Citrine and Lapis danglies

Ok, well Summer is here, which means that Jon and I are insanely busy. The great thing about summer in Maine is that you are SO HAPPY that summer is here. The bad things is that you have SO MUCH to do. The garden basically explodes. Where barren wasteland was for 6 months, all of a sudden you have 6,000 weeds and 2,000 things you actually may have planted that require mulch and water and love.

Plus, we have races. Jon is a runner, and I am a hard core wannabe athlete. Between lifting Dark n Stormies and surfing the internet, I pretend to be an athlete and mostly sign up for races I'm seriously underqualified for. BUT it keeps me motivated. This weekend, we had another weekend away. Jon ran in a 10K in Newton, Mass. It was a fun, short trip, but once again, I was taken away from jewelry making, which seems to be an oftener and oftener experience (yes, I can make up words like oftener on MY blog).

So I made these tonight:

My friend Diane, who is a much more talented jewelry maker, even metalsmith, than I, gave me a bunch of gemstones, wire, books, etc. for my birthday. She hasn't had much time for making jewelry, for various reasons, so she passed along some of her inventory to an ever grateful me. I have to say, I have the very best friends and family in the entire world. I am a lucky girl. Anyway, she gave me a string of citrine, which I have wanted to buy, but which is expensivo, so I decided to make this pair to feature them. From gardening, I know that yellow and blue are a color combination made in heaven, so I paired them with a gorgeous lapis lazuli bead (I LOVE this stuff) that I bought in Vermont. The color just does not come through in photos. I topped the whole thing off with a spiral-y sterling silver filled earwire and voila!

Ok, so now on to logistics. I opened a Facebook page for LoveLarisa here. My plan is to post all the stuff that I think is good enough to sell there. If you like something, just send me a message and we can work out payment details. This blog here will be mostly ramblings and more about my journey as a jewelry maker. Probably pretty boring, but I would like to document it anyway. I have a lot to learn and think it could be interesting for others learning to hear about my progress. I'll also post top secret prototypes here.

My etsy page I think I will probably get rid of. I have gotten ZERO sales from it and they make it nearly impossible for you to promote yourself there. I was hoping to be "part of a community" blah balh blah. But that hasn't happened yet. I think I may have better luck on Facebook with people I know and word of mouth, plus I won't have to pay posting fees or sale fees. We'll see. I may be a marketer, but it's a whole lot different when you're selling your own stuff!

Here's a prototype that I worked up tonight. I basically just took a piece of wire and kinda messed with it. Then strung a bead. : )

It needs a little work, but I like the freeform nature of it. It reminds me of a snail. I think it's quartzite, but I'm not 100% sure. It's big. 10mm or so.