Tag: jade

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Autumn Update

Posted October 12, 2016 

Sometimes I have a morning when I just don’t want to get out the door and go to work. Just tired or unenergetic. Today was one of those. But I got up, out the door and biked to work with my dog running alongside me. It’s cold out; autumn is in full swing and that means frosty mornings, white capped peaks and crispy leaves.

Almost immediately after opening, I had one of my friendly customers drop in to buy a gift. And while she was here another friendly face walked in to ask a jewelry question. And then a happy third joined in. Everyone was cheerful, chatting and smiling and I thought….I am so grateful for these wonderful customers. They make my work totally worth it.

Lately I have been cutting jade to use in my jewelry, working on custom elk ivory projects, and making carnelian and mookaite jewelry for the shop’s inventory. I also just hosted a really fun artist reception for Bailey Russel and Ryan Parker, two contemporary photographers working in the antique wet-plate collodian process. Their work will be up for the month. Online, I have been working on an etsy outlet for my jewelry (isabeljewelry) because so many people like to shop on etsy so I figure it might be good to have a presence both here and there; there may be variation in what’s on each site.

On a painting note, I have been painting quite a bit this year with gouache on paper and you can find my recent work here. I’m exploring the light spectrum, gems and minerals in this new work that is an evolution from sketches and paintings for the public sculpture I installed last year.

I hope everyone is having a nice autumn!

Pictured above: Bailey Russel photos on wall of gallery, jade jewelry on the workbench, jade earrings, above Fremont Lake in October.

Pictured at the top of this post: carnelian bracelets and necklaces.

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It’s Holiday Time?! Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted November 12, 2015 

What?! It’s mid November? Holidays are upon us! So I am madly working away in the shop to bump up my inventory and bust out custom orders. It’s always a busy time for me but I know that I get a rest in January. I recently pulled out some gorgeous chalcedony beads that I recently purchased from a gem dealer and began a small grouping of holiday party drop earrings (see below).

My husband and I have been cutting and polishing some wonderful and colorful green Wyoming jade in all sorts of shapes (pictured below in one of our first dustings of snow).

I’ve made a couple of one-of-a-kind groupings of Australian magnesite (below) and Peruvian pink opal pendants (pictured at top of this post).

Both the magnesite and pink opal were bought during the Tucson gem shows a couple of years ago and it’s been fun to finally use them. Each stone has it’s own little personality: the pink opals are a classic pure pink, girly and serene, and each piece of cream colored magnesite is totally unique with brown veins making an interesting and natural matrix.

Also, I recently made some hammered rings with different faceted gemstones. Mixing and matching colors.

As we head toward Thanksgiving, I hope your holiday season shapes up to be the best ever. Peace!

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Buying Quality

Posted June 22, 2015 

When you buy a piece of Isabel Jewelry you are buying handmade quality with a lifetime guarantee. I realize that there are piles of cheap jewelry that I compete with every day but I know what I am producing is carefully and individually made…because I make each piece. Like all micro-businesses I have to compete with factory made products. Knowing this, I like to keep my jewelry small pieces of artwork.

Some companies use flashy marketing campaigns to push lower quality jewelry, it’s hard not to get convinced by beautifully produced commercials and print ads that their commercial jewelry is more valuable. People wind up paying for a company’s marketing rather than quality artistry. When my customers buy from me, they are paying for top-notch, handcrafted jewelry that I guarantee for life and I am proud of that.

I have been metalsmithing for 20 years now and I create hundreds of pieces of jewelry every year. I am very comfortable at my jewelry bench and love forming metal into tiny wearable art, my tools are extensions of my hands and I am happy when I am at work.

This Saturday, June 27, 2015, I will be having a 5-year anniversary party for my shop in Pinedale (you are invited!). I opened the doors five years ago and have been enjoying serving my community and travelers ever since. It’s a good life and I plan on continuing my work. I thank everyone that has ever bought a piece of jewelry from me, you mean the world to me.

Pictured at top: Wyoming jade & Sterling Silver pendants.

Pictured above: my Pinedale, Wyoming storefront.

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Lapidary comes to my workshop

Posted April 1, 2015 

So I’m super excited about a new turn in my jewelry making. I’ve aquired some rock cutting equipment and am learning lapidary skills. I’ve always used regional turquoise from Nevada, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico and have been wanting to increase my regional offerings so last year I introduced jade sourced from Wyoming. To get hyper-local I figured I would be interesting to start cutting some of the stones I find while hiking here in my own county, Sublette County.

jasper chert fossilized algae quartz agate wyoming

Sublette County is a huge piece of land and mostly public land. It’s amazingly beautiful and varied in geography. We have high sage-brush desert in the southern half of the county and large granite mountains in the north. A lot of the land was carved by glaciers during the ice age so there are large boulders and glacial moraines at the base of the high peaks of the Wind River Range. The desert used to be a vast ocean and is part of the Green River Formation. People find all sorts of cool fossils in Wyoming and Sublette County and south is no exception. If you go a little farther south from Sublette County you get to Kemmerer, Wyoming, a small town known for the Green River fossils, millions of little fish fossils (below is a photo of one I have in my kitchen) as well as palm fronds, prehistoric crocodiles and birds.

kemmerer wyoming green river formation fish fossil

The jade in Wyoming is found in the center of the state near Lander and Casper and it varies in greens to pitch black that shines up like a mirror. I love the jade found here and this is especially one of the reasons I am beginning my lapidary journey; I want to cut unusual shapes for my jewelry. Besides jade we have quite a bit of interesting agate and jasper of varying patterns and colors. So now that the snow is melting I can go rockhounding with pals, what a good time.

(fossilized algae with the corner polished up)

By the way…an interesting thing about the word ‘lapidary’… it comes from the Latin word for rock: ‘lapis’. You hear ‘lapis’ used for Lapis Lazuli is a popular blue stone, often found in Afghanistan, and that name simply means Stone Blue (lazuli coming from the word ‘azure’).

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Wyoming Jade

November is here and I’m starting to ramp up for the holiday season which means building up my inventory in the shop. I’ve been using some beautiful Wyoming sourced jade. In the center of the state there is a nephrite jade deposit and the colors range from an apple green to black with all shades of green in between. One of the unique specimans to Wyoming is the “snowflake” green which has little white crystals mixed into the green. The rock hounds find it in the center of the state, in the sagebrush desert between Lander and Casper; it is usually above ground so they walk all over with their eyes glued to the ground looking for the rocks and hoping for the big million dollar boulder. A lot of people are unaware that gemstone quality jade is found in Wyoming.

I bought some Wyoming jade from a local guy this past summer and have begun using it in my jewelry. And since jade is the toughest gemstone available, it makes for a great jewelry stone and can be worn with confidence in rings.

(This is my husband looking over the rough although we bought all cut stones. We hope to learn the art of lapidary someday.)

Some of the stones show a whole different color when they are held up to a light, for example the pendant below shows a mossy medium green when held up to a light and is a forest green when held against my hand.

The pendants above show the variety of greens found in Wyoming jade, from an apple green to a dark forest green and even a grey-green.

I am super excited to have a localy sourced gemstone available for everyone and will be offerening more designs as quickly as I can get them made and uploaded to the website.