This staff was first borne by Iris, the messenger of Hera. It was also called the wand of Hermes when he superseded Iris in much later myths. The long wires at the bottom of this piece in the works will become the serpents, and I will add more wires at the top to construct the wings.

Next I took pictures of the gorgeous topaz and citrine briolettes I bought from a vendor in Thailand. The smallest is 19.50 carats, and the largest is over 65 carats! I made the smaller (19.50 carat) blue topaz briolette into a necklace the other day before I headed out to my classes, so I would have a necklace to match the earrings I was wearing. Later, I realized that it looked like the necklace that Howl wears in the movie Howl's Moving Castle, which is a favorite of mine. I already have a pair of green tourmaline earrings that look like Howl's, so now I have the set! (I am such a dork!) The citrine briolettes I am keeping to make earrings for myself, and I will make the others into pieces to sell.

And finally, I have sold all of the seahorse earrings in my Etsy shop, so I decided to make another pair to list there. This time, I am using gold-filled wire to make them, and pairing the gold with blazing orange-red fire opals and matching briolettes of cubic zirconia. I finished the first seahorse this morning, and plan on completing the other one this afternoon, so I can list them tomorrow. I will probably make another pair with seed beads, too, as I really like the color the beads give them.

I also have several custom projects in the works, but those will have to wait for another post.
Thanks for stopping by! Enjoy your weekend!
~Pippi

Where has the month gone?

2010-05-28T16:33:00.013-06:00

...Or maybe I should say where have I been since the beginning of the month? It has certainly been a whirlwind! My last post was at the beginning of finals week at school, and after that things have been happening non-stop. I did great in all my classes, and have a 4.0 GPA. My husband and I had one week off between Spring semester and Summer session, and during that week, we traveled to Eugene, Oregon so he could do some computer work for the University of Oregon. Our two daughters live in Eugene, so we surprised them with our visit.

It was nice to be there earlier in the Spring, so we could catch all the lovely flowers blooming around town. My daughters and I went to Hendricks Park to see the rhododendrons and azaleas blooming there, then had lunch at Track Town Pizza.

We drove through Portland on the way back to Idaho, and spent a day skiing Mount Hood with our good friend, Tom Lawrence. The day was clear and sunny, and we had perfect Spring snow. It was great fun! I had never skied there before, and was excited to take a look around the historic Timberline Lodge. There was some really beautiful artwork throughout the lodge, and I was happy to see the display of an old Campfire Girls ceremonial dress based on a Native American design. I was a Campfire Girl for a number of years while growing up, and still have a lot of my old wooden beads from my uniform.

Besides that display, there were some beautiful felted wall hangings in one of the dining rooms, and a wonderful dividing wall made of stained glass. I wish we'd had more time to look around, but we had just missed lunch, so we had to head down the road to the Mount Hood Brew Pub in Government Camp. We had a delicious lunch and a pint of beer before heading back to Tom's house for showers and hamburgers cooked on the grill.

The next day was 12 solid hours of driving to reach home again. We had Sunday to relax before Summer classes started. I am taking 12 credits this Summer (German 101-102, Anthropology and a P.E. class), so my days have been packed with classes, then staying up until midnight doing homework and studying. That has been pretty much all I have been doing since our trip. This weekend we have 4 days off, so I am getting caught up on housework and making jewelry. I will share some pictures of my latest pieces in my next post.

Tschüss!
~Pippi

Etsy Treasury!

2010-05-01T13:28:00.007-06:00

It is always fun to see the beautiful treasuries people create on Etsy.

I have only made one myself, but have had a number of my pieces featured in treasuries. Here is the latest one, called Iolite + Tanzanite = Prettyite, which features a fun ring I made a while back, called Moon Flower.

I made this ring while living in Hailey, Idaho. It was inspired by the fluorite bead I used for the center, and a ring by Eni Oken where she used a similar technique to mount the bead. The center bud is the fat rondel of purple striped flourite with a spiraling stamen of silver wire. I wrapped petals of faceted iolite marquise briolettes along one side, and a sweep of faceted pink tourmalines on the other to cradle the center stone, and finished it with a tiny bud of peridot to one side, like a promise of blooms to come.

A big thank you to Suzanne of PynkRoseDesigns on Etsy for including me in this beautiful treasury. Pop in soon, and take a look! The treasuries only last for a couple of days, before they expire. I saved a screen shot of the treasury, so if you miss it on Etsy, you can still look at it here (you just can't click on any of the items to see more details on them).

Cheers!
~Pippi

Undergraduate Art Show

2010-04-13T16:12:00.019-06:00

Every Spring, Idaho State University's Art department holds a juried art show for undergraduate students. The show is open to students who are taking at least one art class, and are enrolled either full- or part-time at the school. Students may enter up to five pieces, in any medium, for the jury. Each year, a different juror is selected to decide which pieces will be in the show. This year's juror was Ellie Moseman, Assistant Professor of Art History at Colorado State University where she serves as Coordinator for Art History Foundations. She has an extensive background in Central European art, and is currently curating an exhibition of drawings by the German Surrealist artist Richard Oelze for CSU's University Museum. It was an honor to have such a knowledgeable juror choose the best from over 230 submissions (the most the school has ever had!). It was also a great learning opportunity for participants to hear her criteria for choosing the pieces she did.

In the statement she gave at the show's opening, she said that she looked for works that invited the audience to engage with the piece beyond the personal conversation between artist and artwork - works that could sustain a visual dialog with the viewer. She looked at content, craftsmanship, finishing and presentation. It was quite an honor to have four of my five submissions selected.

I was deliberate in my own personal jury process as I chose the pieces that I would enter in the show. My four steampunk pieces that were featured in the Spring 2010 issue of Belle Armoire Jewelry Magazine would probably have garnered a spot, but I wanted to enter pieces that had not been featured before, to show a greater body of my work. I looked through all of my jewelry cases for the pieces that had a strong visual presence.

I knew that the Tribal Tundra Sapphire hoops would be one that I would choose. Sometimes I am lucky, and stumble upon a shape that just "works". These earrings pegged it! In all of my jewelry designs, one of my most important considerations is how the piece will feel when worn. I strive to make my work feel like a natural extension of the wearer's body. I succeeded in making these larger hoops very light in weight, while being visually full. I went all out in details on these earrings, using the finest gauge wire, and wrapping each filigree swirl to give it a wonderful texture. The most time consuming part was the outer edges of the hoops, which have a length of sterling rolo chain wrapped with tiny round silver beads and sapphires.

My second choice was one of my steampunk necklaces. Since I decided not to enter any of the ones that were featured in Belle Armoire Jewelry magazine, I chose Steampunk Cleopatra II, which was built around the sample winged scarab I made for the step out article included in the magazine. I was experimenting with Egyptian coil links, and included sections of the links wrapped with wire and watch parts.

The butterfly hairpin I made as a theme challenge piece for the Etsy Wire Artisans Guild was next on the list. I felt that it was a visually strong piece, and had a lot of interesting detail, so it had a good chance of being selected.

Number four was The Queen of Hearts pendant I finished the weekend before entries were submitted. It was another piece loaded with details, and I knew it would be a strong contender.

I wanted to include at least one of my signature seahorse designs, and thought of entering my personal one, but couldn't bear the thought of not being able to wear it for a whole month, so I entered the copper and seed bead seahorse earrings I made last summer. These were the only ones which weren't selected for the show, but they sold in my Etsy shop the day of the opening, so it all worked out quite well.

The show is open to the public, and is located in the John B. Davis Gallery in the lower level of the Fine Arts building on the ISU campus. The show runs through April 30th. Come take a look if you are in the neighborhood!

Cheers!
~Pippi

Queen Of Hearts

2010-04-04T20:03:00.015-06:00

One of the jewelry making groups I belong to posts daily mini-challenges for the members. This past Friday's theme was, be inspired by a deck of playing cards, and my first thought was to make a queen of hearts card out of wire. I looked at pictures of different playing cards to get an idea for the design, then set to work. Of course, once I got started, I went a little over board, and ended up working the whole weekend on the piece. I had the presence of mind to take pictures as I worked, so I could share the process with all of you.

The first step was deciding on the size, and making the hammered sterling frame. I thought it would look better to have the card hang from a corner, and added a section of coiled loops to the opposite corner to balance the design. After I made the frame, I started wrapping it with 28 gauge, fine silver wire. The spiral end of the frame reminded me of the letter Q on a queen card.

Once I had the frame completely wrapped, I started netting the whole surface with 30 gauge wire. It took 10 feet of wire to net a rectangle 1.25 x 2 inches!

After the frame was completely netted, I started adding the image of the queen of hearts. I used a keishi pearl for her face, as it had just the right shape. I wrapped the top of the face with a herringbone of fine silver wire. I braided four strands of 14K gold-filled wire for the edge of her headdress and the cuff of her sleeve, and anchored it to the netting with tiny faceted tundra sapphires in a mix of colors. I twisted and hammered the wire for the heart, and wrapped a faceted ruby rondel into the center for color. I made a bunch of ball end headpins for the fringe on the corner, and wrapped a few of the rubies and red sapphires onto the corner to get an idea of how it would look before stopping for the night.

The next day, I jumped back into the project, and started in on the crown. I shaped the frame for the crown, then hammered it. The bottom edge was wrapped with fine silver, but I wrapped the points of the crown with more of the 14K gold filled wire, and wrapped bright red-orange fire opals into the valleys. I used the ends of the silver wire on the bottom of the crown to "sew" it onto the netting, and wrapped a frame of silver around each of the fire opals as I fastened the crown to the queen's head. A paraiba blue tourmaline in a heart cut is positioned in the center of the crown.

You can see the frame of the crown before I wrapped it with the gold in the picture below.

The next step in the design was to make the flower held by the queen. I used 4 tiny, VS songea sapphire briolettes, which sparkle incredibly, to make the petals of the flower. I noticed that on all the cards I looked at when researching the design, the queen's flower has only 4 petals. I am still trying to find out why this is so. The stem of the flower is another section of twisted and hammered wire, and the smaller keishi pearl I used for the hand curls around the stem like fingers wrapping around it. And while I didn't use the upside-down repeat of the queen in my design, I did want to suggest it, so I repeated the twisted heart with ruby center in the lower corner, but put it upside-down like on a real playing card.

Today, I couldn't wait to finish my queen! I added hammered looped wires for her collar, and added a fringe of those tiny red tundra sapphires to the loops of the upper collar, so they give her robes movement when the pendant is worn. I finished wrapping the rest of the rubies and red sapphires onto the lower corner of the pendant, then added the finishing touch - a stunning, 9.68 carat ruby briolette hanging from the cornermost loop. I had been holding this amazing stone in my collection of "exceptional gemstones waiting to become a part of a special piece" for a while now. The queen commanded this ruby for her own!

I decided to enter this piece in the Idaho State University's undergraduate art show. The entry date is tomorrow, so I finished it just in time! I am entering 5 of my jewelry pieces into the show. The show is juried, so my pieces have to be accepted first. I will let you know how it goes.

Thanks for stopping by!
~Pippi

We have a winner!

2010-04-04T11:25:00.003-06:00

Thank you to all of my followers, both old and new! I just wanted to announce the winner of the seahorse pendant: Melissa Sutton Boos. Melissa has been blogging here on Blogspot.com since 2007, on her blog, The Wired Quilter. She is another crafty person, like me. :) She is an avid quilter, and has recently started making wire jewelry, as well. I loved looking at the pictures of her quilts, as I have been a quilter myself for over 20 years. She has a great eye for design, and I look forward to seeing more of her wire jewelry, too!

For those of you who didn't win this drawing, don't despair! I will be doing more drawings for my jewelry in the future, so stay tuned!

cheers!
~Pippi

Jewelry Give-Away For My Followers

2010-04-03T17:17:00.003-06:00

I am almost up to one hundred followers here on my blog! As a thank you to all of you, I will be doing a drawing (once I reach my 100 follower milestone) for one lucky follower to win this lovely seahorse pendant. The drawing will be for the first 100 followers only. As of today I only need six more people to reach my goal. I will post again when I do, and will randomly draw the winner.
Thank you all for your support!
~Pippi

Spring Break 2010

2010-03-29T18:50:00.015-06:00

One of the bonuses of being a college student is Spring Break. This year both my husband and I are students, and we took advantage of our full-time student status by being eligible for Sun Valley Resort's Triple Play Pass - 3 full days of skiing for only $99. At that price, how could we NOT go skiing? We stayed with friends in Hailey for the week, and I got to see the kids I used to babysit there, as well as my daughter, who came to Idaho with her boyfriend for her Spring Break.

We left on Saturday afternoon from Pocatello, and drove past Craters of the Moon on our way to the Wood River valley. We passed a herd of elk near Craters, and stopped at one of the overlooks to take in the view. The usually black lava was covered in snow, which was mostly gone by the time we returned the following weekend. We knew we were getting close to Sun Valley as we passed the Queen's Crown outside of Carey.

Grace and her friends stopped by to say hi to me the first night we were in town.

I scheduled a babysitting job my first night back in Hailey, watching the two boys I have taken care of for the past 5 years. We were thrilled to see each other, and had a great time! I introduced the boys to the new Doctor Who episodes, and they are hooked! I plan on getting them each their own sonic screwdriver for their upcoming birthdays.

