Thursday, July 09, 2009

Here's a couple of fair trade and Earth friendly rings I recently made. The green is botryoidal jade that was found and cut by a local rock hound, and the gray is a smoky quartz bead made from crystal that was found at a construction site. All stones are wrapped up in recycled sterling silver wire:


More info at my Etsy shop: http://ethora.etsy.com

Monday, June 22, 2009

My latest custom order tree of life, made of recycled sterling silver, peridot, amethyst, tourmaline, and rose quartz, turned out rather well, if I do say so myself:


And here's a few more recent trees:



The last one is tiny, even smaller than a nickel. I plan to make a tiny tree for each of the seasons. The second to last tree is wire wrapped around a piece of petrified wood. I call these pendants, when I make them, "tree spirits." The third to last trees are repeats of my moon tree and nest tree ideas. You can find them, as well, as some of my other trees, at my Etsy shop: ethora.etsy.com

Thanks for stopping by, now go climb a tree!
For this year's summer Solstice, I gathered the silver suns that I crafted five summers ago and finally turned them into necklaces! Of course I was wearing my favorite "sun mirror" pendant while doing so:


The first necklace I put together features a substantial chunk of fine silver (PMC) that I stamped with a sun tarot card pattern while it was wet clay. The bead dangling from the extender chain is a sunstone briolette. I'm wondering if I should add some more dangle beads near the card or leave it alone...


The second necklace that I finally finished features a sun with a dark tigereye face surrounded by eight moonstone cabs. I baked these stones in with the PMC! The beads in the chain portion of this necklace are raindbow moonstone and fossilzed whale bone:




Happy Summer, everyone!

Saturday, May 30, 2009

I call this tree my "Moon Tree," and so far I've made three of them.
What I did this month:

- opened my Etsy shop
- added 60+ items to my Etsy shop
- finally made a banner I like
- made most of these 60+ items (about 45 or so)
- learned as much as I could about Etsy by immersing myself into the culture (lots of fun!)
- tagged the photos in my flickr account that I wish to be found in searches
- locked the pictures that I do not wish to be seen by customers in my flickr account
- researched marketing (among other things)
- started Facebook page for my jewelry
- started blog (that I've been neglecting, sadly)


Goals for next month:

- figure out how to get noticed on google search
- try out projectwonderful.com
- place ads at craftcult and craftopolis...anywhere else?
- work on my blog
- work on logo art
- renew biz license
- continue adding new items
- and, of course, make more jewelry. I have several new ideas I wish to try out...

Friday, May 15, 2009

Last night I finished the tree you see here. It's made of reclaimed sterling silver wire (18g, 24g, and 28g) and moss agate beads. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out...especially since it was an experimental tree. Do you see what is different about it?

Take a close look...



I wonder if I can now just breed my own beads?

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Look what fell out of my silver tree:

Tuesday, May 12, 2009


I'm laughing because the last time I posted here was three years ago! It's the same thing with Etsy. I opened my Etsy account several years ago but only just opened my store. I'm nearly almost behind the times, but I think I can catch up.

So here I am launching my business full throttle at a time when everyone's sales are slow. I'm not going to let this small fact discourage me, however. It is true that the market is saturated with jewelry, but it is not saturated with *my* jewelry. It is not saturated with lovingly crafted reclaimed precious metal with hand selected natural stones. It is not saturated with jewelry that has inner as well as outer beauty. It is not saturated with my love.

My plan from here on out is to use this blog as a place to chronicle my adventures with metal and stone. I may write up some tutorials. I may feature other artisans. We'll see how it goes. I'm also on Facebook, where I will share pictures of completed pieces, but this is the place where I will let my true jewelry geek shine. Welcome.

Love,
Ellen