New Brass and Copper Pins

I’ve been working on my plan to make all or most of our designs in copper and brass and add them to our Etsy shop.I added these yesterday.

  

Spiraling Full Circle Brass Shawl Pin or Brooch

Madonna Swirl Brass Shawl Pin or Brooch

Unfurling Tulip Lyre Brass Shawl Pin

Spiraling Full Circle Copper Shawl Pin or Brooch

Dancing Waves and Swirls Copper Shawl Pin / Hair pin or Brooch

I was experimenting with some new books to use as props for the photos. Nick was sick in bed that day with a cold and I didn’t want to wake him up and get the usual books I use that I keep in the bedroom. Luckily our house is overrun with books as anyone who has seen it will attest to. So I was able to come up with some new variations on my theme.And once again it was a perfect overcast day for taking photographs with my particular camera too.

Hearts Galore

I’ve been a busy little beaver adding lots of copper and brass into the shop. This week in keeping with the Valentines day theme I added these Spiral Love Heart Pins and the Pendant.

 

Spiral Love Heart Brass Shawl Pin or Brooch

 

Spiral Love Heart Copper Shawl Pin or Brooch

Celtic Heart and Spirals Copper Pendant

It’s been a whole new learning experience working with copper and brass. They are significantly harder than silver and aluminum which makes the noise louder when I hammer the wire. I’m kind of a weirdo and like hammer with my little anvil on my thigh. I realized that after a few months of doing this with the copper and brass that my thigh was feeling sore. I am probably slowly chipping away little fractures into my thigh bone. So I now put a bunched up sweater on my thigh under the anvil to buff the blows of the hammering. Nick tells me that jewelers in India traditionally use their legs to work metal with so I’m probably not all that weird.It just feels like a natural more controlled way to manipulate the wire than hammering on a bench. And less noisy.

This is a picture from 2008.

Kitty Love

I promise not to make this one of those sappy kitty blogs but Valentine’s Day is approaching and love is in the air.

Mrs.CuteKitty (named by the kids of course) arrived on our porch last year. She came in through the cat door, started pooping in the litter box in the laundry room and declared her love for Fidel.

They are banned to the laundry room and great outdoors  because Fidel thinks our house is his personal litter box. I did acquire a new found respect for Fidel the other day when I saw him actually in the litter box attempting to use it. Unfortunately his body is in it while his butt is out of it and he misses completely. But at least now I know he’s giving it a good try. He still can’t come in the house though.

Brass, Copper Sterling Silver

Now the Trinity Clover Simple Hair Sticks or Shawl Pins depending on your needs are available in our shop in:

 

Brass

 

Copper

Sterling Silver

Last year I started playing more with brass and copper and I’m so glad I did. I’m now in the process of adding every shawl pin design and lots of our our jewelry designs into the shop in brass and copper. With the extreme rise in sterling silver prices it’s great to have other less expensive options to work with. And new colors too!I still haven’t quite figured out how to get my photos of copper to get that deep orange look without the glare. Photography is always a challenge eh?

Keeping it simple

 

I had a customer request this design as  a simple stick pin before the holidays. It’s really such a simple idea  and that’s what I love about it.

Trinity Clover Loops Aluminum Hair Stick / Shawl Pin

 

It works great as a shawl pin or a hair stick

It’s super light weight aluminum but I’ll be adding the copper, brass and sterling silver versions into the shop very soon.

Sometimes simple is best eh?

A long overdue blog post

Merry Christmas! Happy Chanuka! and of course…

Happy New Year!

We did eventually get a Christmas tree so the boys don’t still have to stand there.

Right now our Etsy shop is missing a lot of things. We are enjoying a short vacation and will get back to work again soon refilling our shop. I’ve got lots of new ideas too to work on…

New pretty long stem Czech glass flower earrings in the shop

 

I came up with this design a while ago and then ran out of the lovely Czech pressed glass beads. So I reordered a bunch and took new pictures and they are

now available in our shop.

All the lovely bright colors make me happy and really brighten up the tone in our Etsy shop.

 

They have become one of my personal favorite everyday earrings.

They are made with 18 gauge sterling silver wire which makes them a little thicker than the typical earwire so they may not work well for everyone.

You can find them all in the Glass Earrings/ Pendants section of our Etsy shop:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/nicholasandfelice?section_id=5029954

Technorati Tags: glass flowers,earrings,jewelry,Czech glass

New beads!

