It's National Mutt Day and I love dogs! If you don't already know that, you will if you follow me on Facebook or Instagram.

We always get rescue dogs and right now we have 2 - Max (our little old man) and Bijou (the youngster). Max (a Westie aka West Highland White) is from Westie Rescue of OC. They do rescue mutts as well, but they focus mainly on Westies.  Bijou (a Schnauzer mix) is from Karmic Rescue.  I share pictures of both of them regularly since they're both so CUTE!

In honor of National Mutt Day I'm doubling my dog donation. Purchase from my Dog Collection before midnight PDT and I'll donate 20% of your purchase to Westie Rescue of OC. I normally donate 10% of Dog Collection purchases but, for all purchases today, I'm doubling that!! Just click on the products to buy. I have many more designs in the Dog Collection and I'll be adding more throughout the day. Buy some cute dog love earrings to help more fur babies find loving parents!

The Love Bone Earrings are customizable! You pick the gemstone or color of glass that you want for the hearts.

The Rescues Rock Necklace is one of a kind so grab it before it's gone!

Here's Bijou	and Max

Rescues Rock Necklace Yes that is a rock that I captured between copper.  It is held together with brass screws.  A one of a kind necklace to show you love rescues!

Love Bone Earrings I create the bones by hand by fusing argentium sterling silver, shaping it, hammering it and then polishing it.  You choose the heart you would like.  I have a variety of gemstones and glass colors to choose from.  You pick the heart that is perfect for you.

I Love ❤ My Person Brass Dog Bone Tag A fun tag you can hang on your dogs collar.  If you want a different message (maybe you want a tag for you?) send me an email and we can figure out a custom tag for you.

 

Tucson Day 1

We arrived in Tucson this afternoon.  Fortunately my mom is still doing well enough (she's in her 80's) to go with me and help me shop for beautiful gems!  We got out luggage and rental car and headed to the JGM Show.  It actually starts tomorrow but Toyo (Feng's Trading) lets me do some shopping while he's setting things up.  Of course he's continually tempting me with beauties that he's pulling out of boxes!  Here are some beautiful, double drilled pearls he has (and a peak at those maroon granulated pearls I'm getting).
       

I like these because they are a beautiful maroon color and look like they are granulated on top.  Very different!
    

And a shot of what I have in my basket so far :)  I'll be going back tomorrow to see what else needs to go home with me.  Aren't those amethyst leaves gorgeous?!!


After doing a bit of shopping with Toyo we headed north and east to find our condo.  We dumped our luggage, freshened up a bit and then went to the Blue Willow for dinner.  They have delicious food and a vegan vegetable stir fry which is quite tasty.  We both finished off the meal with desert - chocolate crepe with strawberries for my mom and a vegan coffee cake for me.  Quite delicious, but, unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures!

cserpentDesigns Newsletter 01/2020

cserpentDesigns Newsletter

Enjoy!                                                            January 2020                                            Happy New Year! 2020 has begun, my annual Tucson visit is looming and I'm actually getting a newsletter out to start the year! I'm slowly working my way back to playing soccer.  I made it through half a training session this weekend and I'll see how long I can play in a small field game with an over 55 group next weekend.  I'm in the throes of closing the books for 2019 so I'll be ready to add my inventory from Tucson into my database.  I had fun playing with some new enameling techniques so you'll be seeing more designs with my enamel work in them this year.   All my new designs premiere on Facebook since I really like the one-on-one interaction you get with people in the various jewelry groups.  If you want to be the first to see my designs be sure to like cserpentDesigns on Facebook and turn on the notifications.  I update my blog somewhat regularly and I do blog about my new designs there as well.  One big accomplishment last year was to get my own website for my jewelry designs.  cserpentDesigns.com  is open and ready for business.   Since it's January I have to have some garnet designs in my shop.  I'm working on a few more designs with garnet so check back often to see what's new. Ringed Garnet Wisps - Gorgeous artisan lampwork beads, garnet and sterling silver earrings Red Tipped Spikes - Beautiful Sonoran jasper, hollow artisan lampwork beads, garnet and sterling silver If you are on my Facebook page and want to shop just click the Shop Now button. If you're local and are interested in a home jewelry show anytime this year please contact me so we can arrange it. Hostess discounts are available and a hostess gift is always part of the show!   You know I love purple, but I also think kyanite is a gorgeous gemstone.  For this pair I combined the two for a beautiful design.  Available in my studio. Turquoise and Gold Kumi I am doing more Kumihimo weaving with beads, cord and fiber and am adding in larger beads for some designs.  I love turquoise and gold and had fun weaving this beautiful and long necklace. Available in my studio.   Flower Garden Slider I'm designing a new style of bracelet. This is adjustable with a sliding bead so it is easy to put on, adjust and take off. This pretty is available in my studio.   Lime and Purple These earrings use a pair of my enamel drops.  This enameling technique is called crackle enamel.  I layer on multiple colors of glass and a crackle enamel. The crackle enamel causes the upper layers of glass to open up so you can see the lower layers of glass.  I combined the drops with artisan lampwork, Swarovski crystals, Czech glass and copper.  This is available in my studio.

