I’ve always felt a deep connection with the earth and especially the ocean and all it's beauty. Rocks of all kinds have always held a deep fascination for me and you’ll find my collection all through our home inside and out. Working with gemstones to make attractive and healing pieces of jewelry fulfills my desire to help others heal themselves spiritually, physically and emotionally. My handmade beaded pieces are varied---------some are elegant and classy, some have ethnic origins and others are more bohemian, organic, casual and even rustic and I have everything in between.
As if I don’t surround myself with enough rocks (what’s enough???) with jewelry and landscaping……….we decided to create a long talked about project in our yard. We’ve wanted to create a sort of outdoor living room. We have a great kitchen/dining space and wanted an area designed for fire pits and relaxing. This area was a rather unused space and perfect for what we wanted to create. So here’s some photos of before, during and after……….the tops of the rock benches and the rock just outside the sauna door were ones we hauled home from the mountains (with a little help from our friends). The whole project used 12 ton of rock with amazingly beautiful color. We’ve already had a half dozen fire pit gatherings with friends and family and a couple with just the two of us. The area is close to our pond/waterfall and in the quiet of the evening we can hear the waterfall with the crackling fire…………Life is so Very Good……….we’re incredibly blessed!!
ok………….I know this has absolutely nothing to do with any kind of jewelry but I’m so thrilled I have to brag………..uh……….I mean blog about it! We just picked 3# of raspberries from our plants……..we planted these “sticks” 2 years ago and got a handful of berries the first year and quite a few last year but this year has been AWESOME!……we love fresh, organic raspberries! I’ve kept track of some of our harvest this year and so far (and there’s tons left on the plants still to ripen) we’ve picked 12 1/2 # of raspberries………..what we don’t eat fresh is going in the freezer for wonderful smoothies in the middle of winter. Our winter’s here in Utah can be long and cold so it’ll be a welcome treat. We’ve got family coming over tonight so homemade shortcake with raspberries and “real” whipped cream will certainly be the dessert served here at the Everitt’s!
I’ve just finished adding 7 new pairs of Sea Glass Earrings. Some are adaptations of previous designs but an effort to give you more color options as some of the colors of the Sea Glass are more common and some more rare. I’ve had many custom requests for the present designs in different colors so I’ve tried to offer more choices. I’ve had such a wonderful time sorting through the glass…………there’s such a unique energy with it. Maybe it’s the feeling of decades of spinning and tumbling in the ocean and dancing among the waves, the sand, the rock formations and the beloved and varied sea creatures……I’m not sure what it is but it seems almost enchanting to me. I still have a couple of necklaces to finish and then post on the site……………hope you ENJOY!
OK……so I didn’t fall off the face of the earth! Just got lost in the beautiful weather, abundant garden & greenhouse, a huge yard project and just life in general to keep me busier than I’d like to be!
I hope you’ve all been enjoying the new slide show on the front of the website! I put the most recent pieces on it so that will be a way for you to catch the newest creations of Ocean Dreamer’s Jewelry. It’s also given me a chance to do more artistic & creative photos of the pieces. When I photograph a piece for the site I try to give you different views and close-ups so you can see clearly the beauty of the stones, silver, seaglass or old african beads. I think buying jewelry is a bit of an emotional purchase for most of us and definitely a personal thing………the adornments we wear speak to who we are and aren’t usually a casual choice. But with the slideshow feature I have the opportunity to take more creative views of the creations which I very much enjoy! I actually started another Photography class at our local college just last week and am already enjoying it immensely. Hopefully you’ll see the results of improving my photography talents in the photos of the jewelry on the website.
So thanks to all of you for being so patient while I took a break from blogging………I promise to keep up better!
OK……the sale is over and I’m finally finished with a new group of creations! HOORAY! I’ll be putting more than a dozen new pieces on the website in the next couple of days and I have a new addition to the website that I hope you find enjoyable—it will also be launched hopefully by Monday. I say hopefully because my computer skills sometimes remind me of my advancing age (as if my gray hair and wrinkles don’t remind me enough)! Thank goodness for an AWESOME webmaster who helps me upgrade and dress up my website and provides the technical expertise on the back end of the site. And in addition to his great computer skills I’m blessed that his sweet wife greatly enjoys my jewelry so I’m able to barter with him. What a great trade! So now if I can follow his directions (AND drink enough coffee) we’ll get this new feature up for your enjoyment along with the addition of the new jewelry.
So have a great weekend everyone and keep an eye on the site!
peace,
Karen
Good morning all! It’s a gorgeous spring day and I’m already sipping a great organic cup o’ joe! LIFE IS SO VERY GOOD!
The sale is going really well and lots of awesome folks are totally taking advantage of the sale! I’ve deleted a lot of pieces from the site now and it’ll end Sunday night so grab the pieces you’ve had your eye on before then!
Time to get to work!……..wow…..what a great job I have! I can stay in my jammies and sip coffee and play frisbee with my dogs on breaks! I think I’ll just have to keep this job! Now if I could find some space on my jewelry counter! Lots of fun creations happening here that will be posted next week on the website.
I found this great video this morning and thought you might enjoy it. I gotta say my fav is the barefoot one with the guitar. OK, OK…..I’m an old hippie if you hadn’t guessed that already!
