One of my girls dances in the local Nutcracker production and this cast has a tradition of gifting to the members of their group the opening night.  Needless to say in small town every possible Nutcracker themed item gets snapped up quickly – so I thought handstamped pennies may fit the cause.  Here are pennies with “Nutcracker” stamped on the bottom and the dancers first inital stamped in the middle of the coin.  I also added a date tag of “10″ for 2010 along with a crystal.   I hope the girls like them.

Working on  a bracelet for my sister-in-law – it is fun to mix and match keys from the different sets of keys.

A friend of mine spent some time in Seattle and had the chance to collect some sea glass—she would like me to make something out of it for her to wear. I have not ever worked with sea glass before and I know there is no consistancy in size, so I spoke with a stain glass artist to get some direction and tips. This past weekend I found a jar of sea glass at a tag sale – I thought it would be great to experiment with this before tampering with someone’s hand picked souvenir. Wire twisting went well – soldering a couple pieces as pendants did not go so well. I guess more practice is needed.

Found some beautiful silver wire in Minneapolis  – it is wonderful to work with and looks beautiful twisted.  Love to hear suggestions on ways you would like to see silver integrated in some recycled jewelry!

Here are a few of the items that will be donated for a a fundraiser for Dakota Spirit.   The fund raiser for the group is next month and they are raising money for the Dakota Spirit Cheer team.  The money goes towards equipment and other items needed by the teams.  We are excited to be able to donate to a great organization!  

Monogram pendants have been fun to create and I am currently working on creating pendants from old discarded license plates.

Those of you from Iowa may recognize this plate from the early eighties.    After uncovering these plates – it made me miss the day when the plates had an embossed feel to them – where now they are one-dimensional with shiny sticker look to them.

These are my early attempts on trimming and soldering – quite sure it will take quite a bit of practice.   If anyone has tips or suggestions on how to simplify and clean up the edges – send me your input!

Many years ago I had a fantastic pair of earrings that were a gift froma dear friend. The earrings were made with flatten marbles…..needless to say eventually one got lost and I have never found it but I have kept single earring just incase.

Well, on the path of repurposing items I have brought the soldering iron out of the garage and have been creating the 2010 version of the flatten marble earring.

I think they are fabulous and I have been working on my soldering  technique.  It is a slow process; however,  I have only burned my fingers a few times.  I have had great success with the project and was able to send two pairs of these custom earrings  to my dear  friend who originally gifted me the original pair.  It has been fun making several pairs to match my work clothes and know that I have the early pieces finished successfully, I am now looking at putting some of the earrings in the Etsy shop. 

These flatten marbles are a bit smaller in size than the ones you can buy at the local craft shop – these came from a floral supply and are used in the containers to decorate the bottom of the clear vases.  These are working well and seem to be a light weight for earrings.   The colors are brilliant shades of yellow, blue, green, red and so on……I am really enjoying the work I get to do with the glass.

I have always been that type of person when I see something that I think is cool – I feel the need to try and make it myself.  My current fascination are the fantastic typewriter kep pendants and bracelets…….feeling a bit hyper focused but am definately loving the learning process and the end result! 

I have been finding vintage typewriter keys and have quickly learned how to run the grinder in order to flatten the keybacks – I have only started one of the plastic keys on fire by allowing the friction from the grinder to ignite the plastic section.   Caution to those of you out there thinking about creating some of these……

I have worked on over 100 keys and there have been a few casualties…..but it is always a learning experience!

I have been having a great time putting together pendants and am working on bracelets – and I am very excited about the amount of people who are interested in me making necklaces for them as love to make things but I am not always sure others love the things I make !