In the Merry Month of May

I love May, and not just because it's my birthday month. May is the month when Spring turns into Summer (at least here in Arkansas), the privet blooms and our backyard becomes perfumed like a night in Brazil, and my mood improves wonderfully (perhaps because my fibromyalgia does). I have been so busy with shipping and paperwork, not to mention trying to get my office/studio reorganized that I haven't had much time for making jewelry. Of course, I haven't had that drive lately that causes me to stay at the studio so late that I see the policemen change shifts in front of city hall across the way. I've been having ideas, but the ideas are such that I require hours of time to play with colour schemes, gemstones and manipulate wire without interruptions of any kind.
However, I did do the apatite bracelet above, 2 strands of sea-coloured apatite with lampwork beads by Lynn Nurge, while dreaming of crashing into waves with a kayak.The bracelet above is unusual for me - a combination of brown and blue is not one I am known for. But the fantastic beads were my starting point, and I loved them so much I had to go with the two colours. So of course I chose pietersite for the brown: wonderful browns with great subtle patterns and sometimes glints of gold and blue. The Swarovski crystals keep the bracelet from becoming too earthy.

I adore lapis! The lapis earrings that you see here are made with some of my favorite pieces of lapis. The ones above feature good blue lapis with great ripples of sparkling gold pyrite-very nicely sparkling pyrite in chunky faceted nuggets. The earrings below feature some fantastic faceted diamond squares and rondelles of gorgeous blue that hang from sterling posts with spirals around a lapis cabachon.
Here's hoping for some time, totally free time, so that I can play, because play so often results in wonderful things!
Tell me, are the flowers blooming in Finland yet?

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It's My Birthday!!!

It's my birthday, and I cannot believe how old I've become!! But I still love bracelets! My sister and niece and I used to joke that someday I would be an old lady who wore big rings and too many bracelets: I think I've arrived! It is true that I have a tendency to think that the more bracelets you can wear at once, the better - but again, I don't really have the "old lady" feeling yet.

The bracelets here are influenced by the recent trip to Florida I made; they are all happy, aqua, pink and peach, created with the colours of the tall beach houses, the many shades of the sea and the land around it. The first bracelet above is made with coral and amazonite while the second one echoes the shades of coral and aqua with Peruvian chalcedony and aventurine; it can be found on the Unique Handmade Bracelets page.

The unique bracelet above features lampwork from Suzette Celestin in colours matched perfectly by natural aquamarines and - believe it or not- Australian Lightening Ridge opals! Now these opals are not the Peruvian opals I usually use; they are the same opals as those you see with the pink and blue colour-play that you think of when you first think of opals. These are not white-based however; they are a beige colour, but in the light you can see deep within the colour-play to a smaller degree. They are an interesting gemstone to be beige - they have a luminiscent quality and a translucence that you never really see in most beige stones.

The bracelet directly above, Pompano Point, is one of those "spring/summer" mixtures of gemstones that I love so much. The faceted olive bead is peach aventurine: other gemstones are blue lace agate, cherry quartz, rutilated quartz, aquamarine, amethyst and other shades of aventurine. The sterling charms represent sea life.
The last bracelet is handmade of turquoise, coral, lapis, smoky quartz, boro lampwork beads, and light green quartz; it, too, has the "beach" influence. Both Pompano Point and the bracelet below can be found on the Cluny Grey Jewelry site under Unique Handmade Bracelets.So, I'm going to wear all the bracelets that I can cram on my wrists and as my mantra continue to murmur,"You're not getting older, you're getting better."

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