Springtime means Gardening time!
Spring has to be one of my favorite seasons, especially here in Oklahoma. It means the weather is warming up and all the beautiful flowers are waking from their winter slumber. Spring also brings with it hope for my garden. I have already started thinking about what we are going to plant this year.
Each year, I have so many plans, and expectations of what my beautiful garden and flower beds will bring. I anxiously start looking through the seed catalogs (Baker Seed is my favorite!) and as I am at the farm store picking up feed for my horses, I can’t help but go through the seed display dreaming of what my beautiful garden will produce.
Miss Vivianne is helping me pick out her favorites. I love getting the spring seed catalogs!
However…as they say…the best laid plans….
The truth is…my schedule gets really busy with work, the horses and making jewelry during this time of year and usually the garden gets put on the back burner. I am finding the the older I get, the more I desire spending time at home and in my garden and especially time with my horses. The rush of always working gets old and this year, I am determined to make the garden more of a priority. Mostly, because we have the space (and endless access to good quality horse manure), and nothing beats fresh produce! But also; I find such peace, inspiration and connection with my garden. Seeing the first shoots of new life come out of the ground is mesmerizing, and knowing that we are doing our best to work the land and share the fruits of our labor is so satisfying!
Prepping the garden is a lot of work, but it’s definitely worth it in the end!
This year…I have a new plan. I have blocked off time just for the garden. I’m starting my seeds early…I’ve already started cleaning up the flower beds and garden. I’ve consulted with a good friend on how to take care of our fruit trees organically (in hopes that we actually get fruit and not so many bugs). I’m learning how to do my own compost so that we have good soil and I can’t wait to get started! I’m learning all about cool crops versus warm crops, how to rotate what you plant for the best results and so much more!
Learning more and more about gardening.
Our goal this year is to have a big enough garden to can some of the vegetables and fruit for the winter and also to share with our friends and family. God has blessed us with being able to own a large yard and we are grateful to have the ability to turn it into a small orchard and garden. I hope to be able to share with you all the journey of our garden this year,
Happy Spring ya’ll!
Chrissi
New Approach School for Jewelers
I’m excited to announce that I will be attending the New Approach School for Jewelers August 2-6th for additional training!
I always love gaining new knowledge and skills, especially in the area of jewelry, and it has been a goal for a long time to be able to attend this program!
All orders placed between August 1st and August 7th will be shipped out the following Monday, August 9th.
I can’t wait to share with all of you what I learn and put my new knowledge to work!
More soon!
Chrissi
Where you can find my jewelry
Hi Everyone,
It has come to my attention that a couple of bogus websites have lifted images of my work and are selling them for a deep discount. The only place you can purchase my work is on my official website or at a live show! If that ever changes….you all will be the first to know!
If you happen to run across any of my jewelry on another website, I would love to know about it! Several of us in the jewelry community are taking action to report these websites and have them taken down. They not only harm the artists that are trying to make a living, making and selling the beautiful jewelry and art that you love. It also harms those that pay for items they believe are original, and turn out to be something else.
If you ever have a question that the piece you are about to purchase is an original, please don’t hesitate to reach out! I make all of my jewelry myself, and I guarantee my work and stones. I want you, my dear friends to have the best experience possible!
All the Best!
Chrissi
B Golden Jewelry School
View from my hotel in Austin, TX
This past Friday, I attended a Flush Setting Course at the B Golden Jewelry School in Austin, Texas. The course was amazing, and our instructor, Donnie Jarvis, was a fantastic instructor!
This was a one-day course designed to work on just one-skill. Flush setting is a skill I’ve done on several designs in the past, but not without a lot of difficulty. My goal for the course was to learn how to properly do the setting, but to also learn where I was making critical mistakes! I learned all of that and so much more!!!
Our tool kit
We were given a kit of 10 2.5mm cubic zirconia stones to set into a copper plate and then later, a brass ring as practice.
Along with lots of information on the mechanics of flush setting and why we take the steps we take to insure a proper stone fit. So much care needs to be taken in properly measuring not only your stones, but also your burs to ensure everything matches up. So many of my past mistakes have come from not having the proper size bur for the stone…along with also not getting my hole the correct size.
Our first step was to measure the stones. Both the height and width. it’s important to measure the height of the stone, so you are sure you have enough metal for the stone, and measuring the width, helps you know what the maximum sized hole you need to drill for the setting.
Once you have your stones measured, you need to drill a pilot hole. This hole allows the point of the faceted stone to have a place to sit. Next, you use incremental sizes of burs, to drill the hole out larger and larger until you get to just under the size of your stone.
It’s important to continually check your stone with the size of the hole, and this takes much longer than you would think! A hole that is too big, will allow the stone to wobble when you go to set. A hole that is too small, will not allow enough metal to be there to secure the stone in place.
As I wanted to really learn the technique, I practiced with half of my stones, and came up with this beautiful piece below. I think I may frame this one and hang it up in the shop! What do you think?
The course was so much fun, with so much knowledge shared! It was great to have a day filled with conversation from other metalsmiths, and to see everyone’s progress and work! I loved it! I am looking forward to really practicing this setting some more, and really perfecting the skill.
Our Garden!
Flowers and plants for the garden and the flower beds
Well…after living here for over 10 years…my husband and I decided to take a crack at gardening! We had a small garden a few years ago, that yielded some amazing vegetables, and this year, we decided (well…really think it was I that decided, lol) to make it a bit bigger.
Brian helping to dig up and work the soil in the garden plot.
So, after a lot of hard, back-breaking work, we have the plot dug and the soil worked. We added in some top soil and fertilizer to help with the soil quality, next came the planting.
Plants are fin the ground, and we still have room for more! Yay!
To start, we have blueberries, tomatoes, basil, bell peppers, squash, cantaloupe, kale and sugar snap peas (my personal favorite!). Next, we will be doing some okra and sweet Italian peppers, and maybe some corn.
In addition to our new garden, we already have several fruit trees that are doing well this year. Peaches, plums (which are so sweet and juicy), apples and pears. The pears are not going to produce this year, but the trees are pretty young still, so we were not expecting them to bear fruit.
Baby peaches on one of the peach trees.
We are excited to see what our garden and orchard will do! It is amazing to see a little seed turn into a plant, and then into something we can eat! Not to mention, knowing where our food is coming from and the satisfaction of knowing we grew it ourselves. We are hoping for a bountiful crop that we can share with our friends, family and neighbors. It’s the heart and spirit of giving and a source of pride and thankfulness.
It’s been a lot of work, but very rewarding! I know it’s going to be a huge learning experience, but one that I’m really excited about!
Are you growing anything this year? Let me know in the comments! I would love to hear what everyone is doing!
Stay safe and happy!
All the Best,
Chrissi