Sunday was our first day of skiing, and we couldn't have asked for better weather! We had beautiful Spring weather, and the snow was great! We took our first ride up the mountain in the new River Run gondola. The views were spectacular! We ran into an old skiing and mountain biking friend who skied with us much of the day.

While we were in Hailey, I wanted to check out our friends' new restaurant, bar, and bike shop, Power House. Billy Olsen realized that burgers bikes and beers go well together, so he turned his bike shop into a restaurant, too. It works perfectly together! The food was excellent! The bacon cheeseburger I had came garnished with organic salad mix, with sprinkles of fresh parsley on the fries, and homemade ketchup on the table. The bar had a glass top, with a collection of exquisite bike parts, old and new beneath the glass, for the patrons' viewing pleasure. If you are driving through Hailey, be sure to stop there for lunch! You won't be disappointed!

Tuesday was another beautiful ski day. We met up with my friend, Twyla, that afternoon on the mountain, and skied a couple of runs with her. She is one of the most modest people I know, and would never make anything of her amazing skills, but she is awesome to watch! We saved our last ski day for Friday, and planned to head home after that. The view from the gondola was so beautiful that I made sure to go up in it again with my camera before we left, so I could get some good pictures.

The late evening sun was behind us as we headed home after a week well spent!

Ming Mariposa

2010-02-24T17:53:00.012-07:00

I am a little behind on my Etsy Wire Artisans Guild theme challenges, but even though I am a month behind on this one, I could not pass up such a cool theme! The theme for January was "Ming Dynasty", and as soon as I thought of it, my mind went to the fantastic hair ornaments you see in old Chinese period movies and operas. I was lucky enough to live in Eugene, Oregon, home of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, where they have an amazing collection of Chinese art, including a rich assortment of court garments and accessories. The elaborate hairpins, with their exquisite designs immediately came to my mind, and I decided to try my hand at making one.

As I researched my design, I came across some interesting information about hairpins and hair ornaments. In ancient China, engagement was an important social rite where a man and woman confirmed marital ties. It was next only to official marriage in significance. Marital ties were made by following “parents" order and on the matchmaker's "word”. However, maidens in the age of adolescence had the tradition of pledging in love with tokens of love. Under the pressure of the society, young men and women would deliver tokens of love in private. Others just could not tell.

There were ten traditional tokens of love: bracelets, arm-wrapped gold, finger rings, earrings, perfume satchels, jade pendants, true lover's knots, hairpins and twin hairpins, and silk skirts. No matter what they were or how valuable they might have been, tokens of love always became closely associated with the people giving and receiving them. Presenting the tokens of love was just like submitting one’s aspirations, showing the other person they will be loyal for life.

During the Ming (1368-1644) period, hairpins featured multiple styles, featuring a diverse number of designs at the tip of the hairpins. The most popular forms included flowers, birds, fish, insects and beasts, as well as flowers such as: plum blossoms, lotus flowers, chrysanthemums, peach blossoms, peonies and lotuses.

I chose to make a hairpin, also known as a buyao, which literally means "shake as you go". The elaborate "buyao" hairpin was an exquisite hair ornament denoting noble status, which was often be encrusted with jewels and featuring carved designs. An intricately wrapped butterfly sits on the end of the two-prong, sterling hairpin, which I hand forged. The Chinese animal symbol Butterfly represents love, specifically young love, and legend has it that the Butterfly symbolizes an undying bond between lovers. I imagine the piece I made as part of a bride's elaborate hair dressing, as a beautiful addition to her most special occasion, but it would look stunning for any special event.

To give my piece that dancing movement so prized in ancient hairpins, I suspended clear blue sapphire briolettes from the edges and bottoms of the butterfly's wings, and swags of delicate silver chain in the upper wings. I wrapped tiny red and pink tundra sapphires along the edge of the upper wings, and suspended two keishi pearls in the apex of each wing. The body of the butterfly is a marquis briolette of iolite, wrapped so it also moves, and dots of brilliant red rubies shine from the center swirl of each lower wing. Hours of time and love went into making this piece, and I plan on exploring hairpin designs quite a bit more in the future.

Before I go, I want to share one link with you with some particularly stunning hairpins. These Chinese hairpins are decorated with brilliant blue kingfisher feathers, and are truly amazing works of art. Definitely worth looking at!

I am so glad you took the time to see and read about my latest piece. Thanks for letting me share it with you!
Until next time,
~Pippi

Tribal Inspirations

2010-02-21T09:23:00.022-07:00

Even though I have been busy with school, I have still been making jewelry regularly. My first custom nath order started me making more of these lovely pieces of jewelry. I started looking at pictures of them where ever I could find them to get inspirations for more designs. The two I made after the first one sold quickly, and the paisley design was so popular that I got another custom order for one from the woman who bought the blue swirled nath, and an order for a pair of them to wear as earrings. I really enjoy making the paisley designs, and made a beautiful paisley pendant using rubies and tundra sapphires in the design.

The university library has the book, Traditional Jewelry Of India by Oppi Untracht, which had been recommended by someone in one of the belly dance forums I follow, so I checked it out and fell in love! The beautiful pictures in the book are amazing. I spent many days poring through its pages. When it came time to return the book, I knew that this was one I needed to own. I looked online to see how much it would cost to buy a copy, and discovered that it had been reprinted in soft cover for a very reasonable price, so I bought a copy of my own. What a treasure!

I was particularly taken by the pictures of jewelry from the Moghul period, rich with rubies, emeralds, and pearls, so the next couple of nath designs I made were heavily influenced by that period. I love the richness of the rubies and emeralds in these naths, and the pearls give the naths a wonderful luster.

I also recently bought some interesting coins on eBay, with the idea of incorporating them into my jewelry. Many cultures use coins as a part of their adornment to signify wealth. I made a pair of earrings a while back with some scalloped coins from Malta, with a bee sitting on a honeycomb on the front of them, and paired the coins with big briolettes of amber and yellow sapphire briolettes hanging from them. They were a favorite design, and I was sad to see them go when they sold. I started searching the internet for a source for more of the amber briolettes (they were REALLY hard to find!), and finally tracked down a single strand of them, which I snapped up. The first thing I thought of was that I could recreate that design for myself, and I did. These amber honey earrings are my new favorite (I'm wearing them as I type this), and they are all mine! :D

Another pair of coins I bought were some 1952, one Pice coins from Pakistan. These coins were interesting to me because of their unique shape - rather like a big washer. The shape of the coins, and a topic that came up in one of the belly dance forums I belong to inspired these earrings. We were discussing the New Age of belly dance costumes, and the changes we have seen in styles of costumes, and I was thinking about how tribal people would use some of the modern things we have around in abundance, like washers, nuts, and other hardware items, if they had ready access to them. Because the coins were shaped like big washers, I paired them with brass washers of different sizes, and the more traditional coral and turquoise stone beads. I hand forged the ear wires out of sterling wire, but coiled them with more of the copper wire I used to link the various parts of the earrings, to tie the design all together.

The last piece I have to share with you today is the first of a pair of leaf-shaped earrings inspired by a pair of gold earrings in the Indian jewelry book. My version is the same size as the original (7.5 x 3.8cm), but where the Indian earrings were made of solid sheets of gold with granulation and wire work, mine are silver, and intricately wrapped with wire, and, therefore, are much lighter to wear. I am still finishing up the second of these earrings, so they are not listed in my etsy shop yet, but they will be soon.

I have a couple other pieces I am wrapping up as well (pun intended), but those will have to wait until my next post. Hope you enjoyed the show! Thanks for stopping by.
all the best,
~Pippi

As promised...

2010-02-18T17:04:00.010-07:00

School and work have kept me pretty busy, and unfortunately, writing on my blog seems to be the first thing that falls off of my list. I apologize.

As promised in my last post, here is what I came up with for my first project for Creative Process class.

My choice for this first assignment was driven by several factors. I wanted first to use a medium with which I had no prior experience, and second to make my project one that would engage its audience in a physical manner, as well as offering visual and mental stimulation. I wanted a work that would be widely visible to a large number of students on campus, so I chose the circular fenced space at the entrance to the Pond Student Union building.

Mosaics have always fascinated me. I remember as a child poring through pictures of ancient mosaics in the pages of National Geographic magazines. I grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska, which is the capitol of the state, and went on many school field trips to the capitol building, which is filled with amazing examples of mosaics from floors to ceilings. My older sister has made a name for herself in the art world with her mosaics, which she makes from bits of broken pottery and glass washed up on the beaches of New York, Boston, Cape Cod, Ireland, and other locations. Many of her works tie the locations she gleans from into historic maps of the areas, and one of her mosaic maps of the New York waterfront is now a part of the New York City Library map collection. Another huge influence for me is the astounding works of the Spanish architect, Antoni Gaudi.

The student union has been a gathering place on the ISU campus for over 50 years. In keeping with the idea of a gathering place, my project involves renovating the circular, fenced area by the main entrance to the union building. The current design is unwelcoming, with heavy, black barred railing enclosing most of the space, reminding one of a prison or cage. The regular, concentric circles in the middle of the space are static and uninteresting, and when one enters the enclosure, the natural instinct is to look for the exits and pass through the space as quickly as possible. I chose to exchange the stark, forboding black railing for inviting benches that curve along the outer edges of the circle, offering students a welcoming place to congregate outside. The circular ground area would curve upward into the benches bases, and the whole would be covered with a continuous mosaic. The backs of the benches would take the place of the iron railing, and the mosaics would spill over their backs to cover the outer wall which faces the steps as well.

The design on the lower wall facing the steps coming up to the building entrance from the direction of the Fine Arts building would be covered with an Idaho mountain scene, with blue, cloud-speckled skies above. In the sky portion of the mosaic would be the quote, “True wisdom lies in gathering the precious things out of each day that goes by.”, a reminder for us to enjoy the beauty of our surroundings. The gathering theme would be continued in quotes at either of the entrances to the circle. At one entrance would be a quote by the Roman poet, Propertius, “Great is the road I climb, but the garland offered by the easier effort is not worth the gathering.”, and at the other entrance would be the quote, “Education is only the ladder to gather the fruits of the tree of knowledge, not the fruit itself.”

I also wanted to express the diversity of the students gathered on the ISU campus. Sixty-four different countries are represented within the halls of our school, so to express the global “coming together” of people from all over the world, I chose an image of the Earth for the center of the circlular space. In the field around the Earth would be hands of different sizes and colors to represent the different peoples. The top of the wall created by the backs of the benches would not be a straight level line, but would gently undulate, with a solid-colored top to border the design, and rounded tiles to shed rain and snow. The seats of the benches would be angled slightly downward toward the front, so water would not pool on the seats, and the seats themselves would be tiled in smooth, off-white tiles, with various mosaic motifs covering the backrests, similar to the benches in Park Güell in Barcelona.

Because of the huge fluctuations in temperature in the Idaho climate, and the need to be able to withstand harsh weather conditions, high-fire clay would have to be used for the tesserae of the mosaics, and a heavy duty sealant would need to cover the whole to keep moisture out of the grout, in order to avoid expansion and contraction, which would damage the work in the long run. Though I would do the actual work of laying the mosiac, with a hand-selected team of helpers, I would include the student population at large by having students make tracings of their hands for the hand tiles which would surround the Earth in the center of the design, and would have the tracings made into tiles by ceramics students.

Unlike much of the art scattered around the campus, this gathering space would be a work which invites the viewer to touch and interact with it. The mosaic design would welcome minute exploration, and offer the viewer a unique perspective by being able to sit within the work itself. It would be a space where people would want to linger, instead of one to rush through as quickly as possible.

Though this project was only imaginary, it opened my eyes to a bigger view of my art and what I could do. My jewelry making is very small in comparison to the scale of this project, and it was fun and challenging for me to step out of my tiny comfort zone of creativity, and to imagine things in a bigger scope. It is good to think outside the jewelry box now and then.

Thanks for joining me, and letting me share my creative process with you!

Until next time, best regards,

~Pippi

School Days

2010-01-13T10:50:00.010-07:00

Here I am, back in school again. My first classes started on Monday. It is such a different perspective, coming back to school after being in the working world for over twenty years. It is refreshingly easy, compared to going to a job day after day. Here, my job is to learn, which I have been doing on my own for years now. My first semester is filled with basic art classes I need to complete before formally declaring my major in fine arts, an English class to complete one of my general education requirements, and a Pilates class, to keep me in shape.

My first class is Creative Process (Art 103), and our first assignment is a hypothetical art installation. We are to choose any location on campus, and design a piece in the medium of our choice for this imaginary commission. We do not have to worry about practical considerations, such as cost, engineering, or schedule, but we do need to present our projects, and need to provide drawings (sketches, elevations, front and side views, plot plans of the immediate area, etc.), photographs and/or models.

I am thinking about designing some kind of sculpture, so I started by jotting down a list of things I need to decide, such as location, theme, shape, and movement to give me a place to start. I rode my bike around part of the campus to look for possible sites for my work, and to look at the existing sculptures on campus to get ideas. Later today, I will take my camera and take pictures of some of the areas I am interested in to give me more ideas. I am also researching history of the university and of the area to give me ideas as to what my imaginary sculpture will look like.

