On Vacation

I am going to Colorado and New Mexico and will be back and blogging around August 6. Please check back then.

Custom Orders

I love custom orders. I love making something special for a specific person (see my mother-in-law post). Happily, I've been busy the last few days with some custom orders AND special designs for special people. If that isn't enough good news, I actually cleaned my studio as well!

My custom orders included making something for a friend of a customer, based on a necklace called Rhumba Rhythms which this customer bought a while back from my Etsy shop. She says that, every time she wears it, she gets a lot of compliments from friends and strangers, men and women. She wanted something similar, with one strand, for a friend who loves red and wears lots of black. Happily, I had enough beads to start with, and produced the single strand necklace above, which I have named Tango, for the rhythm created by the black, red, and gold beads, as well as the passionate feelings evoked by those three colors together.

My special design for a specific person included making a birthday present for my lovely niece, a wee sprite of a girl who is on the cusp on teenagehood. Now, I've known Emily all her life, was in Singapore for her birth, but only see her once a year, more or less. As everyone knows who knows children, a child can change a lot in a year. Especially when that child is on the cusp of turning that magic teenage number. My sister told me that her current favorite color was in the turquoise/blue range. I sat down with the beads I had, but I needed focal beads to play a starring role. A quick trip to a nearby bead store netted me some gorgeous turquoise beads, with retro-swirly pink and white accents. Ooooh, perfect (I hoped) sophisticated turquoise with a little punch of pink. Below, is her necklace, which she will receive in August on her thirteenth birthday. Happy Birthday, my lovely niece!

In the midst of all these orders, I was thrilled to wake up on Sunday morning and see an order for my Mother Nature necklace from a new customer in Australia! One thing I love about Etsy and my blog is the world-wide connection. And I have a clean studio!!! Can life get any better?

Sunlit Sea

One year ago yesterday, I sold a necklace called Sunlit Sea. Today, in an odd but happy coincidence, I was commissioned to do something similar. Happily, I still had enough of the beads playing the starring role, as well as a good supply of supporting cast members. The colors on the glass beads that I used remind me of the sun shining on the waves, with hints of the cool depths underneath.

Sadly, this will be the first summer in many years when I won't have the opportunity to see the sun shining on real waves. I lived with my family for several years in Costa Rica, where we would brave the terrible roads as often as possible to go to our favorite beach on the Caribbean side. We saw that beach many different times of year when it had many different moods. The best memory I have was one October when we went there to celebrate our son's birthday. The sea was completely calm, soothingly warm, and one could float to one's heart's content, staring up at the blue sky, or turning one's head to the side to see the long line of the palm-lined coast. The worst memory was being there shortly after the terrible tsunami in Asia. This time, a terrible storm knocked out electricity and washed out the road back home. As my son said in a quavering voice, in the pitch dark of the hotel room, with the sound of the waves roaring loud in the utter stillness: "The air is a little too thick with adventure!"

Last summer, we had the privilege and pleasure of spending an idyllic vacation with wonderful friends on the Isle of Palms in South Carolina. Before the tide would go out and leave miles of sand exposed, the water would calm down and, again, one could float, lifted and caressed and gently rocked by the waves. The bonnet-headed sharks swimming around gave just the right note of danger.

So, this year, my sea memories will have to be created by the colors of the beads and stones in my studio. I have some gorgeous chalcedony the color of a warm, shallow sea that I hope to turn to next. All of you who have access to a beautiful beach, I wish you gentle waves and warm breezes!