Just Monkeying Around

Swing into the holidays with this modern Monkey necklace! Perfect for monkey lovers as well as those who just love to monkey around. How can you have a bad day when you’re wearing a monkey?

Handmade at Amazon has officially launched! You can find my shop at http://www.amazon.com/handmade/idreamicanfly or just type “idreamicanfly” (one word) into Amazon’s search box. I have some of my most popular pieces up on Amazon Prime, so… free shipping for you folks in the USA. And yes you can order from anywhere in the world, too. Happy shopping!

Sawing my sailboat out of a wax block

Last year we moved to a small island looking across the water towards Seattle. My view out of my studio is of Puget Sound and all of the wonderful things that entails - everything from sailboats to bald eagles to the waves rolling up on our cobblestone beach. Once we even had a seal just offshore flinging a gigantic salmon up into the air to break it into pieces before diving down to eat them. The seagulls were circling madly and grabbing scraps every chance they got.

All sawed out and ready to start carving!

It’s such an inspiring view that I was destined to eventually start sculpting it. My first piece? This little sailboat. Sailboats are so peaceful. Even when hundreds of them race by, which happens several times a year here, they’re graceful and silent. It’s a thing of beauty.

The finished sailboat, ready to head off to the foundry for casting

The dragon necklace. Always fierce.

The new horse pendant in wax, all sawed out and ready to start carving.

“With life as short as a half taken breath, don’t plant anything but love.” - Rumi

The dragon showing off his curvy side. I really enjoy the challenge of making these jewelry sculptures look interesting from every angle.

Sawing the new horse pendant design out of a wax block. The trick is picking a wax block of the right thickness so that the piece will be the right width when I start carving it. Well, that and keeping exactly to the lines of the sketch when I saw!

The new dragon necklace is here! Elegant yet fierce - my favorite combination.

It’s been too long since I started a new piece, and my fingers were getting itchy. So I carved out the time to sketch today and designed this new horse. The legs are bound to be tricky - there’s a fine balance between getting a graceful delicate look while still having them sturdy enough to not bend during casting. Should be a fun challenge!