Another idea I am playing around with is a mosaic. Like my sister, who is an amazing mosaic artist, I was deeply inspired by the incredible mosaics from the capitol building in Lincoln, Nebraska, where we grew up. We used to go on school field trips there as children, and whenever I am in Lincoln, I make a point to visit the capitol building to revel in the amazing art and architecture it holds.

I have yet to come up with a theme for my work, but some possibilities are education (obviously), native history, or Idaho history. Once I spend some more time looking around campus, and decide on a location, the rest of the ideas will come together.

This is a fun first project, and I feel I have an advantage in how to approach it, as what we are being asked to do is the same process I go through when I design a piece of jewelry. I try to not be too rigid in the first stages of a design, but to let my thoughts flow. I will often look at pictures to get ideas for shape or color, but soon, my creative muse kicks in, and the design flows through my hands to create the image in my head. Sometimes I will have a complete idea, and will sketch it beforehand, and sometimes I only get a general glimpse, and the design shows itself to me as I go along.

I will share more on this project as it develops. Thanks for joining me on this journey.
Until next time!
~Pippi

Welcome 2010!

2010-01-01T10:45:00.013-07:00

Happy New Year to you all!

The year 2009 surely had some challenges, but I am always thankful for every day I get in life, and as I look back over the past year, I wouldn't change a thing! I didn't get as much jewelry making done as I would have liked in the past month, but it was nice to take things at a slower pace after our whirlwind move. My younger daughter and her boyfriend joined us for the holidays, which was delightful! We went bowling, and baked cookies, and watched episodes of the new Doctor Who, and generally enjoyed a relaxing time. I look forward to their moving back to Idaho after she is done with school, so they will be closer to us, and can visit more often.

The holidays also brought some more sales in my Etsy shop, which helped our holiday shopping, and bought me some new gemstones to play with. And, of course, I DID make jewelry! I did a trade with a lovely Etsy seller from Australia for some of her beautiful felted slippers. It turns out that we share the same birthday - a fun bit of serendipity! Louise from Pixie Lou Felt makes such beautiful things! I found her shop as I was looking for a pair of slippers to replace my old ones, which are falling apart at the seams. I saw a beautiful pair of blue and purple pixie boots in her shop, and wrote to ask her if she wanted to trade for jewelry. There were several bracelets she liked in my shop, which were more expensive than the boots, so she made me a pair of low slippers, too, and I made her a custom seahorse bracelet. Both of us were thrilled with our trade! :D

I also made a custom nose ring, or nath as they are called in India, for another Etsy seller, and had to try out a few more nath designs after that. One of the naths I made incorporated a paisley in the design. My fellow Etsy Wire Artisans Guild member, Sheridan Joslin of Joslin Jewels makes beautiful paisley designs, and I always wanted to try my hand at them.

The paisley nath turned out splendidly, and gave me some ideas for a pair of paisley earrings. I managed to find a string of gorgeous Baltic amber briolettes, and wanted to make a pair of really big, bold earrings with them, similar to a pair of costume earrings I saw a woman wearing recently. The paisley design was just the ticket to tie it all together! Since the frames of the paisleys were large, I kept the design as light and airy as possible, so they would be comfortable to wear. The background was netted with 30 gauge, fine silver wire, and I used gold seed beads and a few golden Swarovski crystals to carry the honey color throughout the design. The result was a fabulous pair of earrings measuring 3-3/4 inches in length, but weighing no more than a smaller pair of earrings, and certainly light enough to wear all day and into the night without the least bit of pulling or stretching of the wearer's ear holes.

Last night, I thought I'd make one last piece of jewelry for 2009, but wasn't feeling inspired, so all I made was a simple wrapped rose ring out of copper wire, then my husband and I watched a movie and rang in the new year quietly at home.

I hope 2010 is filled with happiness, good health, prosperity and lots of love for you all! Thanks for stopping by.
Cheers!
~Pippi

Home, Sweet, New Home!

2009-12-13T16:20:00.015-07:00

The past month and a half has blown by like the wind! Big changes are in the air, and have recently swept through my life, for the better. At the end of October, my husband and I started talking about the possibility of going back to college. The economic recession has hit hard in Idaho, and after over a year of my having no job, and my husband's hours at work becoming tenuous, we decided that if we are going to be cash-strapped, we may as well be cash-strapped students. With that decision, we were caught up in a whirlwind of change, and in just a little over a month, we had received financial aid, enrolled and signed up for classes at Idaho State University, found a new place to live, and moved to Pocatello. Not only was it quick, but it is probably one of the smoothest life transitions I have ever had! We have been in our new home for 13 days, and I fell as if I've lived here for years!

Carlos and I came to Pocatello for a week in November, to sign up for our classes, and look for a place to move to. We stayed at a friend's place while in town, and looked at a number of houses. All of the houses we looked at were about the same price range (half what we paid for rent in Hailey), but were, shall we say, DUMPS! One house reeked so badly of cigarette smoke that we walked in, and immediately turned around and walked out again. Another house had the potential of being good (the location was great! the back yard went right up into the hills.), until we looked inside. Dismal, cheap 70's paneling covered all the walls (including the fronts of the kitchen cupboards), and all the lights were industrial fluorescent bulbs with warped plastic covers hanging half open. We came back to our friend's place after looking at these, and decided to check to see if there was anything on Craigslist. Bingo! A cute, little 2-bedroom house close to campus had just been listed. When we stepped inside with the landlady, We both knew our search was over.

From the outside, the house looks ordinary, but inside, it is a gem! The living room and bedrooms are carpeted in a neutral, low-pile carpet. The kitchen floor is tiled in ceramic tiles, and the dining room has beautiful wood floors. When she and her husband bought the house, they replaced the windows, and the landlady stripped the trim around them down to bare wood and stained it. She then proceeded to strip all the trim throughout the house, so all the eggshell walls are trimmed in dark wood. The bathroom is located between the two bedrooms, with doors opening to each room. Though the house is quite a bit smaller than our last house (which was really too big for just the two of us), it sits on a full basement, so there is plenty of storage.

Several of our friends gave us help with our move: our friends Erik and Alison loaned us their pickup truck with a 4-bike rack on the back, which we used to take most of our bikes, and a few other big things to Pocatello in November. Krista came over several days to help me pack, and on moving day to clean. What would we have done without her? Tammy brought boxes and helped with cleaning projects while we packed. Sue and Paul were the biggest help, gathering and bringing boxes to our house, and Paul's helping us load the truck and clean all day on moving day, then driving all the way to Pocatello with us, sleeping on the floor, and helping us unload the next day and return the truck! We are so blessed with all of our friends!

Unpacking began right away, as we realized that we couldn't find the charger for the phone, and the battery was almost dead. Within a few days, it looked like we had lived here for years! Yes, there are still boxes to unpack (mostly books), but we are essentially here. My work table is set up in the spare room, and I have even finished a project, and started a new one! We still have a few weeks before classes start, so we can relax and enjoy the holidays. This week, I will be retaking the pictures for my seahorse tutorial, with the hope of finishing it before the new year. Change is good!

Wishing you all uplifting changes in the coming year!
Thanks for stopping by! :D
~Pippi

Variations on a Roman Theme

2009-11-08T15:11:00.012-07:00

After almost a year, I finally finished the second of a pair of earrings which were inspired by a gorgeous, 2000 year old, gold, pearl and emerald, Roman earring that was found in Jerusalem last year. Here is a picture of the earring:

My version was made with sterling and fine silver wire, and, though I didn't have small emeralds, I did have two larger, polished round emeralds that I used as the focal on the tops of the earrings. I wreathed the emeralds with faceted ruby beads, and where the original Roman earring had the emeralds, I used rubies there, too. Suspended from the bottoms of my earrings are four Akoya pearls, to complete the look. I made the first earring the day after reading about the Roman find, then set it aside for almost a year. But now that I am getting ready to move, I have been trying to finish up those incomplete projects on my work table, and the pair is done.

After I finished these earrings, I decided to play around with the design, and started another pair yesterday. I received a bunch of beautiful pearls and beads as part of a bead swap on JewelryGeeks.com, and decided to use the lovely fresh water pearls I was sent. I paired the coin and biwa pearls with some rosy red carnelian beads, to give the earrings more of an old world flair (the Romans didn't have Swarovski crystals), and to tie the rich colors together, I wrapped them with copper wire.

I also decided to try a technique I'd seen some other wire artisans use on the frame, and wrapped looped wire around the frame for decorative purposes. The top loop also made a handy place to attach the ear wire. I used sterling leverbacks for the ear wires, because I knew that copper ones would turn my ears green, so I wrapped the fronts of the sterling wires with copper wire, to tie in with the colors of the rest of the earrings.

I am now quite taken with this design, and the myriad possibilities for variations on it, and will have more earrings of this style in the future.
Thanks for letting me share my design process with you!
~Pippi

A fly in the works...

2009-11-06T08:51:00.007-07:00

As you may know, I have been working on a tutorial for my seahorse pendants for some time. I finished taking the last of the pictures over the last couple of days,and was excited to be so close to being done, but when I sat at the computer to edit them and insert them into the tutorial, I discovered that my husband accidentally deleted a section of them from the middle of the batch when he was updating our computer, so now I have to start over again making another seahorse and retaking all the pictures. He felt so bad! I told him not to worry about it, and I plan on pushing today to try to retake them all in one fell swoop. Good thing I did all those chores yesterday, so my day today is free. On the bright side, the first seahorse I made turned out beautifully, so it isn't a total loss.

In the evenings, when my husband and I hang out together, I often sit and do wire work while he works on his laptop in the chair next to mine. The other night, I was looking at a big (10+ carat), orange tourmaline briolette in my collection, and thinking I wanted to make something with it. Another wire artist friend of mine makes these cute little wire bugs, which I've always wanted to try, and I thought that the briolette would make the perfect insect abdomen!

I opened my sketch book and started drawing up the image I had in my head. I imagined lacy wire wings, so that the color of the briolette would peek through, and planned the paths the wires would take to become the legs and wings. I didn't start it that night, as it was getting late, but the next evening, I began cutting and wrapping the frame together. I made the first wing that night, and couldn't wait until the next morning to finish it! It turned out even better than I planned! And, I have several large marquise-shaped briolettes of smokey quartz that would also work nicely with this design, so I plan on making another one soon, and taking pictures to make a tutorial for this design, too.

Now, I'm off to gather the things I will need to retake my seahorse pictures.
See you again soon! :D
~Pippi

Atlantis

2009-11-03T15:24:00.007-07:00

The end of October found me itching to play with my wire again, and after a jewelry friend mentioned sneaking in making a ring between her other projects, I decided a ring was in order, too. I had a vague idea in my head when I started it, and wrapped the band and part of the setting base, but then I had to look through all my stones and beads to decide what to feature in the ring. Nothing seemed to look right until I spotted a small octahedron fluorite crystal, like two pyramids with their bases stuck together, sitting on one of my shelves in my work room.

The crystal is a very pale shade of blue, with golden flecks of iron pyrite crystals near the point of one of the pyramids, and when I held it to the base of the ring, I knew it would be perfect! For some reason, the color and shape of the stone reminded me of Atlantis, and I curved and curled the wires of the setting into coiled waves rising up around the stone, like the temples of Atlantis sinking into the ocean. The coils of the setting lace around the stone like filigree, and the shape of the crystal peeks through the swirls.

Since I finished the ring, it has become a new favorite, and I have hardly taken it of since it was done. It sits majestically on my index finger, and looks like a ring a high priestess would wear. The night after it was done, I wore it to bed, and was awakened in the wee hours of the morning by the full moon shining through my window onto my pillow like a spotlight. I raised the ring to the light, and marveled at it in the moonlight. Magical!

So much for National Blog Posting Month!

2009-10-30T14:30:00.009-06:00

Here it is, the end of the month, and I am finally posting in my blog - so much for National Blog Posting Month! I spent most of October madly canning up the pears from my trees before they went bad. I canned 24 pints of pear slices, 5-1/2 quarts of pear pie filling, 8 pints of pear sauce, and three jars of pear butter. The pear butter took a couple of days to make, and a half a stock pot full of peeled and sliced pears cooked down to three small jars, plus enough for a slice of toast. It tastes divine! Well worth the effort!

I was in a slump with my jewelry making, so I whiled away my free time crocheting. I found a really cute sweater pattern online some time ago, and decided, finally, to make it for myself. I used Lamb's Pride yarn in a sunflower yellow. I had to alter the pattern a bit, as the sleves were too small when I followed the pattern.

I used some of the leftover yellow yarn to make the tapestry crochet skull in a Dia de los Muertos bag, inspired by a variegated yarn that looked like serape material when crocheted. I added crocheted roses below the skulls on the bag, scallops of bright sapphire-colored yarn along the bottom, and a fringe of turquoise stones and bone skull beads along the top of the bag.

