Here is an arrow head pendant I made - I like to use stones and colors that are appropriate to the culture that the object comes from - though sometimes I do go wild and use whatever I want - this one is turquoise and coral - which are still very commonly used by Native Americans . . .

I'm pretty sure this tree is going to be for the raffle at the cat show in Houston

http://www.ticamembers.org/calendar/141107a.htm

If you want to see some of my work in person I'm going to be at the TICA cat show in Houston on November 7, 8, and 9th Here is a link to their site:

http://www.ticamembers.org/calendar/141107a.htm

(don't worry if the list of people doesn't make sense to you - those are the judges - just be aware of the location and the times 3 to 9 pm on the 7th and 9am to 4pm on the 8th and 9th) Then my friends Kena and Lisa will be selling for me at Middlefaire in Hillsboro on November 8th:

http://www.middlefest.com/

I've been told by many people that my work looks MUCH better in person so I hope to meet some of you in Houston or hear that some of you stopped by Hillsboro!

Here are two trees I finished last night - I really like the one in the geode but that seems to be a personal taste . . .

As you guys saw I got stuck at the car dealership forever yesterday (I think they may have had to drill for the oil for my car - though I can't prove it) - the good part is I brought my jewelry kit with me so at least I had something to do . . .  here are three tree pendants that are the result of said wait . . . I also got the bodies of two large trees done so I'll post pictures of them tomorrow . . .

The last one is a great example of why you should always follow your intuition in art - I pulled out mixed agate, amethyst, and carnelian all the while thinking 'really?  I'm not sure about this, but ok . . .' and it came out great.

Good thing my art is mobile - I just spent 3.5 hours waiting on my car to get some really simple work done - but I got the wire work on two pendants and two free standing trees done!

Here is another tree pendant - this is based on my crystal gem tree - which is one of the most popular ones.  I think it translates well to a pendant.

I really like this tree so I thought I'd show it off.  I love the little labrodorite 'fruits' on it.

When my circle meets for sabbats I always make little presents for everyone.  This time it is little pendants.  I'm honestly really happy with these for a couple of reasons.  First of all, they are top to bottom pieces for me.  My friend found the racoon (naturally deceased), I skinned him, my bugs gave me his bones, and now he gets to be art.  The current sabbat is Samhein (which most people know as Halloween).  The symbolism of Samhein is death, not as a negative thing, but as a natural part of life.  There is also the realization that the seasons will change and life will re-emerge in spring.

So for these pieces (which are tiny - around 1 inch if that) -  I used a bit of moss agate to represent the seed of life that is still in the 'dead' ground, represented by the racoon vertebra and the bare tree.  I am really pleased with these guys

if I do say so myself.

Here is another tree - this one is more of a spring time tree

A lot of my custom pieces are made for people with specific needs.  This one was made for a young lady who was recently diagnosed with severe depression.  She likes cats so I used shed caracal claws.  The bottom stones are sort of a personal 'blend' of mine for people under emotional stress.  I use black tourmaline to neutralize and transmute negative energy, rose quartz to promote self care, opal to represent positive energy, and then clear quartz to amplify the whole thing.  The other stones are particularly geared toward combating depression.

Here is another tree that is a great example of why I like to do custom work.  A friend of mine came by at the last show I was at and picked out copper wire and lots of red and orange stones and told me to make a tree with it.  I don't particularly like bright colors so I thought 'Ok - but I don't know about this one.'  - look at how beautiful it came out!

I also like that I am able to use every part of an animal - even cast off parts.

Scorpions are one of my spirit animals so I keep them as pets.  One of them had babies and just like all arachnids they shed their skins as they grow.  I collected the skins and made scorpion amulets.

Gem trees are not uncommon to see at gem and craft shows, however mine are special.  I try to include a larger number of stones and also tailor the stones to a particular season of need of the person I am making the tree for.

This tree is a perfect example of that principle.  It is called the 'dead of winter tree'.  As I have mentioned I am highly influenced by Druid beliefs so I included a tiny piece of mistletoe on this tree.  The Druids believed that mistletoe was the most sacred plant because it appeared to be immortal.  They could see it on trees even when the rest of the tree appeared to be dead during the winter.

These little pendants are so bright and delicate - they are almost hard to photograph because any tiny gust of wind and away they go.  They are made of parrot feathers and various gemstones.

I love these little dragon flies - they are made from racoon toe bones - then the bright orange one is made with parrot feathers and the darker ones are chicken feathers.  I had no idea chicken feathers were so intricate but they are.

Here is a a custom version of dragon skin for a woman at Texas Renaissance Festival down by Houston.  I honestly never would have thought about the black looking so good but it sure does

These trees are probably my most popular pieces because they can be completely customized.  I'm a purist and only use natural gemstones for my trees.  The little moons are real moonstone with a nice blue flash.  The rainbow/chakra tree is by far the most popular, but I am branching out (no pun intended) and making them in different styles.  I particularly like the dark moon tree myself.  These pictures are of a rainbow/chakra tree, dark moon tree, and a new one I'm calling an ice tree.

One of the fun parts about re-purposing bones from deceased animals is that I get to give them a new life.  This pieces is made of tanzanite, shed parrot feathers, and the toe bone of a racoon I found dead in the road.

This is my favorite stone in the world - boulder opal.  It is not what everyone thinks of as opal, but I love it.  It is formed when opal and bedrock form together so it is full of patterns and rivers of opal.  I always think about a little universe being in each stone.  This one will likely be set as a pendant too.

I have two favorite stones - this is one of them - it is called pietersite.  Geologically it is made of both blue and yellow tiger eye that twisted and fused during their geological history.  It is really difficult to do it justice in photographs.  I will be setting this piece in a pendant.

