I’m a Star Wars fan and this explains the name of this necklace. Tatooine is in the distant Outer Rim and is a desert planet. Tatooine has an endless desert environment and twin yellow suns. The soil is very parched, yet life persists. You can find all of this information on the Internet or from the movie itself, if you’re a fan like me.  The necklace has a free swinging disc in the center that shows off a beautiful Chrysoprase cab. The outer rim has many small silver planets and the texture on both the inner disc and outer rim represent the parched landscape. OK. Enough. Here are some facts…

Just as you can create beautiful pure silver jewelry from PMC (precious metal clay), you can now create beautiful copper jewelry from Copper Clay! There is also another jew product – Bronze Clay – but I haven’t tried it yet. I believe Shauna is working on a bronze clay piece. Anyway, the copper clay is a dream to work with. You have plenty of time to work with your piece before it starts to harden and refining the piece before it’s fired is…well…easy! With silver clay you have less time before it starts to harden so you must know what you’re going to do before you open it up and…

‘Lo. I am trying to stay in the loop, but as happens in life, priorities must shift periodically. My husband’s new business over the past few months has been eating most of my time, and my elderly mother and 10-year-old boy demand the rest. I need a maid and some sleep, but this will pass. Finally pried myself away one recent afternoon to visit the bead shop down the road that is called Antiques, Beads & Crafty People (http://www.abcraftypeople.com/). My purchase was a couple of inexpensive magnesite and howlite stones for some practice with bezels. This one is magnesite, and larger at about 1.5″ in diameter. The back is partially…

I wanted to make sure that everyone knew we had a gallery on our site that includes pictures of all of our pieces from the beginning of this exciting venture. The pieces shown in our gallery are not for sale but most were at some point in time. I’ve added 2 more items to the gallery: a Silver on Leather bracelet that I made as a special request from my youngest son and a turquoise pendant that was my first attempt at true metalsmithing. I promised you this one in an earlier blog and it turned out quite nice but since I don’t think it’s “perfect”, it won’t make it…

I have created some new pieces and wanted to let you know so you could check them out on our website. I know it seems like it’s been forever since some new stuff got posted here on our blog but I’ve had some kiln issues to work through. My kiln decided to roll over on me one day when it was loaded full of new pieces and just continuee to heat up, completely ignoring the set program, so all of my pieces melted into silver puddles. It was devastating, to say the least. That has never happened to me before and after much technical analysis and part replacement, I ended…

There are a few new pieces on the website and since many of our customers follow our blog for updates, I decided to get them posted. And here they are. The first image is Amber Pebbles. This can be worn many ways. The entire string is about 48″ long and has a sterling silver lobster clasp. You can wear it as one long necklace, doubled around your neck, or wrapped like a bracelet, as shown in the first image. The 2nd and 3rd images are Silver and Copper Discs. The image with the heart is showing what the back of each earring looks like. The stone is a 4mm aquamarine…

I finished another pair of earrings tonight. The inspiration came from a drawing in the sketchbook made a while back when I was looking through some African artifacts on the internet. Drawings have to incubate sometimes. I think the thing was actually a rattle, but the copper disks on these earrings just simulate the round rattle. The sticks are made of PMC3, and the rest is sterling wire. I scratched some lines in the copper but they disappeared when I patina-ed the metal; the next pair I might try to etch the lines using beeswax. I don’t know if the area will be too small to effectively perform this technique,…

Hello, is it us you’re looking for??…..reminds me of David Cook’s rendition of Lionel Richie’s song on one of the first “top 12” episodes of American Idol. I loved Dave’s version. But that aside, we have not been around lately, and the details explaining that would be too boring for anyone. Lisa and I have been working when we can sneak in a second but it’s hard to get in the zone with that kind of action. I made some Alone Star earrings and it feels like fun to think of a name for them right now–Copper Stars maybe. Alone Stars in Copper. ASJ Copper Stars. The star is the…

I’m starting to get into texture these days but didn’t want to just cut out a circle and apply a texture to it. I needed it to have some “pop” so I took my cookie cutter (you’d be amazed what we use for tools around here…) and cut out a circle, sliced it in half and then cut the top off of each, a little off-center. Yes, I used the cookie cutter to do that, too!All of this was done, of course, after I had applied a texture to the front and back of the earrings. I had to roll the clay out thicker than I wanted since I had…

I wanted everyone who has asked the last couple of years to know that we are offering cross jewelry this year; Lisa has a new set with earrings, too. For the necklace shown, I used a heavy gauge wire, balled on the ends, which were then hammered and hole-punched where Jesus was nailed to the cross. The cord is called Tenara™: if you scroll down the blog to the Country Girl necklace there is a description of this strong thread that’s found another home in the jewelry industry. We really like the casual and delicate feel of this slender string; in this necklace the color is brown (apologies for a…