WOW! Just WOW!

(we'll get to the photo at left later)

First, WOW - what a great big honkin' outpouring of love on my B-Day! THANKS to everyone who has dropped me a note, called, sent a card, posted on my FB wall, etc !

I'm so overwhelmed and thankful! I have the bestest friends and family in the world! (I do, really)

"the girls" at work made me a lovely lunch yesterday - a big cobb salad, bread from Panera, homemade lemon cheesecake with fresh fruit, tea with mint grown in one of their own gardens, and a lovely gift - a reusable bag (and I don't think they even know about my bag obsession) and a very generous giftcard to Copelands. WOW! These ladies are just amazing. I am SO blessed to work where I do and with whom I do. Amen.

My family and I are planning to go out to dinner on Friday night to celebrate. We will be trying Great Sage for the first time! Great Sage is an "Organic green cuisine vegetarian" restaurant. I never set out to be vegetarian but being raw sort of set that for me. I hope everyone will find something they like there. If nothing else it will be a great adventure - and isn't that a great part of life?

Speaking of adventure - last night was Tuesday - do you know what that means?? BENCH NIGHT!! I didn't really buckle down and do much, but I did have an adventure! I was experimenting . . . .


Soon I will have a line of FUN and quirky jewelry that glows. I mean really glows!

It is part of my adventure in resin. I love resin, it is so versatile.

The various pigments and inclusions and techniques.

It never gets old.



(incidentally you can see last year's bday gift to myself in the background, a lovely, colorful, bright, FUN, and cheery piece from MaryJudy )

So this is with the lights on......








annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd.............................

ta da - with the lights out. :)



I added a luminous pigment that glows!

REALLY glows!

The one of the left not quite as bright as the other - but WOW!

Knocked my socks off! I love it!

I have quite a bit of experimenting left to do, but I can see so many possibilities!

I am thinking of all kinds of designs, words, etc.

The rings are not cleaned I only took them far enough to get the resin in there as I have been waiting to try this for a couple of weeks (vacation was great but what an interruption to my bench time!). So impatient. :)



I also took some time last night to play with creating some custom design dies (think 'mold') for the press. There just never seems to be enough time in the day/week/month......

Anyway, a new friend who is attending the Jewelry Artists Retreat this year has been showing us some of her recent press work and it made me write myself a note to use my press!

I love this little piece of textured metal and am looking forward to making more with different shapes, designs, etc.

I created a template in acrylic sheet like this  and then used a semi-soft rubber to press the metal into the template/mold that I had made. A note about thicknesses: you can use just about any thickness you want - it just has to be deep enough to support your design. A less thick acyrlic will allow a less deep design. Same thing with the urethane (or rubber) -- less thickness means you can't press your metal in as deep. But we're working very small scale here (typically) with jewelry, so you don't need anything really large. :)

Now that you've heard about my recent adventures - I'd love to hear about yours! Go ahead, click comment and fill us all in! (and say WOW!, just for the heck of it)