Website: https://www.cserpentDesigns.com

Blog: http://www.cserpentDesigns.com/blog
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The foot at week 15 and the jewelry

A lot has happened since my last blog post!  I'm walking and, as of today, I can rise up on my toes!  Yep I celebrate the simpler things in life as I'm able to do them now.  I spent 6 weeks without putting any weight on my right foot (scootering around on my knee scooter) and then started to transition from walking in the boot to walking in shoes with lifts and now I'm transitioning to shoes with no lifts and barefeet!  Each transition takes some time for the muscles and tendons to get used to the new position.  Once I can walk with no pain and a decent distance with no lifts I can start gentle jogging for small amounts of time each day.  That's a little way in the distance.  I did want to share a before and after picture.  The bone spur (bulge) was pretty big before surgery!

As my foot has healed I've gotten back to making jewelry.  It is taking me a while to get back in the groove.  My creative stints are not as frequent, yet, as before surgery.  Here are some of my recent creations.  They haven't yet made it into my Etsy shop so if you're interested just go to my cserpentDesigns Facebook page and send me a message.

The Purple and The Green - amethyst, peridot and sterling silver

Purple Rose - Artisan lampwork and sterling silver

Palette on Black - Artisan lampwork, my own enameled on copper drops, aquamarine, Swarovski crystals, Czech glass and sterling silver

I'm working on new designs with some of the Mexican Purple Opal drops I got in Tucson in February!  Can't wait to share those with you!

Tucson - fossils and rough - day 6

I finally remembered to take some pictures today - but only at one venue :)  We were at the Howard Johnson hotel show this morning and went wandering around to see the fossils and gemstone rough.  I always like to see what the beautiful stones and gems that I use look like before the get cut and polished.  Here are a few of the gemstones in the rough.

Citrine

Peridot

Purple opal

Rhodonite

Tiger Eye

Turritela agate

And here are some cool fossils. I don't remember what the names of the critters are and I'm too lazy to look them up :)

And here's Manny from El Paso Rock Shop who answered our questions about the various stones and cracked open a few geodes so we could see the crystals inside.

And here I am in front of a mongo crystal

Tucson Gem Show - Day 2 (posted a day late)

I was just too tired last night after catching up on all the business related emails to take bead pictures and share them all with you.  I totally forgot to take any venue pictures!  Even today I only took pictures at the new venue (for us) that we visited - but I did get some good ones there.

Yesterday I started out at the JGM - Simpson St. show on its first day to make sure I got first crack at the beads that Toyo Feng of Feng's Trading brought to the show.  He always has wonderful quality, he knows exactly what/how it's made, if the stone has been treated and he often has some cool cuts!  I found him 4 years ago and he is one of a few dealers that I have to visit on the first day of the show. Oh he had some beautiful stuff!  Kingman and Sleeping Beauty turquoise, some gorgeous carved ovals of mosaic creek jasper, beautiful carved citrine leaves .... ah I could go on and on - but I'll let the pictures show the story since I forgot to take a picture with Toyo!  Hotel room pictures are never the best - but hopefully you'll get a feel for how beautiful the stones are.  As you can imagine I spent a lot of time looking through beads!

Various turquoise shapes (and the bright blue pendant is Sleeping Beauty! and those green hue tubes are Kingman!)

more turquoise

Sleeping Beauty turquoise and white agate

Citrine and carnelian

Exquisite carved citrine leaves

Angelite and the cutest little, flat pyrite squares I've ever seen!

Aren't these just the coolest carved barrels in red creek jasper?

Petrified wood beads - wow!

Blue Lace Agate - always a favorite of mine

Natural pearls and nephrite jade from British Columbia

Golden obsidian and purple jasper

After lunch my mom and I had to get something cleared up with the rental car company (I was on empty after only 1 day of driving and they marked full on my contract - oops!) and then we hit Gem Mall.  We went to the 1000 building to start and I didn't see too much that got my creative juices flowing.  I did have to go to Nirvana beads because they were selling the "cultured sea glass" beads for Znet shows and I love to use that in designs.  Unfortunately that was not a pleasant experience.  Our salesman, Nir (who, it turned out after some googling late last night, is the company PRESIDENT!!!) spent almost my entire visit at his booth complaining about Chinese vendors, Chinese products, ...  Why he agreed to sell fake sea glass for a Chinese company in his booth is beyond my comprehension since he was quite negative about the glass, showed total disdain to those wanting to buy it and, even more amazing to me, made no attempt to show the buyers how they could pair the sea glass with his beautiful Czech beads.

