I have very little jewelry stock left, so have to focus on that for the next few weeks. Earrings are usually the easiest to make, and the easiest to have fun with, so I started there.

Hmmmmm……why am I having a hard time?

To begin with, my hands have lost the quickness and sureness to make the same loop in the same size repeatedly. So practice is in order before I start wasting supplies.

The real problem, however, is lack of sufficient inspiration. All I want to wear, and therefore all I want to make, are relatively long, dangly earrings. I had one idea in my head, so started there.

These are a very dark green agate rondelle. I made the same earring in a dark pink agate.

These two weren’t enough. I made them in a blue triangle glass for a brighter look.

That still didn’t exhaust my desire for these 3-stroke dangles, so I made a pair, a bit shorter in case everyone doesn’t want them quite as long as I do, with an 8mm amethyst round.

Then I played with sterling silver wire. This is one version of the earrings I made.

After every pair of earrings, I felt like I was again empty, devoid of inspiration. It was a struggle to come up with something else. I kept opening my drawers of beads and waiting for something to pop out at me. I had a pair of blue cane beads that I like.

Next some hematite teardrops said, “use me.” Although the two agate pairs are my favorites, these run a close second.

After what felt like several hours at the table, I have created only 18 pairs of earrings. I need to make 3 times that many, for sure. Plus necklaces and bracelets.

Sigh.

Your turn: where do you get inspiration when you need it?

When I had my own family, we adopted several of my hubby’s traditions – using bags of various Pepperidge Farm bread blends (cubes and crumbs) as the base of the stuffing instead of white bread we’d dried in the oven, adding sausage to the stuffing, and cooking that turkey in a paper bag.

If you’re like I was that first year, you’re now saying, “Huh? Cook the turkey in a paper bag?!” Yep, you butter the inside of a brown paper grocery bag, slip Tom into it, fold the end over and keep it closed with clothespins. It really does keep in the juices and reduce cooking time. I’m sure its where Reynolds got the idea of their browning bags.

One Thanksgiving tradition that’s remained constant throughout my life? Getting that jellied cranberry sauce out of the can in one piece.

One of my sweetie’s weirdest traditions? An essential leftover lunch included a stuffing sandwich with on doughy white bread. With mayonnaise WHAT?! That’s a bread sandwich! Putting bread between two slices of bread! Yep, I agree, it’s totally wrong, but my comments never budge the practice. Nor could his insistence make me try it.

Remember the prize this month? It’s a healing gemstone talisman. Made with moss agate, amethyst, amber, peridot, and my coppery wishes for peace.

So as part 2 of the November contest, what’s one of your Thanksgiving traditions? Tell me sweet or odd, long-standing or newly-formed. If you don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, use another food-centric holiday of your choice. (You can still respond to the first part, if you prefer.)

Unlike most weddings, the bride asked her two attendants to pick out any dress they liked, as long as it was pastel. She said her desire was that the women would truly be able to wear the dresses again.

Joan went shopping and chose a very lovely sheath dress with a short-sleeved jacket. The fabric is beautifully textured like a silk shantung, and it’s a muted silvery-green color. All together its a very classy look. She planned ahead and brought the dress to my house so we could lay stones on it and see how they would look.

Given the sheath style with its relatively high simple neckline, Joan appropriately wanted her custom necklace for this wedding to be fairly long, one that wouldn’t interfere with the lines of the dress or jacket. Instead the necklace would pair nicely the dress, with or without the jacket, and add a bit of pop to the outfit.

We looked at a variety of stones, ultimately deciding on using a combination of amethyst and rainbow flourite. The amethyst would be a counterpoint to the fabric’s green, and the flourite, with its transparent green, purple, and pale yellow colors, would tie it all together.

So now we had the type of stones. As with all my custom jewelry, next we spent some time discussing everything from length of the finished necklace to weight (actual and visual), type of clasp to overall style. I did a rough layout of what I was thinking based on our conversation, and got Joan’s approval to proceed. Cubes of amethyst & flourite, offset by faceted amethyst rondelles, all surrounded by sterling silver.

Within the next week I drafted the necklace for her to come back and try on. She was happy with the draft, so we talked about coordinating earrings.

Fluorite & Amethyst Necklace & Earrings

I’ve made wedding jewelry before, but this was the first time an attendant was able to choose it herself. Previously the brides have chosen the jewelry and given it to their attendants as gifts. This was simply another way for the whole process of custom jewelry to work, and one that made everyone happy.

Contact me for your own custom jewelry – for your wedding, prom, holiday, or just to make that outfit pop.

Amethyst Geode

I’m not going to go into the geology of it all, but there are basically two types of quartz – those with large crystals that we can easily see with our naked eyes, and those with crystals so small they require a microscope to see them. The first group has some familiar gemstones like amethyst, citrine, aventurine, tiger eye, smoky quartz, and rose quartz.