 

A couple of days ago my favorite crazy bead salesman and friend Peter came through and set up my own personal bead show in my driveway for a few hours. Peter travels to Asia half the year and buys beads in Hong Kong and other places and then travels in the US the other half of the year selling his special handpicked goodies. I always spend more than I intend to and get filled with good stories from his wild traveling experiences.

These are some yummy gemmy British Columbian nephrite jade beads that I couldn’t resist. I’m a sucker for green stones.

Oh I have so much work to do now that I spent all that money on new beads!

Mid Valley Adoptive Families Picnic Potluck

 

I somehow started channeling my Mother’s volunteerism genes and became the organizer of this years summer Mid Valley Adoptive Families picnic this past Sunday. It was actually pretty easy and didn’t require much to do on my part other than securing the reservation for the nifty barn structure at the park and bringing stuff. It would have been nice if I had read the fine print about needing to get a key for the gate that lets you park your cars right next to it. Instead we had to carry all our coolers and stuff up a hot hill.

 

My crazy eyes Max spent a lot of time with his fellow Spiderman enthusiast Lauren.

Bringing a big box of Legos was a stroke of  genius if I say so myself.

Trying to get a group of kids to all stand still and look in the same direction is pretty much impossible.

It went really well and a good time was had by all.

The lazy flower garden

When we first bought our place about 16 years ago I had grand ambitions and lots more free time.And I knew nothing about gardening. I took mostly free or cheap plants from friends and neighbors.And now years later when I am too lazy and busy to put any effort into it these hardy perennials keep coming back without any help from me.

Little did I know how disgustingly stinky daisies are.

I love these daylillies! I seriously never water them or do anything but weed a little early in the spring.

I can’t remember what these are called . Some sort of hardy bluebell?

The reseeding foxgloves that always surprise me every couple of years by reappearing just when I thought I wouldn’t see them again.

 

I can’t remember what this lovely purple stuff is but as long it requires nothing from me I’m happy to have it.

These I could do without. The Canadian Thistle. Ouch!

Thisi s my non lazy super hero husband putting in our new vinyl floor.What a difference!

Philomath Frolic and Rodeo-one week later

Well it was over a week ago that I too the kids to the Philomath Frolic and Rodeo but I finally got the time to post this. As a Brooklyn girl the rodeo fascinates me. It’s so different from where I grew up to see guys wearing cowboy hats because they are actual cowboys and not gay men. Of course they could be gay. Not that there’s anything

wrong with that.

The boys took their mandatory pony rides.

They had been begging me to do the carnival rides. The first ride they chose was the roller coaster. I was kind of surprised that Max really wanted to do it because he’s not much of a ride daredevil.  He looked like he was pooping in his pants the whole time. When he got off he said in his serious voice-“That was kind of scary.” He then declined to go on any other rides for the rest of the night.

 

Henry won this giant blue bear that made him very happy. We also ran into his best friend Emmit

 

And then there was the actual rodeo. This is the rodeo clown wearing a silly fat suit and doing a whole dance schtick. While somewhat amusing at times I couldn’t help but feel bad for the overweight folks in the audience. But the kids told me he wasn’t making fun of fat people he “just wanted to dance in a fat suit to be goofy.” OK then.

Real cowboys roping a cow. Yee haw!

 

The mandatory shaved ices.

Aleaha and Max really getting into their ices.

Relaxing at home with Dad.

Successful photos of new Kanji jewelry

We often get requests for specific words in Japanese Kanji and other languages to be made into our stamped jewelry. This is Nick’s end of our jewelry line. He makes the dies and perfects the tumbling techniques. I get the fun part of photographing the jewelry. I used to hate it back in the olden days before digital cameras. I’d waste hours and hours of my life and tons of money on film, wait to get it printed and then be horribly disappointed and start all over again and repeat the process. My simple Sony Cyber-shot 5.1 megapixels changed all that. And the miracle of Photoshop.

These pictures were taken outdoors on a cloudy overcast day. I found a Japanese kanji book of ours and an art history book and had some fun.

 

Light - Japanese Kanji and Chinese Character and for Light Sterling Silver Pendant

Light - Japanese Kanji and Chinese Character for Light Sterling Silver Stamped Earrings

In the same photo shoot I played around with some rough obsidian we bought at the Tuscon Gem Show many many years ago and this new Snow Flake Obsidian Ball Pendant.These didn’t come out quite as crisp and photoshop helped with the contrast quite a bit. The silver Kanji jewelry above didn’t really need much photoshopping at all other than cropping.

My boys

Henry and Max and our new  to us mini van modeling the cute summer clothes that Grandma Fran sent.