After finishing up my crochet projects, I finally felt like playing with my wire again, and decided to make a ring last night. I had a vague idea of how I would make the ring, but didn't decide on a stone to use until it was almost half way done. I had a small fluorite crystal I had been carrying with me for years, and realized it would be perfect in this ring. The crystal has inclusions of pyrite - small golden flecks that sparkle in the light. The stone is the palest blue, and I wrapped the coils of silver wire up around the stone, over the pyramid shape of the crystal's top like the waves drawing over the lost land of Atlantis.

Now, I am back in the swing of things with my jewelry, and am off to make something else.
Thanks for stopping in!
~Pippi

Pears Today, Pears Tomorrow (or Pippi's Adventures in Canning)

2009-09-25T18:52:00.010-06:00

I love this time of year! The fruit trees are all heavy with their bounty, and I can't help but take advantage! I was out in my garden yesterday, and my neighbor called over the fence to me, "Pippi, the plums are ready! Come get some!" So I gathered up my picking bucket, and chatted with Marie as we picked the small, deep purple plums that covered the branches. They looked so pretty, I soon ran to get my camera, too!

I picked 3 gallons before heading back to my kitchen to clean and wash them, and cook them into jam. The plums are a small Italian variety - tart, and about the size of a large olive, and I knew that pitting them all by hand would be a huge chore, so I decided to try something different.

I cooked a smaller pan full of the plums, with a little bit of water in the bottom of the pan, and when the fruit had softened enough to fall off the pits, I poured it through a strainer, and mashed it with a wooden spoon, to get as much of the pulp from the pits as possible. Then, I poured the fruit puree back into my stock pot, and made the jam as usual. Way easier! I took these pictures while the second batch of jam was still in the heat bath.

I made 18 jars of the plum jam last night, and decided that I would can pears today. Last year, we had a good crop of pears on the two trees in the front yard, and I dried most of them, so this year, I decided to make canned pears, instead of drying them. I picked about 40 pears this afternoon from one tree, brought them in, washed them, and started peeling and cutting them into eighths.

I made a light syrup with organic cane sugar, and a small amount of orange juice (to help keep them from darkening), and then, as I filled each jar with as many pear pieces as I could stuff in, I poured the syrup over them, closed them, and then heat treated them to seal and preserve them. I filled the twelve wide-mouth pint jars I bought this morning, so as the second batch was in the heat bath, I scooted down to the store to buy another dozen for tomorrow's canning. I'm sure I will be buying even more jars before I am done! It will be so nice this winter to have pears whenever we want them.

I think I am going to play around with canning pear pie filling, too. Pear pie is one of my favorites (that and cherry), and we usually only have it in the fall, but it would be so nice to make a crust, pour a jar of pear pie filling into it and bake it in the cold winter months, too. I'll let you know how it goes!

Happy Fall, everyone!
~Pippi

5 lessons about the way we treat people

2009-09-14T16:42:00.001-06:00

Several people have sent me this in an email in the past, and as I saw it again today, I thought I'd share it with all of you, too.

P.S. Thanks, Dave! :D

5 lessons about the way we treat people

1 - First Important Lesson - Cleaning Lady.

During my second month of college, our professor gave us a pop quiz. I was a conscientious student, and had breezed through the questions until I read the last one:

"What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?"

Surely this was some kind of joke. I had seen the cleaning woman several times. She was tall, dark-haired and in her 50's, but how would I know her name?

I handed in my paper, leaving the last question blank. Just before class ended, one student asked if the last question would count toward our quiz grade.

"Absolutely, " said the professor. "In your careers, you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say "hello."

I've never forgotten that lesson. I also learned her name was Dorothy.

2. - Second Important Lesson - Pickup in the Rain

One night, at 11:30 p.m., an older African American woman was standing on the side of an Alabama highway trying to endure a lashing rain storm. Her car had broken down and she desperately needed a ride. Soaking wet, she decided to flag down the next car.

A young white man stopped to help her, generally unheard of in those conflict-filled 1960's. The man took her to safety, helped her get assistance and put her into a taxicab.

She seemed to be in a big hurry, but wrote down his address and thanked him. Seven days went by and a knock came on the man's door. To his surprise, a giant console color TV was delivered to his home.. A special note was attached.

It read:

"Thank you so much for assisting me on the highway the other night. The rain drenched not only my clothes, but also my spirits. Then you came along.
Because of you, I was able to make it to my dying husband's' bedside just before he passed away... God bless you for helping me and unselfishly serving others."

Sincerely,
Mrs. Nat King Cole.

3 - Third Important Lesson - Always remember those who serve..

In the days when an ice cream sundae cost much less, a 10-year-old boy entered a hotel coffee shop and sat at a table. A waitress put a glass of water in front of him..

"How much is an ice cream sundae?" he asked.

"Fifty cents," replied the waitress.

The little boy pulled his hand out of his pocket and studied the coins in it.

"Well, how much is a plain dish of ice cream?" he inquired.

By now more people were waiting for a table and the waitress was growing impatient.

"Thirty-five cents," she brusquely replied.

The little boy again counted his coins.

"I'll have the plain ice cream," he said.

The waitress brought the ice cream, put the bill on the table and walked away. The boy finished the ice cream, paid the cashier and left..

When the waitress came back, she began to cry as she wiped down the table. There, placed neatly beside the empty dish, were two nickels and five pennies..

You see, he couldn't have the sundae, because he had to have enough left to leave her a tip.

4 - Fourth Important Lesson. - The obstacle in Our Path.

In ancient times, a King had a boulder placed on a roadway.. Then he hid himself and watched to see if anyone would remove the huge rock. Some of the King's' wealthiest merchants and courtiers came by and simply walked around it. Many loudly blamed the King for not keeping the roads clear, but none did anything about getting the stone out of the way.

Then a peasant came along carrying a load of vegetables. Upon approaching the boulder, the peasant laid down his burden and tried to move the stone to the side of the road. After much pushing and straining, he finally succeeded. After the peasant picked up his load of vegetables, he noticed a purse lying in the road where the boulder had been. The purse contained many gold coins and a note from the King indicating that the gold was for the person who removed the boulder from the roadway. The peasant learned what many of us never understand!

Every obstacle presents an opportunity to improve our condition.

5 - Fifth Important Lesson - Giving When it Counts.....

Many years ago, when I worked as a volunteer at a hospital, I got to know a little girl named Liz who was suffering from a rare & serious disease. Her only chance of recovery appeared to be a blood transfusion from her 5-year old brother, who had
miraculously survived the same disease and had developed the antibodies needed to combat the illness. The doctor explained the situation to her little brother, and asked the little boy if he would be willing to give his blood to his sister.

I saw him hesitate for only a moment before taking a deep breath and saying, "Yes I'll do it if it will save her."

As the transfusion progressed, he lay in bed next to his sister and smiled, as we all did, seeing the color returning to her cheek Then his face grew pale and his smile faded.

He looked up at the doctor and asked with a trembling voice, "Will I start to die right away".

Being young, the little boy had misunderstood the doctor; he thought he was going to have to give his sister all of his blood in order to save her.

Have a great day!
~Pippi

More Egyptian Coils and a New Steampunk Necklace...

2009-09-04T10:42:00.009-06:00

As you know, I have been playing with the Egyptian coil technique for the past week. The whole time I was making coiled bracelets, the steampunk winged scarab I made as a demo for a step out article I recently wrote has been sitting beside me waiting to be made into something wearable. I wanted to incorporate the Egyptian coils into the chain for the pendant, but didn't want to overwhelm it with so many coils, and I only had a few feet of the 20 gauge copper wire I used for the frame of the pendant left - not enough to make the whole chain using the Egyptian coil technique, anyway. Another challenge I faced with this piece was how to attach the chain to the pendant.

As I looked at the wire wrapped scarab, waiting for the ideas in my head to come together, I decided to echo the spirals at the ends of the wings in the chain by making two sections of Egyptian coils, but with more open coils like the wings, and wrapping them with matching seed beads and watch parts, to tie the designs together. I had just enough of the 20 gauge wire to make six links - three for each side, and a shorter piece left over that I used to make the bail for the pendant. I also had some 5mm round Swarovski crystal beads left over from a bracelet I made for my daughter for Christmas last year that matched the seed beads, and I used these to make the chain, to give the necklace a bit more sparkle.

Each of the Egyptian coil links was wrapped with 4 feet of hair-thin wire, seed beads, and selected watch parts, and linked through the next. I didn't wrap a stone into the center of the coils like I did on the bracelets I'd made, as I wanted them to have free movement as part of the chain. The weight of the pendant helps keep the Egyptian links lined up when worn.

The bail was a bit trickier, and I doodled in my notebook for a while until I came up with the shape I wanted for it, and an idea of how I would attach it. I echoed the wrapped seedbeads from the wings around the top center of the bail, and wrapped one of the Swarovski beads into the loop, then curled the sides around and over the top of the wings to make loops to attach the chain. This also gave the scarab what looked like a head with curled antennae.

The bulk of the chain is made up of the wire wrapped Swarovski crystal beads. I added a couple of double coiled copper links to the chain, to give it some variation, and used a large, open gear at the top of one of the Egyptian coil sections to attach it to the rest of the chain. And, to finish the design, I made a coiled hook clasp, which I hammered flat, to bring it all together, so to speak.

This piece turned out better than I'd hoped, and gave me some ideas for the next piece I am working on for the Etsy Wire Artisans Guild's September Theme Challenge - Pirates. I will be continuing my experimentations with the Egyptian Coil technique in this challenge piece, using ideas from the necklace I just completed.

Stay tuned!:D
~Pippi

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

2009-09-03T12:43:00.004-06:00

Years ago, when I worked on my friends' organic farm, harvesting would begin early in the morning, and we would take a break around noon for lunch. When the zucchinis were producing like mad, Katherine would make up a big pan of chocolate zucchini cake from her mother's recipe, and we would hurry through our lunch, so we could pig out on her cake for dessert. It is a great way to use up a bunch of zucchini! I wrote down her recipe, but lost it somewhere in one of my moves, but often thought about how yummy it was.

So, when my neighbors told me to help myself to the stuff in their garden while they were away, and I found two huge zucchinis, my first thought was chocolate zucchini cake! I looked through all of my cook books for the recipe I'd copied, but to no avail, so I decided to just wing it. Mine turned out so well, I decided to share the recipe with you all. This one is really rich and chocolatey! (and a great way to disguise zucchini for your kids!) :D

Pippi's Chocolate Zucchini Cake

Ingredients

2 cups (organic) flour (I use 1 cup white, and 1 cup whole wheat)
1-1/2 cup organic cane sugar
3/4 - 1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (I use Dagoba Organic Cacao Powder)
2-1/2 tsp baking powder (I use Rumford's non-aluminum baking powder)
1/2 tsp. sea salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
freshly grated nutmeg (optional)
4 eggs
1-1/2 cups (organic) olive oil
3 cups grated zucchini
5 oz. dark chocolate, chopped (I use Scharffen Berger 72% cacao chocolate - Chocolate chips work well, too.)
3/4 cup chopped nuts (or substitute 1 cup of rolled oats if you don't like nuts)

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a spring-form pan (a 9" x 13" pan will work, too).

In a large mixing bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and cocoa powder until well blended.

In a smaller bowl, whisk together the oil and eggs, and add to the dry ingredients. Mix well. Fold in the zucchini, chopped chocolate and nuts/oats until they are evenly distributed throughout the batter. Pour into the cake pan.

Bake in the preheated oven for 50-60 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool the cake completely in the pan, before turning it out onto a plate. You can eat it as is, or frost with your favorite chocolate frosting. Enjoy!

Egyptian Coil Variations

2009-09-01T15:24:00.010-06:00

I have been meaning to try my hand at making an Egyptian Coil bracelet for some time now, and finally did it. And, of course, I couldn't stop at just one!

I followed a free tutorial on the blog of a fellow jewelry artist, Marie Christine, but added some small beads wrapped into the center of each coil, which I had seen on an Egyptian coil bracelet made by Delia Stone (though she tells me that she borrowed the idea from another artist, too).

My first attempt was done in 20 gauge copper wire, with tundra sapphires wrapped into the coils. I wanted the clasp to echo the spiral design, and fashioned my clasp with a large faceted nugget of moonstone. I had already made the chain, and wired the small stones into it, when I decided this, so I had to make the clasp while attached to the rest of the bracelet. A bit awkward, but it worked out. I was very pleased with how well it turned out, and immediately decided that I should make one in silver, too.

For this variation, I used 21 gauge sterling wire for the coiled links, and hammered them before linking them together. I raided my bead stash for stones to wrap into the chain, and ended up using the last of my little faceted amethyst beads. I didn't have enough of the small ones for the clasp, so I used some slightly bigger rondels around the faceted amethyst nugget in the clasp. It ended up looking quite stunning! I forgot to make the clasp first (again) and so had to build this one while attached to the bracelet, too.

I loved how the copper one looked so much, I decided to make another one, and finally made the clasp first! I used a gorgeous handmade lampwork bead by a talented Salt Lake City glass artist, Scott Tanner. (I bought my set from him on eBay, but am happy to announce that he now sells his work on Etsy!) I decided to go smaller with the beads set in the coils, and used bicolor green seed beads on this bracelet. They pick up the greens in the lampwork bead very nicely!