This is something I call dragon skin.  I got this idea after listening to a Druid friend of mine describe his idea of how legends about dragons may have come about.  He tells the story better than me but he describes someone of African decent coming to a European village with a small bright colored animal (what we would now know as a panther chameleon) and telling everyone in the village it was a baby dragon.  Of course, at that time in Europe most people had never left their village and had only seen people that lived in their village, so seeing a person that looked so exotic with an animal that was exotic would leave them with few choices but to believe that they had seen a baby dragon.  They would then pass the story down to their family members and the legends of dragons got started.

I got to thinking, if I wanted to make someone believe I had access to a live dragon, how would I do it.  These pieces are the result.

I am going to write a bit more about why I so enjoy doing what I call 'top to bottom' pieces, but I was showing a photograph of this particular piece to someone today and thought the story was great.

This is a piece of rose quartz that I cut for a friend who is going through a divorce - they love rose quartz.  Rose quartz itself promotes love of all kind, including caring for yourself, so it is a perfect stone for someone suffering a divorce on a metaphysical level as well.  One of the problems with  quartz is that it fractures.  So I had the piece pretty close to done and sure enough it fractured right down the middle.  One option in that situation is to put the broken piece in my bag of stones to crush for inlay and finish one side, but I had another idea.  This piece represents what they were going through in terms of their divorce.  The stone broke and can't be repaired, but the main pendant part is completely refinished - it is a new and different stone. It is complete without the broken piece.  However, the broken piece still fits onto the new stone and you can see where it broke off just like people are never really the same after a divorce.  I also made the setting with a hook on the back so that the broken piece can be worn on the pendant if they so desire.  As a finishing touch I included two Celtic runes on the pieces to represent protection and the ability to find safety in chaos.

This level of craftsmanship and consideration of the circumstance surrounding the piece is just not something you can get from commercially made jewelry.

Hello everyone

I just want to introduce myself for now.  I live in Fort Worth, TX and I'm in some sense a new artist, though I used to make jewelry years ago.  It is funny that I stopped to go to college and it has turned out that the college thing was a bust.  It is sad to me that I meet people almost everyday in the same position - we all say 'Oh yeah - you have a useless Ph.D. too!  Hi!'.  I recently read an article that said that you are more likely to make it in Hollywood than to get a professorship in today's market.  Of course, they didn't tell us any of that when I was in school.  SO, anyway, after wasting around 10 years of my life and seeing the direction that higher education is headed (I can go on and on about that so I'll save that for another blog) I decided to chuck the whole thing and go back to my art.  I have linked this page in with my etsy account and my facebook account and will back post some pictures in the coming days.

I love to make custom art most of all but I do make general pieces for inventory.  One thing you will notice if you see my work (or my house for that matter) is I have a thing for trees.  I consider my religious beliefs to be very heavily influenced by the Druids so that makes a lot of sense.  I also use animal parts pretty extensively in my art.  This has caused some debates on my facebook page, particularly among people who know I'm a vegan so I thought in this first post I would explain that to all of you.  I consider any work with an animal part to be a spiritual activity and strive to make each of my pieces using bones or fur or claws a tribute to the animal the part came from.  My animal parts come from three sources :

1) Naturally deceased animals - I live in a big city - animals get hit by cars and die for other reasons.  I recently collected a grackle that I'm pretty sure got killed by a hailstone in a storm.  I have dermestid beetles - my beetles can turn some nasty bits of roadkill into beautiful bones that I can use in jewelry.  Don't worry, part of the cleaning process is putting them in peroxide and no bugs or diseases can survive that.  I have also found a few sellers on ebay that collect bones when they go for walks in the woods and then sell them on ebay (admit it - you would never have thought to do that).  It is pretty easy to tell the difference between a bone that is cleaned by nature and one that is cleaned by a person so I'm confident when they tell me they found the bones they sell me.

2) Antique animals - I consider any claw, tooth, or skin of an animal that was killed prior to 1947, and will not be replaced by a new piece in someone's collection. to be fair game (no pun intended).  Again, in my mind working with an animal's remains is spiritual and if I were an animal I'd prefer to be used to make a piece of jewelry that would make someone happy rather than sit in a box forever.  Unfortunately once an animal is dead I can't bring it back, so at least I can bring back parts of it.

3) By-catch - Most of the fur I use are scraps of scraps.  Mostly I buy from another artist on etsy who reuses old fur coats and then gives me the scraps of what she was working on.  I also work with a Cherokee man who sends me the scraps of pieces he makes.  I also know a taxidermist who sends me skulls and bones (they don't use a good amount of the actual animal in the taxidermy process) of animals that he processes.  He's told me over and over again, it is me or the trash.  Again, I find it to be more respectful to use all of an animal than to throw them away.  Lastly, I know a couple of hunters who hunt for meat (trust me they might as well be interviewing for a job for all the questions I ask them).  I have recently started processing a skull or two for them.  You will probably get another blog post from me about why hunted meat is more humane than farmed meat, though I don't eat any of it.  Honestly, after processing a couple of skulls I don't know how a taxidermist could eat meat - I was eating toast the rest of the day both times!

So that's my ethics and my work.  Other than that I'm quite the animal lover - I love cats of all kinds (two of my spirit guides are big cats) and I'm pretty fond of rats and reptiles . . . and arachnids  . . . really pretty much anything that isn't a human (or a dog - quite honestly I just don't like the way dogs smell - sorry to all you dog lovers - I'd stop someone from hurting a dog and I'd care for one that was in need but they just aren't my favorite).