Cactus Flowers, Bunny Rabbits, Tartans and Butterflies

What a weekend!  It has been some kind of roller coaster ride the last 4 days.  Thursday night, I started on a custom order for a local customer who wanted some Scottish Tartan pendants and brooches for her gift shop.  I made a few on spec for her to see, and when I tried to email photos to her, I found out my email account had been hacked.  I went through the steps to try to recover it, but in the end, the account was closed, so I spent almost all day Saturday trying to remember all the accounts so I could get everything updated. 

Everything went smoothly until I tried to update my Nook e-readers.  I have the 1st edition and the color edition.   The 1st edition runs on 3G cellphone service.  The color runs on wi-fi, which I cannot access in the rural area where I live.  If I want wi-fi on the weekends, I have to drive 25 miles to the nearest McDonald's parking lot. 

 

 

Getting ahold of someone in B&N's customer service department took 2 hours.  I got disconnected several times, and was so frustrated, I wanted to throw the Nook at the wall.   When I finally connected with a real, live person, I was told I needed a wi-fi connection to "unregister" my color Nook.  The techie person wasn't sure if I could "unregister" the 1st edition without messing up the color, and vice versa.   He also said I would lose my library, but I could download them again... all 938 books, one at a time.   I told him to forget it, I'd just go buy a Kindle and start over again.   Amazon still has a reader that works on 3G.  My 1st edition Nook is obsolete and they don't sell it, nor do they offer another 3G reader.  That's all I had to say to get him to check further to see if there was anything I could do to save my library.  It all worked out in the end, and I actually had some time to create some new pieces, too.

The new Scottish Tartan pieces I created on spec for a local gift shop: L-R:   Royal Stewart Earrings, Wallace Brooch, Ayrshire Scotland Necklace, Crawford Brooch, Sullivan Necklace, Campbell Necklace, MacLean Necklace, Baxter Necklace, Davidson Necklace

These pieces are part of my Spring 2012 Collection.  The 3 brooches in a row are a custom order for my friend, Lucia. 

And finally, these pieces were created using scrap clay and my "controlled marbling" technique (tutorial coming soon.)

The first thing I thought of when I saw the green and turquoise colors in the mix was "cactus flowers,"  so these became part of my Southwestern Landscapes Series.  I love making these little heart earrings, but they are the devil to sand and buff!

And if you're wondering why all the mosics all of a sudden, it's because making them is easier than figuring out how to line up two photos beside each other in this new blogspot format.   If you would like to check out better photos, please visit my flickr photostream.