So here I am - three bracelets in three days, and I still haven't had enough of this design. I decided that I am going to make an Egyptian Coil chain for the steampunk piece I made up for a step out article for the Winter 2009 issue of Belle Amoire Jewelry magazine. I'm still playing around with ideas in my head before I start, but I'm sure that by this evening, I will be coiling away! I'll let you know how it turns out.

Glad you stopped by!
~Pippi

foxyfindings.com August Facebook Contest

2009-08-20T20:11:00.007-06:00

As I was checking in on Facebook today, I saw the posting for a contest on FoxyFinding's Facebook page.

Here's what you have to do to enter the contest:

1. Head over to www.foxyfindings.com and find that special item that catches your eye.

2. Write a blog post about the item. Why you love it, what piece of jewelry you’d like to use it in, how it inspires you. Let us know what you love!

3. Post the link on our fan page wall at www.facebook.com/foxyfindings

4. Get your friends to “like” your post! The top “liked” post at the end of the contest will win a $50 shopping spree on FoxyFindings.com!

5. Plus, voters have a chance to win! We will randomly choose a voter from the top “liked” post for a chance to win another $50 shopping spree on Foxy Finding!

A $50 shopping spree? and all I have to do is share what I want to make with some of the amazing beads they have to offer? How could I resist? :D

So, I went to www.foxyfindings.com, and found these lovely rhyolite beads. As soon as I saw them, they reminded me of a beautiful picture jasper bead I used in my most recent skull bracelet.

When I made this bracelet, I thought it would be fun to make a similar bracelet, but with the wrapped teardrop stones on both ends, and multi-stone chains between them. Sadly, that was the last of those jasper stones in my stash, but these beautiful, mossy green stones would make a perfect substitute! And with $50, not only I could buy the rhyolite beads, but I could find some fun beads to make up the chains in between, too! In fact, there would be more than enough to make two bracelets!

So here's what I will do, to sweeten the pot even more: If I win, I will have a little contest of my own, and everyone who leaves me a comment here, as well as liking my post on foxyfindings' page will be put into a drawing, and if I win the contest, I will make one of these bracelets just for you!

To 'like' my post and cast your vote, click here. Thanks!

You all have until the end of this month to get your votes in. ;)
Cheers!
~Pippi

Apricots!

2009-08-14T15:56:00.008-06:00

My neighbor called me to let me know that the apricots on her tree were ready to make into jam, and told me to come get some. Hooray! I love apricot jam! I went over today to pick my first batch for jam making, and went to the store to get more jars. (I filled all I had with blueberry jam last month.) Another friend is letting me borrow her food dehydrator, so I will be drying a bunch, too.

This first batch of apricots was photographed in some of my beautiful pottery bowls made by the talented artist, Amy Palatnick. I will be featuring her later this month here in my blog. You can find her selling her work at the Saturday Market in Eugene, Oregon, or in her new shop on Etsy: www.amypalatnick.etsy.com

This recipe from Molly Katzen's Enchanted Broccoli Forest cookbook is my all-time favorite coffee cake recipe. I often make this cake for myself for my birthday, but both apricot jam and dried fruit are expensive, so I don't make it as often as I would like. And since my neighbor is sharing the fruits of her bountiful apricot tree, and I am making both jam and dried apricots, I will be making this coffee cake through the winter. Yum! :D

Russian Coffee Cake

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 cup (packed) light brown sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups unbleached white flour
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk at room temperature

Filling:
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup almonds
1/2 cup shredded unsweetened coconut
1/2 cup peach or apricot jam
1/2 cup dried apricots, minced

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Generously grease a standard-size tube or bundt pan.
2. Place the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl. Cream together with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each. Stir in the vanilla.
3. Sift together the flours, baking powder, soda, and salt into a separate medium-sized bowl.
4. Add the dry mixture and the buttermilk alternately to the butter mixture (dry/wet/dry/wet/dry). Mix just well enough to thoroughly blend after each addition. Don't beat or otherwise overmix.
5. Place the chocolate chips and almonds in a blender jar. Whirl together in short spurts until ground into a coarse powder. Combine this with the coconut in a small bowl.
6. Spoon half the batter into the prepared pan, gently spreading it until even. Spoon small amounts of jam here and there onto the batter. (Don't try to spread it - just leave it in little blobs.) Sprinkle on the apricots and about 2/3 of the chocolate-nut mix.
7. Add the remaining batter, distributing it nicely. Sprinkle with the rest of the chocolate mix, and bake the cake for 45-55 minutes - until a probing knife inserted all the way in comes out clean. Allow to cool completely before removing from the pan.

My husband tells me that apricots are actually related to plums, and were first cultivated in India. They need a cold winters to produce fruit, and even temperatures for pollination. They tend to bloom around the Vernal equinox, and often the flowers are killed by Spring frosts. They do really well here in our sheltered mountain valley, and this year enjoyed warm temperatures while they were blooming, so there are a lot this year!

Last fall, my landlords came over to help me move compost in the garden, and there was one pile in the alley that was full of apricot pits (from the neighbor's tree). When I was weeding the beds this Spring, I saved some of the apricot starts, and planted them in a big pot. I plan on splitting them into their own pots this fall, and hope to nurture them long enough to plant them as small trees for future apricot crops.

When life gives you the pits, plant trees!
As always, thanks for stopping by!
~Pippi

Procrastination....

2009-08-12T13:13:00.010-06:00

I'm supposed to be cleaning the house. That is the big TO DO item on my list for today, but I am procrastinating. Instead of sweeping and mopping the kitchen, or vacuuming, or dusting, I am sitting here at my desk, checking my Facebook and posting on Twitter. So, since I am putting off what I should be doing, I figured I would at least make this computer time productive and write a post for my blog.

So what have I been doing since my last post? The biggest project I've been working on is a tutorial for making my seahorse design. So many people have asked me to make one, but I have been a little intimidated by doing so. I finally decided to take the plunge! I have a good portion of it done, but weather and computer glitches have slowed down my progress lately. I am back on track, and pushing to finish it this week.

The weekend after my friend's wedding, an old friend of ours from our Collins Bike Shop days was in town. It is always a pleasure spending time with Tom! That saturday that he was here, he decided to drive up to Stanley for the folk festival, and took us and our tandem as far as Galena Lodge before heading over the pass. Carlos and I had been wanting to ride the old toll road over the pass, and this way we didn't have to ride all the way up from Hailey first. We had planned on riding the toll road last year on our bike trip, but weren't able to find the road (it was there, just under a marsh). This time, we consulted with Don Shepler, who is one of the caretakers at Galena Lodge, and he told us how to find the trail. We had to ride on the highway for about a mile before the trail continued past the marsh. It was a warm, sunny day, and the trail was steep, but we made it to the top of the pass, where we ate sandwiches from our perch overlooking the Salmon River headwaters and the Stanley Basin. Lovely! We rode back to Hailey via the Harriman Trail, rode along the highway for a few miles until we reached the Wood River Trail, and took that the rest of the way back home. We rode a total of about 75 miles, of which at least 50 was off road, and only 5 miles on actual roads! Whew!

The next day we went on a ride with our friend, Tom. We hadn't ridden the Cold Springs trail on Baldy since the Castle Rock fire in 2007, so we decided to ride up Cold Springs, and down Warm Springs. The back side of Baldy burned right to the ski boundary (a little over), and the trail on that side of the mountain was very different from its pre-fire days! What was once a hobbit-like trail twisting through the trees was now open, with blackened tree trunks as far as the eye could see. However, nature is amazing in its ability to recover, and the hillsides from top to bottom were covered with a sea of pink wild hollyhocks! It was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen! Sorry, I didn't bring my camera - it's too hard trying to take pictures during a bike ride.

The next weekend, we went on another ride with friends, and I DID take my camera! We rode up Kinsey Creek and down Curran Creek. The ride was only 10.6 miles, but the climbs were steep and the trail fairly technical. It was a great ride! There was one point where the trail crossed a sea of lupines. The smell was intoxicating!

Last tuesday, I went with the folks from Sagebrush riding arena to Camp Rainbow Gold, and we did riding sessions with the kids. It was an amazing day!

During the off-times from working on the seahorse tutorial, I had to make SOMETHING, so in the evenings, while my husband and I relaxed and watched old Doctor Who episodes, I played with my wire and made some more copper and seed bead seahorses. It was relaxing to be able to just make one without having to photograph each step. I also made a coiled wire basket, which I am very pleased with. I'm thinking about ways to incorporate tiny baskets in my jewelry. We'll see what I come up with.

OK, now that I've cought you up on my doings, I really must get off the computer and get my house cleaned!
Thanks for procrastinating with me!
~PIppi

Kelly & Mike's Wedding

2009-07-23T13:37:00.012-06:00

My husband and I drove to Oregon this past weekend for our friends' wedding in Portland. It was a busy few days with a lot of driving, but great fun in all. Everywhere along our route, we saw fields of summer hay in various stages of harvest. In some places, the bales lined up in the field stretched for miles.

Carlos had to do some computer work for the University of Oregon, so we drove to Eugene first. We decided to take the scenic route through eastern Oregon, rather than the interstate. Highway 26 winds through the Blue Mountains, and passes by the John Day Fossil Beds. We took a slight detour to see the Painted Hills section. Carlos had ridden his bike along that route years ago, traveling from Pocatello to Eugene, and had told me about the hills a number of times, so we had to stop, being so close. Even as we drove along the road to the lookout, the colors of the hills that rose up from the roadside were spectacular. I kept wanting to stop to take a picture, but Carlos said the best views were at the top, so I waited. It was definitely worth the wait! Magnificent!

We arrived in Eugene late thursday night, and slept on our friends' fold-out couch. On friday, while Carlos was at the university, I took advantage of my time by seeking out and buying a flat of organic blueberries from Royal Blue, and spent several hours visiting my friend, Katlyn, with whom I went to massage school. It was nice to relax and catch up! I met up with Carlos later in the afternoon, and we went to our favorite restaurant, Yi Shen. They also have an asian foods market as part of their store, so we stocked up on our favorite soy sauce, and some other things we can't get here in Hailey. After a delicious meal, we hit the highway for Portland.

Kelly and Mike were hosting a potluck dinner with family and friends on friday night, and we made it in plenty of time to join in. We spent the night on Kelly and Mike's fold-out couch that night, so I could help with some of the wedding stuff in the morning. Kelly's friend, Deni, and I went to the Portland Farmers Market early saturday morning to pick up the flowers for the wedding. As we walked through the market, I was wondering if any of the farmers I knew were there, and right across from the flower vendor was the stand for Wintergreen Farm, and my friend, Chris working the stand. I worked with his wife, Shannon, for years at Horton Road Organics. I love it when that happens!

Deni dropped me and the flowers off at Kelly and Mike's house, and I joined them and Carlos for a breakfast of homemade waffles, while Kelly went with her mom and aunt to get their hair and makeup done for the wedding. (As you may remember, I wrote about the crown Kelly wore for her wedding in an earlier post: Pearl Blossom Wedding Crown )The stylist did a beautiful job of arranging the crown in Kelly's hair. She looked beautiful!

The wedding took place at the Edgefield McMenamins. They had rented the Administrators house and garden for the wedding, and we had the house for the night, so guests stayed in rooms there. The service was simple, yet meaningful. Kelly and Mike were positively glowing! The minister was very good, and they had a great photographer documenting the event. I took a lot of pictures with my camera (and also with Kelly's mom's camera while she was in the pictures), and posted them on Facebook for them as soon as we got home, so they would have some to share right away. Mike and Kelly had planned on having music play on their ipod after the harpist finished, but the band, The Decemberists, happened to be playing at the hotel that night, so we had great music for free, too!

Carlos and I stocked up on bottles of McMenamins beer to bring back with us, and we had a delicious breakfast in the Black Rabbit restaurant at The Edgefield. The Edgefield is on the eastern end of Portland, so we were able to jump onto the highway and drive back without having to deal with driving through the city, which saved us almost an hour of driving. The drive home was smooth, and we were happy to sleep in our own bed again when we got home.

Ketchum Arts Festival

2009-07-15T14:50:00.017-06:00

The day after we got back from Spokane, I had to get set up for the Ketchum Arts Festival up in Sun Valley. This was my first time doing an outdoor show, and I was a little bit nervous, not knowing what to expect, but after 13 years of doing the Lane County Farmers Market booth for Horton Road Organics, I figured I'd be OK. On one of the blogs I follow, the artist shared her checklist for shows, so I used her template, and added things I needed. I bought a new Swissgear 10ft. canopy tent and 2' x 4' folding tables from Amazon.com, and designed new business cards. I already had display stands from past trunk shows, and earlier in the year I bought some glass topped display cases, so people could see everything easily, and it looked professional. My set up changed from day to day, as Grace and I fine tuned it, with the last day being the best display. I only got a picture of the first day's set up.

My daughter, Grace, was such a help! She worked with me all three days of the festival, settting up in the mornings, greating and assisting customers, and packing the jewelry to bring home each night. It was so nice to spend the weekend sitting outside with her.