I had to go digging through piles and boxes myself (since he didn't even know what products he brought to the show) to try to find some matching fire polished rounds for the sea glass I picked out.  I only found 2 colors that matched.  I have to wonder why he didn't make sure, before he packed for the show, that he had Czech beads that complemented the sea glass.  That seemed like a real easy way to improve sales to me. But it does require some planning ahead of time and you do need to actually talk to the customer about what they want so you can offer them some complementary beads in your own product line.

Anyway - I spent very little since he did not have many of the sea glass styles I like, had very few Czech beads to match and I really wanted to minimize my time around him.  I only caught his first name while I was there but my mom was sure that this Nir was the Nir in Nirvana beads.  It turns out she was right!  Once I found out who he was I sent a scathing email to the company contact email because I just couldn't believe any company president could act that way.  I've had vendors totally ignore me, in which case I leave, and some don't really warm up until they see that you're serious about buying - but I have never heard the amount of negativity that I heard from Negative Nir. Oh - and I had to bag everything up myself!  He just handed me his cell phone to sign for the credit card purchase and walked away!

Nir did respond this morning and apologized.  He said he would take my comments to heart.  I don't know that I'll actually go visit him again to find out because I have had so many pleasant dealings with Starman (Czechbeads.com).  They have a very professional display at the shows (bundles of beads are not just piled wily-nily on tables) and their sales staff is helpful, positive and friendly.

Anyway - I don't want to end this post with that negative interaction so here are the pretty beads that I was able to get at Nirvana.  Won't those Czech rounds look just gorgeous in a cascade above the glass drops?

Tucson - Day 4

We had to start out day 4 with a stop at Starbuck's for the 2 Starbuck's addicts in the car (Mom and college roomie Kathy).  Then we headed back to The Rock Show (or more commonly knows as RV Park) so Kathy could check out the polished slices to see if she just had to have some for coasters ... and she did.  This time I did remember to take pictures of Bob and Pharoah of Really Old Rocks.  Wow - I remembered the picture and to include a link to his web page!  I'm getting back into the proper swing of things ... 

FYI - Pharoah is the pretty, brown guy standing on his back legs ...

Next we hit the Barn at The Rock Show to check out one of the vendors that was closed on Sunday.  I was soooo glad we did.  They had some gorgeous, American, semi-precious gemstones.  Gorgeous jaspers and agates - some I'd seen before, some I haven't.  Here is just a taste of what I found ...

Willow Creek Jasper from Idaho

Gorgeous sage amethyst from Nevada and more jaspers (I'm too tired to go open the bag to dig out the name)

I got quite a few other stones there - but the pictures didn't come out too well.  Of course I forgot to take a picture of Leanne and you'll have to wait until I get home for me to update this post with the name and web link...

Next it was back to TEP (aka the Kino Gem and Mineral show) and another of my favorite gemstone suppliers - Royal Quality Gems - owned by Chun and Jennifer Ho.  They always have wonderful, quality gemstones at very reasonable prices.  I had a good time shopping there.  The pictures only show the gems that actually photographed well since I didn't want to remove them from their protective sleeves.

Chun and Jennifer - the very gracious owners who only carry quality gemstones in their stock

Gorgeous turquoise and oh-so-hard-to-find river stone!

More turquoise, onyx and lovely rhodocrosite

From here we next headed back to G&LW Gem Mall to replace some cultured sea glass (aka manmade sea glass) at Znet that Kathy accidently dropped and to go in search of faceted, skinny, but not too long onyx drops. Here is some of the manmade sea glass I purchased yesterday and today at Znet - I love it!

It took quite a bit of searching to find the onyx drops (very Goldilocks in feel - this drops too small, this drops too big ... oh,, yay, this drop is just right!) and in the process of looking I found other beads that I just had to have ...

Onyx drops, grey (aka phantom) quartz, ruby hearts (oh so pretty!), jasper earring pairs, green oyster (first time I've seen it and it's cool! - green sprinkly inside mother of pearl)

And that, my friends, was that.  We headed back to the condo, Kathy, my kitchen beautician, colored my hair to turn some of that blondie-grey into just blondie ... And now it's time to hit the sack.  More on our adventures tomorrow!