Count Down Fun! 4!

So I woke up in my office chair at 3 or so this morning and stumbled off to bed.  We ended up getting a pretty good early start to the day.  This time of the year the light is just incredible, and mornings and late afternoons can be spectacular.

I started by de-spruing the ferns I cast last night.  The three Christmas Ferns are toast, but the Bracken and the Japanese Painted Ferns are hot!  Despite our joking about how long they would take to de-sprue it went surprisingly fast.  Then a coarse grind and a fine grind and now they're in Pat's to do que.

One leaf is incomplete.  Fortunately I waxed it up a much longer frond than we need!

When I ground the back clean the heat caused this color to develop.

Interesting possibilities for a Fall piece . . .

This is going to be a spectacular pendant once we're finished!

Here's an idea of how different the finished pendant will look from the initial casting:

we made this Bracken Ridgelines Pendant early this Spring.

I got all of the Seasonal Botanicals  ground and ready for Pat, while she finished these two gorgeous Seasonal Botanical Pendants!

Sterling Silver Sedum telephium 'Autumn Joy' and Labradorite.

 

I just blanked on what succulent this is!  Um

Sterling Silver Succulent on Labradorite.

(Hmmm.  Maybe I am that tired!  I think I'm glad I didn't try to invest tonight.)

Then it was back to wax work!  I managed to get all of the Petite Ridgelines Pendants that we'll have at the Guild Fair treed and ready to invest.  Got a flask of our larger Ridgelines earrings treed and ready to invest.  All weighed, notes made and ready for the morning.

Here's a sneak peak at some new earrings for our spinner rack for the Fair.

Affordable Reticulated Bronze Earrings!



While I was finishing up Pat made her wonderful enchiladas for our dinner tonight.  The smell was driving me crazy.  They tasted even better than they smelled!  YUM.

Last week someone asked me if we ate out all of the time when we are working like this; hard and straight through.  No, we aren't eating out now.  I enjoy cooking, Pat enjoys it when she doesn't get stuck with it all of the time.  It works pretty well for us.  Stopping and taking an hour or so to cook a good meal is Fun for me.  Besides the better we eat the better we work.  

After dinner and a little break I went back to work and shot some waxes for tomorrow.  After about forty minutes I finally realized that I was smelling the air compressor that powers the wax pot.  I had left the dust cover on and it had gotten so hot that I couldn't touch it!  Time to stop.

Oh.  I just remembered that we haven't mailed our Fair postcards out . . .

A Veritable Plethora of Labradorite Ridgelines Pendants!

Here are a few photos of some of the Ridgelines Pendants that we've made in the last few years using Labradorite and Spectrolite.  The best ones have incredible luminous colors.

(Graphic Content Warning!  I took these photos for our own reference and record.  So most of them were taken pretty quickly and really aren't very good photos!)

We know that Deb loves the blues, but we thought it would be Fun to show you the golds and greens too!  (I can't find photos of the rosy and purple ones.)

Talisman

Gateway

Mountain Lake II

Lightning Strikes Twice

Vision

Doorway Into Time

Spring Rain

(This is a Rainbow Moonstone.)

(This is also a Rainbow Moonstone.)

Phoenix Eye

(Another Rainbow Moonstone.)

I guess you can understand why we have a couple of Collectors that call us Mr. and Mrs. Labradorite when they visit us at the Guild Fairs in July and October!

Hope you've enjoyed the trip down Labradorite Memory Lane!





Mountain Morning For Jennifer & Ellen!

Mountain Morning

After searching for awhile I finally found the photo I'd promised to post for Jennifer and Ellen!

Mountain Morning was inspired by this spectacular Picture Jasper.  It sat on my desk for a long time because we just weren't sure how we were going to use it.  It called for really special Ridgelines pendant.

What's really cool is that this pendant so inspired Pat that she designed a new feature for it, that we've since used on a few other pendants.  As well as a hidden bail it has an extra clasp, similar to a pearl enhancer.  This fastens securely around the hand-knotted tiger eye beds.  This pendant is now in K.K.'s Collection.  So now she can wear it on the tiger eye beads or on her favorite chain!  Neat idea, huh?

And no Ellen.  We didn't make it to the Market Saturday!  My company came to town early and when Pat was ready to leave for the Market Asheville got hit with torrential rain.  At least I did pickle some sweet peppers.  It's a start.

I'm still having camera problems.  But we're not going to let that stop us from getting back to blogging.  Work might, but the camera won't!  Just as a teaser of what's to come here's, this photo was taken late this June.

Thirsty Sam at the Fountain

Special thanks to those that emailed and asked about us while we were so busy that we weren't posting.  As I said, all's well we were just working like crazy.  We still are for that matter!  But hopefully we're getting back in the habit again.