The first day was my best day. I sold several of my seahorses and Eni Oken style coiled bangle bracelets, and made enough that if I didn't sell anything else the whole weekend, I would have been happy. Saturday brought a lot of lookers to my booth, and I gave out dozens of my cards to customers, so they could also shop for my work through my Etsy shop. Sunday was another busy sales day, and the day I did a number of fantastic trades with other artists at the show. I traded a necklace and a pair of earrings for a beautiful oil painting of a pinto horse by Timi Savier. She also does beautiful bronze castings. You can check out her works on her website: www.belcavallo.com

I also traded another necklace and earrings for a beautiful, organic gold ring set with a faceted pink tourmaline by Bob Rodman, a jeweler from the town of Fairfield, ID, which is just a few miles west of here. My last trade was a pair of earrings for a beautiful reclaimed pine mirror with a beautiful mountain scene burned into the top of the mirror, and a heron in a pond on the bottom corner. The pond that the heron is standing in is made from a ring in the grain of the wood. I also bought a purple, pottery bowl from Regina of Personalized Pottery from Pocatello, ID. She also shows her pottery in The Loft here in Hailey. Check out her website, too! www.masakpottery.com

My friend and neighbor, Colleen Pace, of For The Birds, makes whimsical, edible birdhouses, and has done the Ketchum Arts Festival for years. This year, she won the best booth award, and with good reason! Her booth looked so beautiful! I am working with her to help her set up an Etsy shop, and will let you know when it is up and running.

I collected information from a number of other artists at the show whose work I really liked. Here are the web site addresses for those who have one:

Helen Glidden was the painted silk artist who was set up right next to me. Such beautiful work!
www.hgliddenartist.com

I have been a fan of Melissa Graves Brown's paintings since I first moved to Hailey! She has a number of her paintings shown locally at CK's Restaurant and in Galena Lodge, and she just opened a store in downtown Hailey. I hope to one day own some of her work.
www.melissagravesbrown.com

Karen McCall of Ketchum makes wonderful hand-painted floor cloths:
www.karenmccallart.com

The photography of Joe Bauwens and Marybeth Flower is stunning!
www.piazzabook.com

Kathryn McNeal is another artist who shows her work in The Loft. Her mountain scenes are quite popular!
www.kathrynmcneal.com

I bought a number of bars of the wonderful, handmade soaps from Susanne Schlador of Lavande De Bois.
www.lavandedebois.com

All in all, I had a great time, and look forward to doing the festival again next year!
Thanks for coming by! 'Til next time!
~Pippi

Spokane and Back

2009-07-09T15:54:00.015-06:00

My yard sale on the 4th of July was a success, and the next thing on my busy July list was driving to Spokane to pick up my daughter from her visit at her sister's place. We decided to drive up to Spokane through western Idaho, then we cut over into Washington by Lewiston, and took a smaller highway north to Spokane.

We drove up over Galena Pass to Stanley, then through Lowman and McCall. The scenery was fantastic, and the weather could not have been better! A couple of summers ago, when the Castle Rock wildfire was burning outside of Ketchum, there was also a big burn near Lowman. When the burned area came into view, it was deceiving at first as to what it was, because the new undergrowth was SO green! The road snaked along the south fork of the Payette river, with mountains rising steeply from the other side of the road.

As we were driving through the town of Cascade, I spied a wire sculpture of a bighorn ram, and had my husband swing around the block so I could snap a picture. I wish I had had time to stop and take a closer look at how they constructed it. We stopped in McCall at a microbrewery for an early dinner, and we sat out on the upstairs balcony, enjoying the fresh air and the view.

The drive to Spokane took us 2 hours longer than if we'd taken the interstate, but it was so much prettier, and there was very little traffic. The worst driving part was the few miles of interstate we had to take into Spokane, because there was construction, and we crawled along for over half an hour to go 4 miles.

We arrived at my daughter's apartment around 10:30 pm, and hung out for a little while before going to sleep. The next morning, I made waffles for breakfast (I brought my waffle iron along with me.), then we turned around and headed back to Hailey. We decided to take the interstate going back, to save time, so we got to drive through part of western Montana, which I had never seen before. It is so beautiful! There were mountains all around, and the reason they call Montana the "big sky" country was very apparent.

Just outside of Missoula, we discovered the location of Jellystone Park! Yogi Bear's picture was even on the mailbox in front.

From Missoula, we took highway 93 through Salmon and Challis.

We traded driving in Salmon, and I made sure to stop near the old Model T Ford we passed on the way into town, so I could take a picture of it, too, then cut over Trail Creek pass into Sun Valley on the way home. We had just enough light to see on the skinny, windy, gravel road over Trail Creek. The edge of the road drops off very steeply, and I was glad that Carlos drove that part, and happier still when we were on the paved road again!

Today, I went up and set up my tent for the Ketchum Arts Festival. I will be finishing up pricing, etc. this afternoon, and the festival starts tomorrow morning.

Wish me luck!
~Pippi

July Will Fly!

2009-07-02T15:47:00.011-06:00

The months seem to fly by, anyway, but this month is particularly busy, so it will seem more rapid than most. I'm starting off my "month of July extravaganza" with a yard sale this saturday - July 4th. It should be a good day for it, as the Main street traffic reroutes down our street for the parade. I have been working all week, pulling old things up out of my basement and cupboards, and sorting through the boxes that never made it past the garage when we moved across the street 3-1/2 years ago. I am SO ready to lighten my load! I already sold $100 worth of camping gear and Carlos' old leather telemark boots to a friend who gave Carlos a ride home from work the other day.

I have slowed down on making jewelry, as there is so much to do! Still, I did make a few fun things. I finished the necklace for Sagebrush Arena's 18th annual 'Cowboy Ball' silent auction. I knitted a copper chain to go with the copper horse I'd made earlier, and figured out how to make the bail the way I wanted it for the pendant. I used one continuous piece of copper wire over 50 feet long for the chain, using a 3-pin knitting technique, not unlike spool knitting. I think it will go well in their auction. I also played around with ideas for lucky 4-leaf clover jewelry. Here are my first two attempts.

While all this fun is going on, I also have to get ready for the Ketchum Arts Festival the following weekend, with a quick 2 days (tuesday & wednesday) of driving to pick my daughter up from visiting her sister in Spokane in the middle of the week. We are driving up and back through the middle (as much as one can) of Idaho, rather than taking the interstate, and I will be taking my camera, so I can share the beautiful scenery with you later. Thursday is set up day for the arts festival, and I will be there friday, saturday, and sunday all day selling my jewelry. I have been taking breaks from yard sale detail to make up a bunch of fun, 1-inch buttons to sell in my booth, too. I have been selling them at The Loft, and they are quite popular!

I will have a whole 5 days after the arts festival to rest up and get ready to drive to Portland the following weekend for my friend's wedding, where I will take pictures of the wedding crown I made in action! Hopefully, the end of the month will quiet down some, and I can get back to making jewelry and relax a bit.

And now, back to moving stuff out into the garage for the yard sale.
Wish me luck! :D
~Pippi

Solstice Ride 2009

2009-06-24T13:32:00.014-06:00

We did our annual solstice ride yesterday. (It was a couple of days late, because it was dumping buckets of rain on the actual solstice.) Every year, there is a group ride on an 18 mile loop of trails in the mountains west of town. We meet at Wolftone Creek, and ride up the North Fork Deer Creek Trail, then loop along Mars Ridge and come back down Howard's Trail. The ride starts after work (usually around 5pm) and then we all have a cookout at the campground where we park. This year, we had a group of about 17 riders.

The beginning of the ride was interesting, as a quarter mile of road on the way to the trailhead was washed out by the creek jumping its bed at a bend near the road. It was shallow enough, and the gravel underneath stable enough that we were able to ride through the stream, and we only hit one deep spot where our feet got a little wet. I was smart to bring extra dry socks with me.

The weather was perfect, and as long as you were moving at least at a walking pace, the mosquitos weren't any problem. Our problems did start after a stop to regroup about 5 miles in. We hit the trail again, and were probably about 6-7 miles in when the drive chain on our tandem broke on a steep climb. Carlos and I waited for the next rider to come up behind us, to see if they had a spare chain link with them. Normally we have one in our packs, but we also use our hydration packs in the winter for skiing, and take out all of the bike tools. Unfortunately, the master links didn't make it back into the camelbaks this spring. The next rider up the trail was Nathan, and he did have spare links. Carlos sat and fixed the chain, while I held up the bike and tried to keep the mosquitos from eating Carlos as he worked. We got it fixed, and rode for a ways before it broke again on another steep climb (the section of chain Nathan gave us had just popped out completely) We walked up the trail pushing the bike (to avoid mosquitos), until the next rider caught up to us, but he didn't have a link, so we had to turn back. The nice thing about all that climbing was it was mostly downhill going back to the parking area, and we were able to coast back without any trouble.

Since we got back early, we got the campfire started, so when the rest of the group made its way back in, the fire was burning merrily. Normally, it is too dry for a campfire, but with the month of rain we had, there was no danger of the fire getting out of control. Everyone brought something to contribute to the cookout afterwards, but the elk and antelope kabobs were by far the highlight of the fare. We made our way back home around midnight, took showers and fell asleep almost immediately. An excellent way to spend the day/evening with friends! Carlos and I plan on going back with just a couple of friends and doing the whole ride, since we didn't get to finish it yesterday.

Thanks for stopping in!
'Til next time,
~Pippi

Summer is here! (finally!...)

2009-06-23T14:27:00.007-06:00

This has been the strangest spring I've seen since I moved here! We live in the mountains, and spring is usually dry, but we have had all the rain that Seattle hasn't for the past 3-4 weeks. It was so dark from rainclouds that I often had to turn on the lights inside during the middle of the day! Finally, though, the rainy weather has broken, and we are back to our usual sunny skies. I am glad, as tonight is our annual summer solstice (a bit late) mountain bike ride. Every year, a group of us ride one of the mountain trails nearby, then have a cookout afterwards. I always look forward to the cookout after the ride, as there is usually some good food happening, and tonight will be no exception. Antelope kabobs are on the menu, along with side dishes, and I made up a batch of peanut butter cookies last night, which will be dessert tonight.

Our ride will take several hours, and several thousand feet of hard climbing, with exhilerating downhills. The plan is to ride up Mars Ridge, and come back down north fork Deer Creek trail. I haven't been up in that area since before the Castle Rock wildfire, which raged through the area a couple of summers ago. It will be interesting to see how the fire changed the landscape, and what wildflowers are blooming there now. With all of the rain we've been getting, the flowers should be spectacular! (I'll bring my camera, and try to snap a few pictures. Not always easy when riding.)

I made the most of the rainy weather we had, and have been making jewelry (as usual). I found a tutorial for making pretty pearl flowers on one of the blogs I follow. The blog is in Hungarian, but the pictures are very good, and I was able to follow them to figure out how to make the design. Here is the link to the tutorial: http://kricsar.blogspot.com/2009/06/tutorial-3.html
I was really pleased with how it turned out! My husband just got a new set of strings for his viola, so I have been recycling his silver-wound strings into necklace cords by adding a jumpring through the ferrule, and wrapping a lobster clasp onto the other end. It makes a nice, light-weight necklace with clean lines, which don't detract from the pendants I hang from them.

I also made yet another skull bracelet, this time pairing the turquoise skull with a wire wrapped ocean jasper with gorgeous markings on it. I only have three of these skull beads left, and don't know if I will find them again (though I always look), so they are extra special to me, and I want to do them justice by making them into something really beautiful.

I have to keep this short, as I need to get my riding clothes, etc, together to leave soon.
Happy summer to you all!
~Pippi

Raining Turquoise Skull Bracelets

2009-06-18T13:37:00.017-06:00

It has been raining here every day for several weeks now, quite uncommon weather for our mountain valley, but it has been very conducive to working in the garden, and I have been doing a lot of that lately! I recently started a project to edge the beds in my front yard with flush-set, flat stones, to give the beds more definition, and to make mowing easier (I can just roll the mower right up to the edge of the grass, without needing to use a weed wacker.) We get clear patches in the weather where the sun comes out and things dry up somewhat, and I weed and plant, and when the rains drive me indoors, I make jewelry. Not a bad life! :D

I have been making more of my asymmetrical bracelets lately. I was originally inspired by a bracelet I saw in a Sundance catalog, and have made a number of bracelets of a similar design. For these bracelets, I make a section of tiny wire wrapped stone chains, and couple them with larger, unique beads and findings to make my bracelets. My newest favorite is my Ganesh bracelet. I traded with another Etsy seller for the silver Ganesh finding, and used an orange and purple color scheme, as it reminds me of India. I used earthy-colored tundra sapphires for the multi chains on the bracelet, wrapping them with fine silver wire, then grouped them with a big faceted nugget of amethyst, and a carnelian faceted round, capped with Thai silver bead caps.

After I finished the Ganesh bracelet, I still wanted to play with this bracelet design, and I had a few turquoise skull beads left in my stash, and decided to make another skull bracelet, using turquoise and coral. As I was working on this bracelet, a friend emailed me and asked if I could make her a skull bracelet, too. She wanted all turquoise for hers, and I modified the design a bit, to take advantage of a cool, Tibetan silver charm I'd been saving for a special project to use in the design.

