Day After

We got home late last night after the three day Walnut Creek show, but the sky was a only dark blue, not black!! If we drove straight home, instead of stopping for dinner, we would have been home before dark, which would have been thrilling.
Before we moved down from the mountains, we wouldn't get home from a show until Monday afternoon. Now we have all of Monday at home to recover from the show. This is really a great lifestyle change for us. I do work a little however. There is a lot of paperwork to do, and I try to organize my orders before all memory of them has left. ( This isn't alway successful.) Today I may even try to clean up the studio a bit, so when I get started tomorrow morning, it won't be quite so chaotic. This is my free time....and I am just hanging out. What a new thing to do!!

Process

I've been having fun with the new things I purchased at Tucson Gem Show this year. The necklace to the right labeled "New for Walnut Creek" is one of the pieces that is all new in '09

Tucson is so much fun!! My process is....buy what appeals to me. Oh, I do go with a plan, like trying to match stones with my glass, or listing and looking for what I think I need, and never has this really worked. What results in the best, interesting jewelry is to buy the things I have never seen before that are different and interesting. I don't (as a lot of you know) even remember what the heck they are!! And sometimes, it doesn't matter what the actual material is.
The piece to the right is made of glass ( the clear parts) and who knows what that black stone is?? I had never, in over 14 years of shopping at the Tucson Gem Show, seen anything like these two beads. When I bought them, I didn't even know they would go together. I also bought the metal beads this year that are shown here between the black and clear. What a great look!! All new!

The down side to this process is that I don't know how much of each stone to buy, and lots of times there are only a few strands available. For these reasons, there are only two of this necklace available. The other one features larger pieces. It isn't quite finished yet, and I may not take it to Walnut Creek.

Walnut Creek This Weekend

It's a busy time. With back-to-back shows, I have forgotten to send out my postcards for Walnut Creek. I will send a few out today, but I won't get everyone. Emails will go out!!!
I have had some fun in the studio, working with more of the new stuff I bought this year at the Tucson Gem Show. Now, I can see I what I should have bought more of , and what I perhaps shouldn't have bought at all! I got a few strands of an unusual glass, and I made two related, but different, necklaces out of it. I will try to post a photo, especially since there are just two of these available.

New Booth Location at Menlo Park

My booth location at Menlo this coming weekend has been changed- I will be two booths west of my old spot, so it is a short walk. I wanted to be in the sunshine!!! I am cat-i-corner ( how do you spell that?) from La Boulanger, on the south side of Santa Cruz Ave, on the corner in front of a bank. Sorry, I don't know which bank either!!!
Gotta go make beautiful things now!!!

Doing My Part

In San Franciso in March, one of my customers remarked that she was buying whatever she liked. Her rationale was, if people with a job don't spend money, what will happen???
I took this to heart when I was back in San Francisco last weekend. I noticed that a. I was working, and b. I do have a job. Therefore, it was my DUTY to buy these handmade SHOES!!! Aren't they just fantastic???? (pictured at bottom of page)
The handmade shoe people were new to the art shows, and I had never seen their work before. I wish I had taken more photos to post here, but I must remember, this is a jewelry site. I absolutely love them!!!! The shoe makers had pumps, flats, pointy toes, flashy straps.... you name it. But these fit me perfectly, and I may be able to wear them for a few hours at some of the shows, if I can stand to scratch up the bottoms!

First Spring

I got home from San Francisco on Monday afternoon, and as I drove up our driveway, the landscape had changed since I left on Thursday. The trees were budding then, and when I got home there were leaves everywhere! There are two large oak trees in front of my studio, and the change from bare limbs tinged with pale green, to large masses of solid, opaque green was truly amazing. I feel like I am experiencing spring for the first time in my life, even though that is surely not the absolute truth. Our mountain home didn't show a lot of seasonal differences, except of course when there was snow. Here, there are things coming out of the dirt, our front yard went from a dirt field to....well, not grass exactly, but very very green stuff that needs mowed. Bushes that looked dead when we moved in now are almost in bloom!!! It is amazing.
The West Portal show kicked my butt, or I would have been out in this glory doing some weed whacking. Instead, I have been wandering around the house in a daze. Not today!!!