My kind of Christmas

Everyone asks me if I celebrate Christmas. I always say no, but I just realized that I do have the Christmas tree, it is decorated just like the rest of the house, I have full closet of gifts for Sophia and I even went out for a Christmas dinner to my friend's house, so can I really say that I wasn't celebrating it? 

But I love The New Year celebration so much better. The anticipation, the feeling of something new, cooking, champagne, ... I love it all. 

We always had a real tree when I was little. I will never settle for a fake one. My mom and my dad collected vintage tree ornaments their whole life and my mom gave them all to me when my dad passed away. Now every year I decorate my tree and it brings so many joyful moments... This year it's even more special, because for the first time I decorated it with Sophia, last year she was just a month old, she didn't care. I am so blessed to share this magic with her! 

Here are my special ornaments 

and the Grandfather Frost :

Another update coming on the January 1st - with all Sophia's presents under the tree

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year All!!! 

i did it

Made it to the first hundred~!

oldie, but sooo goody!

i was looking through my old jewelry pictures and found this beautiful ring that sold way to soon :) I need to re-create it, or at least get inspired by it and make a similar one. It was so much fun!

We had a special project in the jewelry class called "Adjustable ring". The idea was to create a ring that could fit any size finger. I had many many ideas, but decided to create a gorgeous wrap around ring with garnet teardrops.

I have more of these beautiful blood red garnet teardrops, so if anyone has similar ideas and would like a custom ring I would love to play with "adjustability" again!

me likey

I can't believe that 100 people actually left 100% positive feedback for my items. This is huge. I don't think i realized it before that (way over a hundred) items are all around the world: USA, Russia, Australia, Finland, England, Canada are some of the places i shipped my lovelies to.

Thank you all! For loving what i do and for giving me an chance to do what i love! This would not be possible without all of you!

Love you much.

T

p.s. to make this number even more magical I just need one more sale :)

fun. fun? fun!

This weekend was great! Yesterday we went to IKEA to get some sun toys for Sophia on Sunday. I already have her "big girl room" planned in my head, so we started small.
Here are my two loves putting some furniture together:

Fun chalk board to solve formula equations:

And we got these crazy fun finger puppets. Sophia loved the stories I came up with at dinner:)

jewelry stuff:
I shipped a couple of custom orders to my best customers ever. One is in Australia. Here is what I had to say goodbye to:

Beautiful , very rare and unique hematite pendant featuring two black Tahitian pearls

Montana Agate Ring

My favorite of all - Carved Amber Compass Pendant

Have an amazing week!

CraigsEasy = Amazing Craigslist Tool!

Occasionally I look for furniture on Craig's list. With all the house projects i am into I want to save as much as i can. But I would also like to save time that I spent opening every listing and looking at pictures.
But I came across this amazing tool and it saves me so much time.

http://craigseasy.com/

you can get directions on how it works there, but here is how I did it:

1) add CraigsEasy to favorites:

2) go to Craigslist and modify your search:

make sure you check mark "has image" and click "search"

now right from this page go to your favorites and open what we saved:

 And... Voila ! You can browse ALL the pictures at once!

Have fun exploring!

Test drive - Labrodarite Pendant

Bernita,
Here are some pictures per your request :) I love this pendant! The color is so soft, warming, loving. Simple setting and just a great feel to it.

Sorry the pictures are not the best quality, i was just trying to show the size of the pendant, more detailed look you can see in the listing in my shop.
http://www.etsy.com/listing/55396495/sale-huge-labrodarite-pendant-sterling

This stone has a really nice blue flash!

Here is me:

Here is my little helper...
What's so fun in that bag???
The dapping tools set is the best toy of her :) She is putting correct dapping sticks in the holes. No need to buy toys for this kid. Mama has plenty of them in her studio!~

Test drive

I decided to post here pictures of me wearing my own jewelry. My friends know this doesn't happen that often. I don't know why.  In Russia it's called "shoeman with no shoes" :) It's important to me to know how certain piece feels and wears before it finds a good friend and new owner, so here it goes.

I will call these posts test drive. Let me know if you would like to see a certain piece~!

Have a fun day!

green drusy/druzy ring with fun sterling spheres accents. Oh Fun!
here is a link to the ring:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/56046592/sale-green-drusy-ring-size-6-and-half

Here is the top portion put together and also I sized the ring's shank to a requested size 9:

Per Mary's request I didn't do the additional wire on top of the crown wire, but because I added another layer of metal under crown wire the walls are thick and very sturdy, but because the face has different levels (cheaks are lower than forehead and chin) I can't push it around the face all the way. This is the best fit for the ring in my opinion, without damaging the design around and keeping perfect sircle around the face.

Custom face ring Part I - Design

Hi Mary! I got a beautiful carved face, over this weekend in the mail and started working on it, actually just played with the setting wires:

Face itself has nice size and shape. A little unleveled, but that's fixable :)

Here is it:

After playing with couple bezel wires to hold the face we came up with two options:

Option 1) Just crown wire, here it is pre-set in it

This crown is very light. Face is delicately supported by little crown teeth. I love it.

Option 2) Bezel wire with crown wire on top:

Mary, This setting is good too, but in order to se it I had to add some wire to the top of the crown wire and this adds extra weight and height to the ring. It was a great idea, but it looks a little bulky and feels heavy. I also had to raise the face a little bit to level it out. It was a great idea, but I am not sure it's the best choice for this ring now. It's for you to decide, but I would go with the first option.

What do you think?

Cameo / custom order

This is one of my favorite custom projects so far! I etched Egyptian border around this cameo oh Achilles that turned out to be about 600 years old!

The background is my kitchen's table and I think it looks sharp with this set!

Custom shoe :)

I had a custom request for a show with an opal.. I worked on several designs, but never actually finished it, but the idea was pretty cool and I might get back to it later when i have the time, but here are the sketches :)