I really liked how her bracelet turned out, and it seems whenever I start making pieces with turquoise, I end up making several. This time was no exception. After finishing the two skull bracelets, I made a turquoise pendant netted with fine silver wire, and strung it on a necklace made from one of my husband's used, silver-wound viola strings. I added a jump ring through the ferrule, and wrapped a sterling lobster clasp onto the other end with half-round sterling wire.

After I finish up my chores for today, I am going back to work on the jewelry for the upcoming benefit for Sagebrush Equine Training Center for the Handicapped (www.sagebrushequine.org). I volunteer there every week. They offer 130 free riding sessions a week to handicapped people and at-risk youth, and are able to do so through the generous donations of time by over 200 volunteers. Very cool! I am working on some horse-themed jewelry designs for the silent auction. I'll share what I make here, too.

Thanks for stopping in!
~Pippi

A Busy May

2009-05-26T15:22:00.010-06:00

The weeks have flown by since my last post, and even though I haven't written here, I have been doing and making a lot! It seems the trees have leafed out overnight, and I have been spending lots of time out in the garden, pulling weeds, and getting ready to plant. The other day I had the windows open, as the weather was quite warm, and the intoxicating smell of pear blossoms filled the house while I worked on a piece of jewelry. Heavenly!

After finishing Kelly's wedding crown, I was still enamoured by those lovely keishi pearls, and made a couple more pairs of earrings with them. I have been working like mad, making jewelry for my upcoming showing at the Ketchum Arts Festival, coming up on July 10-12. This will be my first arts festival, and I admit that I am more than a bit nervous (of what, I cannot say, just nervous). I have been trying to make pieces in a variety of price ranges, and still give free reign to my creative urges.

I made a series of hoop earrings with multiple drops, and tried my hand at wire filigree work in the style of another wire artist I admire. I also finished the second of an intricate pair of tribal style hoops I started in the winter. I'm glad I took the time to finish them, as they are exquisite!

Over Memorial Day weekend, I finally talked my husband into going to see a movie in the theaters with me. He doesn't usually care for going to the theaters, as he doesn't like people talking around him while he is watching a movie, or missing parts if nature calls. We saw the new Star Trek movie, and we both loved it! When we came home, we found the original episodes on cbs.com and have been having fun watching them again (me, curled up in my chair, making jewelry at the same time).

My latest project was inspired by a piece by another artist friend. She had made a wire wrapped lotus blossom pendant, which I liked the shape of, so as we watched Star Trek reruns, I began sketching out my version. I wanted mine to incorporate wire filigree, and then I had a sudden inspiration to add a row of rainbow stones for each chakra. I had one beautiful blue tourmaline bead I'd been saving for something special, and soon gathered the other colors from my gemstone stash. The pendant grew quickly, and turned out even better than I had hoped.

Now on to my next jewelry projects, and planting my garden!
Thanks for stopping by!
~Pippi
~

Pearl Blossom Wedding Crown

2009-05-07T12:55:00.010-06:00

Kelly has been my best friend for almost 15 years now, so when she told me she was getting married and needed a headpiece, I knew I would have to make her something really special!

When my girls were little, Kelly lived next door to us, and so, in addition to my daughters wearing my braided daisy crowns, Kelly often got one, too. She always loved wearing flowers in her hair. I decided to make pearl blossoms like the earrings I made earlier, so her wedding flowers would last a long time, but was having trouble picturing the actual crown.

One lazy Saturday afternoon, my husband and I decided to lay down for a nap. As I was dozing off, I suddenly saw in my mind how the crown would look! Nap forgotton, I got up and immediately started sketching it in my jewelry notebook, so I wouldn't lose the idea. I was thinking at the time, that it would convert into a necklace, so that she could wear it for more than just her wedding. Knowing Kelly, even if it didn't convert to a necklace, she'd find a place to wear it! I had an old issue of Bead & Button magazine with an article by Sherry Serafini on how to make a beaded collar, so I used the measurements from her directions to plan out this tiara/collar.

I bent and hammered the sterling wire for the frame, and started wrapping it with fine silver wire. I had to use long sections of wire to complete the weave on the frame without noticable breaks. It is almost impossible to join a wire in the middle of this weave without it showing, and I wanted this to be perfect. Usually, when I am wrapping a piece, I use a piece of wire not more than 2 feet long, as the wire becomes work-hardened and more brittle as it is manipulated. For this piece, I used pieces from 3 to 12 feet in length. I had to be very careful as I wrapped to avoid bending or stretching the wire as I worked, but still wrapping it tightly. From time to time, I would lay out the pieces with the pearl blossom earrings I had made, to help me visualize where it was going.

After I wrapped both sides, I had to decide how they would join together. My original sketch was a bit vague here, and I would often sit with it on my lap for some time, playing with design ideas in my mind. I finally came up with a gently curving piece with a wider woven section across the center, to stabilize the design. Here, the finished frame is ready to add the keishi pearl blossoms.

Kelly told me that her other wedding jewelry was sparkly crystal/diamond style, so for the stamens of the blossoms I used Swarovski AB crystals for added sparkle. Each flower alone took me 1-1/2 hours to construct, and incorporates almost 7 feet of wire to make a 1 inch flower. For the chain, I also used Swarovski crystals to make the chain, and echoed the leaf design from the collier for the shape of the clasps. The leaf clasp is woven with the same design as the frame of the crown on the top half, then coiled on the bottom half, and closes much like a safety pin, for a secure closure. A smaller keishi pearl rests on the spiral of the clasp, like the buds on the crown.

So now that it is finished, I am spending a little time looking at it, before I send it off. It is always so strange to me that something this beautiful can come out of my mind and hands! I am thankful for my gift, and happy to be able to share it with all of you!

all the best,
~Pippi

Variations On Themes

2009-04-25T14:10:00.014-06:00

When I develope a new design, I usually make several variations of it, as I explore using different colors and shapes in the design. Yesterday, as I experimented with this earwire design, I decided to remake an old pair of well-loved earrings. (Lately, I have been looking through all of my old earrings, which I made when I first started wire wrapping, and remaking them with my much improved skills.)

Years ago, when I lived in Eugene, I would often come across a box of stuff someone left on the curbside for free. In one of these free boxes, I found a plastic tub with random earring parts. In it was one of a pair of amber earrings with leaf-shaped amber drops, missing one of the drops, with only the broken wire remaining. There were two pieces of amber left, so I rewrapped them with silver wire and wore them for a number of years as simple leverback earrings. These amber drops are now paired with varying shades of tundra sapphire faceted rondels wrapped onto the earwires. They are so much more dramatic now!

The first pair of these earwires I made were used on a set of variations of pearl blossom earrings. I liked how the wires turned out, and desided to try them in several different variations. I used more of the keshi pearls which inspired the pearl blossom earrings, this time as falling petals. I love when the apple and pear trees' flowers are ending, and the petals fall off like snow!

The other design which I have been making variations of lately is this pearl blossom design. They were inspired by the beautiful string of freshwater keishi pearls I recently bought. As soon as I saw them, I thought of flower petals! Here are the pairs of earrings I have made so far. I am working on a tutorial for this design, which should be out later this spring. I used faceted amethyst for the stamens on the first pair. I liked the design so much, I had to make a pair for myself, and used tiny faceted spinels for the stamens on mine.

I used smaller fresh water keishi pearls for the petals on the third pair, making the flowers smaller, and I wrapped tiny peridot round beads onth the petal frames. The stamens on the mini flowers are topped with tiny round garnet beads, and they look more like plum blossoms to me.

The backs of the flower petals for this design was inspired by an ancient pair of Croatian filigree earrings I found in the book, Croatian National Jewelry, which a friend gave to me as a gift a few years ago. (I am half Croatian on my mother's side of the family.) The original earrings were quite elaborate, and the design I adapted was from just the top of the earrings. I love the swirling spirals!

I have some other completely different designs I am working on, too, but I'll save them for next time, when I can show you pictures.

Until then, celebrate every day of your life!
all the best,
~Pippi

Steampunk Cleopatra

2009-04-09T11:30:00.007-06:00

"This will bring you luck", the stranger said.

She put on the strange, scarab necklace, and felt a slight shiver, but it passed too quickly to notice.

It soon became her favorite necklace, and after wearing it for a while, she noticed a curious thing. It started when she was sitting in a coffee house, fiddling with the necklace, when she saw a person she really wished to avoid talking to enter the shop and wave to her.

"Oh, no!", she thought.

She glanced at the scarab and saw the tiny gears start to move. Suddenly, the unwished-for person turned abruptly and left the shop without saying a word to her. Then the gears stopped again. How strange!

"That was lucky!', she thought to herself.

Soon, she noticed other times when the gears in the scarab would move, and then good things would happen. She wished she could ask the stranger who gave it to her about it, but who knew if she would ever see him again.....

I imagined this piece as a sort of temporal vortex device. The filigree wings, wrapped with fine silver wire (very conductive!) act as antenae, The gemstone crystals align the correct frequencies, and the gear work moves events in a positive path for the wearer.

I have always been a sci-fi geek, and the Steampunk genre appeals to my inner nerd. According to Wikipedia: Steampunk is a sub-genre of fantasy and speculative fiction that came into prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. The term denotes works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used—usually the 19th century, and often Victorian era England—but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy, such as fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, or real technological developments like the computer occurring at an earlier date. Other examples of steampunk contain alternate history-style presentations of "the path not taken" of such technology as dirigibles, analog computers, or digital mechanical computers (such as Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine); these frequently are presented in an idealized light, or with a presumption of functionality.

Steampunk is often associated with cyberpunk and shares a similar fanbase and theme of rebellion, but developed as a separate movement (though both have considerable influence on each other). Apart from time period and level of technological development, the main difference between cyberpunk and steampunk is that steampunk settings usually tend to be less obviously dystopian than cyberpunk, or lack dystopian elements entirely.

Various modern utilitarian objects have been modded by individual craftpersons into a pseudo-Victorian mechanical "steampunk" style, and a number of visual and musical artists have been described as steampunk.

One of my favorite steampunk/cyberpunk novels is The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson.

This is my first steampunk piece, one of many to come. The theme of this series is Tempus Fugit - time flies. The necklace is a stylized scarab with wire wrapped filigree wings. Tiny gears and jewels range along the bottom of the wings, and the Swiss clockwork body makes the body of the scarab. The wing span is 3 inches, and it is wrapped with over 14 feet of fine silver wire.

I was hesitant to post this piece in my shop, as I love it so much, I want to keep it for myself, but musn't be greedy! Besides, I know I will be making more of these!

thanks for looking!
~Pippi

Flowers and Filigree

2009-04-07T20:31:00.007-06:00

The snow is rapidly disappearing, and I've even seen a few crocuses popping their purple heads up. Though I will honestly miss the winter snow (I love to ski!), I am looking forward to flowers and mountain bike rides. So, when I stopped in the Bead Shop the other day and saw these gorgeous, petal-shaped, freshwater pearls, I knew I would have to make blossom earrings out of them. I had been looking in my book, Croatian National Jewelry, for inspiration, and found it in a pair of filigree earrings from Croatian Baranja. Each blossom is made up of over 7 feet of wire, and measures just over an inch in length (not including the leverbacks). They came together quite nicely, and are light as a flower to wear! I like them so much, I'm starting another pair (I'll have to make a pair to keep!), and, at the suggestion of a fellow wire worker, will be making a tutorial for them, too. (Thank you, Sheridan!) I see flower garland necklaces, rings, and crowns in the future, too!

My other jewelry pursuits have been on a different track, lately. I have always liked steampunk jewelry, and have decided to try my hand at making my own, wire wrapped style. I am a big-time nerd, and have always loved sci-fi, comic books, graphic novels, etc. As a child, I studied insects and languages for fun, you get the idea... The thing that gave me the final nudge to give steampunk design a whirl was a group of old watch faces for sale in an Etsy store called SteampunkSupply. I love to look at the cool things in this shop, and dream. As soon as I saw the watch face set, I knew what I would make with each one! I ended up buying one of their large steampunk grab bags to get me started, instead (though I may have to go back and buy the set that drew me in in the first place...), and the ideas started pouring out into my notebook. I wanted to start making them right away, but I have to wait for the grab bag to arrive. I did make up the frame for the first one. I keep going back to the picture and studying each piece, planning where I will use it. Soon enough, you will see what I come up with!

Thanks for stopping in! 'Til next time,
Enjoy!
~Pippi

Spring Break

2009-04-04T20:59:00.007-06:00

My daughter, Grace, came out to visit for her Spring break last week, so I was busy spending time with her, instead of writing for my blog. We had a wonderful visit together, and both had our projects that we worked on to mark the time. Grace loves to knit, and decided to make a scarf for one of her school friends. Here is a picture of Grace modeling the finished scarf.

I did a little crocheting, before turning back to my wire work. Grace had asked me if I could make her a wire wrapped band that she could wear on her thumb. Just as Carlos was leaving for work one day, I had a sudden inspiration of how to wrap the band, and sat in one chair in the livingroom working on the idea before it slipped away, while Grace sat knitting in the other chair. The band turned out just as she wanted, and she immediately put it on. I wanted to study the pattern more, and since she wouldn't take off her new ring, I made another one. I still haven't quite got the finishing of the band design the way I would like it, but I knew I could use the pattern to make a cool ring with stones, so that was my next project. I had a beautiful 2.22 ct. yellow sapphire briolette that would look perfect as a center stone for a ring, and I added two reddish tundra sapphire rondels set in a swirl of wrapped wires.

