Fall’s here, winter’s comin’, and we are gearing up for our favorite seasons at Alone Star with a couple of additions to the collection. Lisa and I both love the cooler temperatures, fall colors, the snow, icicles, even the dicey stuff like sleet and ice–mainly because in our part of Texas the divide between summer-to-fall and winter is so half-hearted, the lackluster seems to spill over into winter and we end up with a season that doesn’t really know it’s supposed to be cold. Especially in this coastal region you just have to reminisce, and you can if you have good kid memories like we do. Those of foot-long icicles…

Well, Country Girl has finally arrived! I know it took forever for me to get around to finishing this but there just always seems to be something else to do. I’m trying to stay on top of things these days so, with any luck, you’ll see more new things from my tiny little studio. Country Girl comes in at 4.6 grams of handcrafted fine silver. The thread I used is call Tenara™ (previously Gore-Tex™) and it’s used in a lot of things, including parkas, marine stuff, and even jewelry. It wears so well and is really tough, so it won’t snap or wear out. It has a slick feel to…

I’m sure all artists feel this way eventually – you want to create your work but you don’t necessarily want to create that same piece of work over and over and over and over again. Your brain works overtime coming up with new ideas and you barely have enough time to jump out of bed (I do a lot of my design thinking early in the morning before I’ve gotten up) and write them down (or draw them, as the case may be). At any rate, that’s where I’m at these days. I want to create the pieces that I’ve drawn on paper but I don’t particularly want to make…

Many things have interrupted the small sculpture part of our lives, but lo and behold, Lisa popped up recently with a new design. I had been wondering why she was so quiet lately… She was inspired by looking at the work of other jewelry artists–that’s a rub for me. I almost hate doing that because I mistakenly think it will overly influence my own designs. But usually what happens is what Lisa said: other artists’ works can stretch the mind, and it’s what emerges to fill the extra space that can come from your own preferences for shape, texture, color and form. You have to be true to the elements…

A previous post mentioned re-making the silver “Tech” bead bracelet that I made for my son Micah, who is a big Red Raider fan. I finished the improved version today and mailed it off to him for his birthday upcoming April 6. A couple of snaps show how the clasp works, and by the way, these photos came out pretty well in light of my usual complaints! It is made with 2 sterling end tubes constructed by moi, each that measure about a half-inch and are loaded with a few magnets and epoxied to the round leather cord. I discovered that sliding the sterling ends inside the bead allowed for…

I have been working on, but have not finished, the Flower necklace that’s about three photos below this post. I decided that the spiraling wire on each side would simply be too hard to clean, so I am looking at a beading alternative. Plain wire just kills the piece, so until I find the right substitute, this necklace remains on the bench. I will find a way!

I have to thank Matt again for another great name, this time for the bracelet posted here. “Galveston Gumbo” is made from jump ring chain that Rio started selling in its current catalog; we bought both small and large varieties and this is the large one seen here. The jumps are a combination of regular wire jump rings, then flat wire jumps. Not what I expected but I got used to it fast. I made a slew of shells, then picked graduated sizes and attached 7 of them. The pretty hook and eye clasp works fine, but as usual, the shells began slipping down and while the clasp is nice-looking,…

Whoa, blew past my birthday on the 23rd and still didn’t get a post up. Things are going on in the personal life–kid stuff, relative stuff, work stuff–as usual. But I am here today because a couple of new items stand to be posted soon–the recent earrings for which I uploaded a drawing, and a new bracelet about which I had no time to post information. Above are the promised new Texas earrings, which we lovingly call “Texas Bling Earrings” thanks to my clever husband Matt, always full of good ideas. They are a whopping 1.38 inches in width, and for me that is big, but they glorious in this…

Spring is here in Friendswood, and my azaleas are bursting buds open daily. Just one of the colors (rose, second row in the middle) in my latest necklace. This is the first one I made so any flaws like horizontal wire that isn’t quite straight will be corrected on final versions. I couldn’t say initially where the design came from, but after checking my sketchbooks I had been drawing triangular images with curving wire, stars, grids and other elements before the design found itself in just one drawing. Also, the swarovski crystal beads at my bead shop haunt are displayed like candy and I had been pawing through them like…

Be looking for a new pair of Texas-style earrings at the site soon. I have already fired and semi-polished them, have received the order of blue topaz stones, and once my husband lets me off the hook helping him with work and I get my dapping block back from Lisa, I will finish these! I wanted to make something that was kind of flashy. That hasn’t been my style in the past, but evolution is a good thing, even darting down and then back up a side road now and then…I want to see if these earrings generate any interest. They are not an outlandish design (some might think a…