The second group, quartzes with small crystals, are commonly called chalcedony. This is a large group that includes agates, jaspers, onyx, bloodstone, carnelian, and stones simply referred to by their color names – blue, purple, pink, and green chalcedony. It is these latter stones that are now most often seen in imitation glass versions. The pretty blue “quartz” and cherry “quartz” that are readily available are actually colored glass. Beware when buying them to make sure you’re getting what you’re paying for.

But from my perspective, what’s most interesting is that so many of the stones that I work with, from amethyst to Botswana agate, red jasper to onxy, are all forms of quartz! They look so different, that I didn’t know the geology behind them was so similar. Guess I should have paid more attention in that college geology class!

purple rayon chenille handwoven scarf

Interestingly, the name amethyst comes from an ancient Greek word meaning “not drunken,” because amethyst was thought to prevent drunkenness. It also symbolized piety and was thought to encourage celibacy, making it an important stone in the early days of the church. In my personal opinion, I think its rich purple color, denoting royalty, was equally important to church leaders, and it’s possible that they “gave” amethyst its connection to celibacy and piety as opposed to the other way around.

amethyst

Amethyst can help transform negative energy into positive, providing tranquility and relieving stress and depression. It can open the channels between the physical and spiritual worlds, promoting telepathy and lucid dreaming.

The most popular form of quartz, amethyst is fortunately abundant, and large stones of decent quality can still be purchased affordably.

Amethyst is strongly connected to the chakras, or energy centers in the body. It is believed to help align and balance especially to the 6th (Third Eye) and 7th (Crown) chakras.

The Third Eye chakra is helped by amethyst’s ability to heighten spiritual and psychic awareness, as well as its calming and stress-relieving properties. Amethyst also aids in introspection and to increase intuition.
The Crown chakra controls our mental energies, and amethyst’s ability to reduce stress helps here, too. This chakra is important in meditation, and, as mentioned earlier, amethyst’s ability to calm the mind helps in that activity.

Some people believe that amethyst can also help with physical healing, treating toothaches, bone and joint ailments, stomach problems, and heart or hearing disorders. It has been used to cure headaches, treat blood diseases, including diabetes and hypoglycemia, and to minimize problems of the central nervous system.

You can buy amethyst jewelry, a talisman, or a purple scarf from my website.

garnet, amethyst, and rose quartz

Red & Magic

Amethyst is sometimes called the healer’s stone, or the stone of spirituality and contentment. It enhances your creative energy and healing power by assisting the mind’s surrender to higher spiritual energies. Amethyst opens you up to the cosmos, bringing in all the positive energy around you, balancing and aligning the intellectual, emotional, and physical energies.

Sodalite is a shaman’s stone. It is beneficial in healing work by providing activation of the third eye, and provides direction of purpose and lightness of heart.

Green aventurine was used in shamanic medicine wheel work to aid spirit guides in connecting to the green, healing heart light.

Next time I’ll talk about how you can choose a talisman.

I asked if I could prepare a talisman for Benjamin, and was given the green light. So I began by doing lots of research into which gems might be of benefit. I looked for gemstones that are soothing and calming, gems that are protective, gems that enhance courage and power, gems that encourage pleasant dreams, and more. How would I decide which of these characteristics was most important?

As I was doing this research, I was thinking about the form of the talisman. This was a small child – only about 2 years old at the time. Obviously, something that he would wear or carry, particularly in bed, was out of the question. Beads are quite small, and I certainly wouldn’t want any kind of choking hazard, so something that would hang from his bedpost or get pinned to his pillowcase was also inappropriate. But I wanted it to be something Ben could see easily from his bed, whether it was before he went to sleep, when he woke frightened, or when he awoke in the morning.

Finally I arrived at a creative solution to the two problems – including multiple gemstones to provide multiple benefits and making something both safe and easily visible – a relatively large talisman that would hang from Benjamin’s window via a suction cup!

With that decision made I could proceed. I ultimately ended up with a talisman that contained 13 different gemstones, one in a particularly protective shape. Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? Well, here’s a photo of the finished piece, which I think is attractive & tasteful. (Sorry the photo quality isn’t better – I hadn’t yet mastered my digital camera.)

Ben's talisman

I mailed it directly to Ben, along with a page that explained what each stone was and their characteristics. His mom and grandma both reminded him who I was (we’d met a few times) and explained what the talisman was. He was really pleased to receive it, and to hang it in his bedroom window.

I can’t say that the talisman made dramatic improvements, nor, even three years later, can I say that this poor little guy’s nighttime problems are completely gone. But I do know that the next time I saw him after he’d gotten the talisman, he was eager to bring me to his room and show it to me, and was clearly happy that he had it.

So what healing gemstones did I use? Amber, amethyst, blue lace agate, fluorite, green aventurine, hematite, labradorite, leopardskin jasper, peridot, rose quartz, ruby, smoky quartz, and turquoise. The green aventurine was in the shape of a Zuni bear, a powerful creature in Native culture.

I’ll be covering many more gemstones in the future, but if you can’t wait, here’s where you can learn a smattering of information about healing gemstones.