A few of my friends and I are attending a handmade event this first December weekend in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. I am always very grateful to be accepted into a show and I do really enjoy exchanges made with the customers. It is very hard to make a living doing what we do... it is passion driven. Please take a moment and appreciate what we do and try to imagine how we are received in general. Sometimes it can be discouraging --> most often it is uplifting. Check out this link

Hello! Here is an article I wanted to post about about making my own stock wire. When I am making a piece of jewelry, I mainly buy two raw materials: Silver wire and silver sheet. What I have ended up with over the years is A LOT of little bitty wire end pieces and A LOT of sheet metal with various holes punched in them. Also (ahem) a few failed projects that I have exiled to my scrap bin. So in short, I have a lot of scrap. What to do with all this scrap? Over the years I ha

Here is a pendant I recently worked on for/with a customer who is also a student of mine. It is an Australian boulder opal with a genuine sapphire set to the side in sterling silver. I especially love the way the sapphire picks up the slight dark blue in the opal, it was a stone we chose together to accent the opal. Working with customers on custom work can be tricky but I felt that we were on the same wavelength as far as design and the overall product was concerned. I love

Here is something that makes all goldsmiths swoon... an ounce of pure gold. I will use it by alloying it into probably 18 karat gold (my favourite) to make bezels and maybe some casting. Gold is such a treat to work with and many people don't realize that this is what you start with to create all your gold alloys (12k, 14k, 18k, etc.) even white and rose gold! It just depends on what metals you mix it with and how much of this alloy you use. For more depth on the subject, ch

I am going to try this blog thing out. I want to be able to post and share ideas, techniques and useful resources that I find. Hopefully if I can keep this up, it will keep you coming back for more :) #photo