I’m getting so bogged down with creative ideas swimming around in my head (it’s getting hard to sleep at night!) and projects all over my desk and dining room table! I’ve discovered some fun new artisans with lovely components that I can hardly wait to play with. One of them is a great artistic pair from North Carolina–Lisa and Tony–who together do fine silver designs and then cast them in Shibuichi (translated as “one fourth” in Japanese) which is one part silver to three parts copper. The finished pieces are stunning with the pure hues of the patina generated by copper oxides and greyed down by the silver oxide giving them a rustic and unique character. The possibilities are creating a traffic jam in my poor brain! I’m having way too much fun combining these pieces with gemstones and other brass elements for a great organic and funky feel. I’ve also been playing with different patinas and metals. One of my “recipes” with ammonia & vinegar and sawdust (different kinds of sawdust creates different effects) combined with copper is producing gorgeous designs. It’s all an experiment and now I’m ready to move to silver and see what we get! So with all these new pieces emerging I’ve decided it would be fun to have a Spring Sale and make some room for the “new stuff”! I absolutely LOVE Spring anyway so why not make it even more fun!
Our greenhouse is already giving us cucumbers ready to eat–we had our first one on Mother’s Day at our family gathering at our home and there’s already 6 more ready to eat now a week later! And the tomato plants are already making little baby roma tomatoes–how wonderful is that?! The shelves in the greenhouse are full of tons of baby plants–we start everything from seed now–many as early as January and then the rest in April when we return from Maui. SPRING ROCKS!
Happy Earth Day Everyone! What a great time we live in! I know it seems challenging right now but if you look at the positive side there’s an amazing “awakening” happening on the planet and I personally am glad to be here! It seems that more and more people are waking up and making different choices–almost as if we’re coming into our spiritual maturity. We have a choice to become more conscious and peaceful and take care of ourselves and our earth and it appears that on a global scale we as humans are making some good choices–allbeit a bit late. But then again maybe the timing is exactly perfect! I believe it’s a time to take more personal spiritual responsibility for who we are and who we choose to become–both individually and collectively. Everything we do and think affects all other living things. Glen and I have a lot of discussions at gatherings with friends and others we know feel the same way. One of my favorite books right now (I have it in book form and on my ipod too–I can absorb more of the principles if I use more of my senses) is “A New Earth–Awakening to your Life’s Purpose” by Eckhart Tolle. His key premise is that we need to choose–either we wake up and make some huge changes for ourselves and our Earth or we’ll destroy Her and ourselves! It’s a very powerful book and has been very helpful for me in realizing my negative patterns and gives me the tools to change those patterns. So there’s my speech on my soapbox for today (smile!).
Speaking of tools I just found some awesome drill bits that work much better for drilling my Sea Glass. You should see my dining room table–my husband built a 2.5 inch thick aspen slab table that’s 7 ft. long and 51″ wide and it’s COVERED in Sea Glass—piles of colors being sorted and put in groups for designs. The glass that seems to be available in Maui is the white, brown, kelly green, lime green, light aqua and dark aqua–listed most common to least common. I’ve found a couple of reputable sources (they only sell surf tumbled Sea Glass with no additional artificial tumbling) to purchase the colors I can’t find that are common in other areas. It’s fascinating to see how the different areas have different colors and even shapes. So my drill is getting a workout and the new designs are appearing on my site. I have a new design in my head that I’ll be working on in the next couple of days. Thank goodness for coffee–I was up til 3am last night working on photos and getting new pieces on the web and getting my Earth Day Sale going. Sea Glass pieces are a great recycle–”garbage” glass recycled mostly by our wonderful ocean and then I get to finish the project by creating pieces of adornment!
Enjoy my new treasures and let me know what you think of them and if you have some thoughts on pieces you’d like to see!
I’m finally getting something accomplished with jewelry! We’ve had a few “spring” days and the warm weather has called me outside to enjoy some sunshine & warmth…….I so miss Maui. There’s always a withdrawal time when we return from Paradise each year.
I’ve had a chance to sort my Sea Glass treasures by color and now will pull out all that’s considered “jewelry quality”.
Sea Treasures from Maui 2009
What I’m looking for is pieces that have been sufficiently tumbled by the surf to smooth the rough edges and give the pieces a “frosted” look. That in and of itself eliminates most of the glass gathered. It’s hard to decide when I’m gathering so I just pick up whatever I can find and then decide later what’s usable. All of the rest of my Sea Glass goes in pretty glass jars to sit on windowsills in my home–more reminders of the ocean I love! Once I’ve found pieces that I can use for jewelry I can put them together with design ideas. Sometimes the piece of Sea Glass inspires the design itself. After laying them out I pull out my dremel and begin the process of drilling holes in the glass. It’s a bit of a meditation and I have to be in a calm space so that I’m patient with the process. The holes have to be slowly drilled from both sides to meet in the middle to avoid chipping out the glass. Then the fun begins as I create the piece I’ve designed–sometimes the design changes a couple of times before I’m happy with it. It continues to amaze me how something that was considered garbage has now been gifted back to us by the ocean as a tiny colorful jewel!
We arrived safely back in Utah yesterday after an all night flight to see SNOW! What a shock to go from everything green to everything white! I know, I know, it’s spring in Utah! It’s still hard to come home to snow–we always hope on our return from our yearly trip to find SPRING–not this year! But it is so good to be HOME! We certainly love and appreciate our quiet life in our small rural town.
I’ve barely unpacked and still have lots of sorting Sea Glass before I can get to designing–I have so many ideas and have sketched most of them so I’m hoping to get some new pieces created in the next couple of weeks. I found lots of great treasures at Aloha Bead too so my jewelry studio will be getting lots of use–with a fire in the stove for warmth! I’ll just have to keep dreaming of digging my toes into the warm sand and listen to my ocean waves CD while I work!
I’ll be having a sale next month for Earth Day so keep visiting and sign up on my email list so you receive notices about sales.