Grace's local friend, Camille, spent several days and nights here with Grace, and I did a study of a neat pair of pressed metal earrings she was wearing one day, which I adapted into a wire filigree design for a necklace. I worked on the necklace on and off for a few days, and finished wrapping it today. I still plan on oxidizing the wrapped centerpiece, but I took a few pictures of it as it is, so I could share it here with you.

As I was working on this piece, I had an inspiration for my next series of pieces. The series will be called Tempus Fugit, and will be a line of steampunk, wire wrapped jewelry.

'Til next time, thanks for stopping in!
all the best,
~Pippi

Taking A Break?

2009-03-23T17:05:00.007-06:00

My last wire project was very consuming, and I felt a need to take a break from my wire for a little while. My husband always laughs at me when I say I'm taking a break. He knows it only means I will madly throw myself into some other craft for a while, until I start playing with the wire again. He's right.

I spent a few days working on some bead embroidery, on and off, and for the last two days, I have been crocheting again. I made up a design for a tapestry crochet skull bag a few months ago (at the suggestion of my husband), and they are so darn cute, I keep making them! The first was for a friend who was visiting town from Boulder. He got a black one with three skulls in red. Then each of my daughters wanted one, and of course I had to make one for my love! (since it was his idea in the first place). I made a gray and red one for another friend, then didn't make any more until I thought, maybe I should make one for myself. I started last night with a red bag with a white skull, but when it was done, it was too red for my taste. I made up a gray one with a white skull, but it still wasn't quite right, so I keep crocheting. I feel like Goldilocks - this one is too red, and this one isn't colorful enough, but I still haven't found the combination that is "just right" for me. But I am having fun trying!

Meanwhile, I have some jewelry ideas percolating in my brain. It won't be long before I have to start madly making jewelry again. I'll have some more goodies to share soon!

'Til then, thanks for stopping by!
Hope you are enjoying the spring weather!
~Pippi

Emerald Isle Necklace - Etsy Wire Artisans Guild March Theme Challenge

2009-03-18T12:13:00.008-06:00

I made this necklace for the Etsy Wire Artisans Guild March theme challenge of 'Emerald Isle'. One of the things I love about being in the Etsy Wire Artisans Guild is our theme challenges. They give us a chance to broaden our ideas, and maybe try a new technique or design we have been wanting to attempt, but just needed the impetus to start. I am half Irish (on my father's side) and have always been fascinated by the amazing knotwork the ancient Irish used to decorate everything from standing stones, to weapons, to jewelry, etc. For years I have studied the techniques for constructing these knotwork designs, and have collected a number of books on the subject. Until now, I have only drawn knotwork designs on paper, but with this theme challenge, I decided to break out and construct one out of wire.

The design for this necklace was adapted from the book, Celtic Art, Methods of Construction, by George Bain (Dover books). I did a sketch of the knot in the size I wanted before starting. I started with just the knot, wrapping as I knotted it, so I could get the points on the corners where I wanted them. This is the knot before I started adding the embellishment. There is over 30 feet of wire in it at this point.

Here I took a picture while taking a break from wrapping the embellishments onto the knotwork. The center features a piece of green sea glass I picked up off a beach in Ireland, when I went there with my daughters in 1998, and the tiny green beads are glass seed beads. Each tiny bead was looped around with wire after being wrapped onto the knotwork, to frame it, and the sea glass is set in a bezel of faceted Thai silver beads done in peyote stitch.

There is close to 70 feet of fine silver wire wrapped into the finished piece, and it took over a week of patient wrapping to complete. This is another one of those pieces that when I finished it, I couldn't believe I made it! It is stunning!

Thanks for letting me share it with you all!
~Pippi

The Adventures of Pip

2009-03-12T14:28:00.007-06:00

It seems like there is always so much more to do than there is time in the day! And even though I have been a bit lax at writing here in my blog, I have been doing lots of other things. Of course, my jewelry making is usually at the top of the list for me. My latest, greatest creation is a beautiful sapphire dragonfly pendant. I have been wanting to make one for quite a while, but had a hard time coming up with a design I liked. I had started a couple of attempts that ended up on my scrap pile. It wasn't until I saw a dragonfly necklace in one of my friend's Etsy shop that I finally had the inspiration I needed. The pendant my friend used is a wonderful Thai silver, filigree dragonfly, with a faceted amethyst set in its thorax. For my dragonfly, I used a lovely 1.75 carat blue sapphire I bought last year (the color was so beautiful that I couldn't pass it up!), and tiny, faceted sapphire rondels for the abdomen. He was definitely a labor of love, and took me a solid day of careful and patient wrapping to complete! Though it only measures 2-1/4 inches by 3 inches, it incorporates over 23 feet (more than 7 meters) of wire.

Of course, I haven't just been making jewelry all this time. My husband and I have been going skiing almost every weekend, trying to use up our ski passes before the end of the season. I finally mastered the telemark turn, and suddenly, skiing became much easier, and lots more fun! We also have been training to be volunteer ski buddies for disabled skiers through Sun Valley Adaptive Sports ( http://www.svasp.org ), and yesterday I donated massage for a group of disabled war vets that are here for the SVAS outdoor program, Higher Ground. In partnership with Department of Defense and major military medical centers around the country, Higher Ground serves recently injured American Service members who have been severely wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. The purpose of higher Ground is to use sports and recreation as a means of healing and therapy. The program offers two winter snowsports camps, two summer adventure camps, and weeklong customized events serving more than 40 Service members and their significant others each year. The goal is to build physical skills and self-confidence, and to provide a fun, healthy, and meaningful experience, so the Service members can more easily transition into their new lives in their home communities. The group I worked with was great, and I was honored to be able to add to their healing experience.

I have also been active in the Wire Artisans Guild, since I was accepted as a member, and have been working on a celtic knotwork necklace for our March monthly theme, Emerald Isle. This is another project I have wanted to tackle for a while. My family on my father's side came from Ireland, and I have been fascinated by the ornate knotwork used in ancient illuminated manuscripts, stone carvings and jewelry, and have collected a number of books on their construction techniques. The monthly theme was the kick in the behind I needed to finally get around to making a piece of knotwork jewelry. I'm sure now that I have started, there will be more to follow.

And, for those who are local, or are planning on visiting our beautiful valley in July, this will be the first year that I participate in the Ketchum Arts Festival, July 9, 10, & 11, 2009. To that end, I have been making jewelry like mad, to have an abundant supply for the event. If you do come, please stop by my booth, and let me know you read about it in my blog, and I will give you 30% off any one item in my stock.

Thanks for stopping in! Enjoy each and every day!
~Pippi

An Abundant Week...

2009-02-24T18:17:00.017-07:00

Right after I posted my last post, I dove into those beads, and made up a bunch of new stuff! On Tuesday, I made a pair of earrings and a seahorse out of the last of those gorgeous green tourmalines. The seahorse looks so beautiful with the light behind it! The green tourmalines positively glow! I wore the earrings over to some friends' house for dinner the next day, and my friend bought them right out of my ears! Luckily I took pictures of them earlier that day! The earrings were a variation on a design I had made before, and I used the last of my scapolite trilliant briolettes for the tops of them. They set off the deep green of the tourmaline briolettes beautifully!

I was so inspired with how they turned out, that I spent much of Thursday playing with more variations. I stopped in at The Bead Shop in Hailey, on my way home from the post office, and they had these cubic zirconia briolettes that I couldn't pass up! I made 3 different CZ earring pairs in two days, then switched back to natural gemstones over the weekend to make up two more pairs of earrings. I still managed to go skiing both Saturday and Sunday! And, I finally mastered the telemark turn! :D

Then yesterday, The package I'd been waiting for arrived! I had glass artist, Kerri Fuhr make a custom bead for me. She had some really cool raven beads in her Etsy shop, and I asked her if she could make a magpie one for me. I love how funny and smart magpies are! There are a lot of them where I live, and they visit my back yard often. I sent her a picture of a pose I liked, and had her put a berry in its mouth, like in one of her raven beads, and she did the rest! As soon as I opened the package, I started working on a bale for the bead, so I could wear it! I wanted to incorporate my wire work, but not detract from the bead itself. I am quite pleased with the results, and have been wearing it all day, and admiring it! I hope you enjoy looking at it too!

If you have a chance, check out Kerri's Etsy shop. She just added the most gorgeous swan bead!
www.kerribeads.etsy.com

Wishing you all an abundance of good things!
~Pippi

From bits of wire and rock come...

2009-02-17T16:46:00.011-07:00

...New seahorses and other pretties!

I am always on the lookout for the most exquisite gemstones to use in my creations! Recently, I bought a few things from a new source in Canada. She always has a stunning selection of stones in her shop, especially watermelon tourmalines, which I love! I bought a few briolettes of the watermelon tourmalines (thinking seahorse dorsal fins), then added some dark green tourmaline briolettes, rainbow moonstone briolettes, and exquisite, tiny faceted rondels of green tourmaline and tanzanite. They arrived here on my birthday. I also ordered some super tiny, faceted, silver beads from my source in Thailand, and some cool scalloped coins to make into earrings.

I made a seahorse out of the tanzanite and moonstone beads. The color of tanzanite has always been a favorite of mine, and the flash of blue in the moonstone briolette sets off the purpley-blue of the tanzanite nicely! Then I made a pair of watermelon tourmaline seahorse earrings next.

One of the sets of coins I bought was from Malta, and feature a honeycomb with a bee on it on the front of the coin. I went with this theme for the rest of the earrings, and added big briolettes of honey-colored amber, with coiled wire caps that look like old-fashioned beehives, and sparkling briolettes of yellow sapphire to finish them off. They are bold earrings, measuring 2-5/8 inches in length, but are feather light (only 7.7 grams for the pair!)

I made up several variations on a tribal-style hoop design I have been refining for a few months. The original inspiration was a cool, old pair of gauged hoops from Indonesia, which I found on one of my favorite bellydance sites. The first of these recent tries features Swiss blue topaz briolettes, and for the second pair I used some of the moonstone briolettes I just bought. Both turned out quite nicely.

I am currently working on a pair of earrings using the gorgeous, dark green tourmaline briolettes, then I plan on making one more seahorse with green tourmalines. I'll keep you posted!

Thanks for stopping in!
~Pippi

Good News from the Etsy Wire Artisans Guild.....

2009-02-17T16:25:00.003-07:00

Hi everyone!

When I logged in to my Etsy shop this morning, I was greeted with a message from the Wire Artisans Guild that I had been accepted as a member! They only vote in 10 members at a time, twice yearly, and have certain criteria that each member must meet. There were almost 40 applicants this time, for what was planned as 10 new positions on the team. (They ended up adding 13 new members, as the 10th place position ended up being a 4-way tie.)

This Etsy street team aims to educate buyers on the intricate and labour-intensive work that goes into the making of each piece (and the consequent pricing), the skills and techniques involved and the uniqueness of every wire-wrapped design making it a collectible OOAK couture piece. I am honored to be included in this group of talented wire artists!

Our guild is being featured on blockheadradiolive.com
1pm (eastern time), Saturday, 21 February, 2009

you can also find out more about the guild at:
wireartisansguild.blogspot.com

Cheers!
~Pippi

Local Spotlight - The Loft in Hailey, ID

2009-01-27T13:00:00.008-07:00

I usually sell my work through private trunk shows and online, but since I have made the shift to making and promoting my jewelry full time, I decided to find a local shop to carry some of my work, too. The Loft is the only store here in the valley where you can buy my work.

The Loft, in Hailey, is an interesting and beautiful mix of yarn store and art gallery. The owner, Alissa McGonigal, grew up in northern Idaho, and has lived here in Hailey with her husband and 3 children for 8 years. In addition to supporting local artists through her store, Alissa enjoys the many opportunities for playing outdoors here in Idaho, skiing, hiking, and mountain biking. She also loves reading, knitting, and baking. She is a teacher by trade, but fell into the business of running her store/gallery by chance. She started the outdoor Artists' Market in Hailey a few years ago, and met many local artists, looking for a venue to sell their work. Alissa is an avid knitter, and always wanted her own little yarn shop. She decided to marry the two ideas together and came up with a local artists gallery with yarn. She says, "I am surrounded by beautiful work which in turn inspires people to be creative themselves. I am also a business woman by heart. I really like to run my own show."

Through her business, Alissa hopes to promote awareness of our talented, local artists, and help foster a community appreciation for art. Her store offers a place for her to share her knowledge of knitting and passion for the arts, and helps bring monetary success to her fellow artists. She also adds a fun, eclectic shop to downtown Hailey! She says, "I see the Loft getting better and better with each passing year. Years from now, I still see myself supporting artists in any capacity I can think of. Hopefully, I will find more time to create more fiber art of my own."

Alissa is planning a website for The Loft soon. In the meantime, readers can reach her by emailing: theloft202@gmail.com
If you are visiting Sun Valley for summer or winter fun, be sure to stop in! Her store is located at 202 N. Main Street in downtown Hailey, right next to the Sun Valley Brewery. The phone number is (208) 788-5144.