Bigger Photos

I edited the layout of the blog to allow for larger images. I have wanted to figure this out for ages as the body of the blog always seemed to narrow for me. Well, thanks to Geninne's Art blog I figured it out last night. These photos were taken by my friend Chris Plavidal, I love their little treasure box quality.

ETA: I was asked to give some info on how I did this. First you have to widen the body of your blog by editing the html template. I had been scared to mess with this, but it was super easy. Here is the tutorial I used. However, I found those numbers to be too big and used 850 for outer wrapper and 600 for main wrapper. Blogger photo upload still won't make the photos bigger, though I can put two side by side now. So, you have to host your image in flickr, or whatever photo service that you use. Then copy the image from there and paste into your blog post. Since I made my blog body 600 pixels wide that is now the largest width of photo that I can use. I hope that helps.

Karlie Rose

We went to my parent's house for dinner last night and got to see more pictures of Karlie Rose. Mom spent all last week with my brother, sister in law and Karlie, so she had lots more pictures on her camera. I love the one of my dad, brother and I admiring the sweet girl. In some of the newer pictures it was amazing to see that she has already changed since I saw her at 0-2 days old. I hope to see her often and look forward to spending lots of time with her.

I'm still whirring away in the studio, now with about five days of production left and lots to do still! It is always challenging with the rush of getting ready to photograph finished pieces, but I will do my best. I hope to share some pictures with you by the weekend, so keep an eye out for a few photos. Pester me if I don't because I often need a reminder to stop and take pictures of my jewelry!

What I'm working on

Stones like candy in bezels. Waiting to be made into earrings and such.

This pendant is finally resolved. I spent a lot of time on it and ended up changing it twice! It will have an opal clam in the middle and little stones at the bottom.

I am loving this pendant!

These will be rings and pendants in my Collage style.

This pendant will have a beautiful turquoise cab in the middle with coral set in the smaller spaces. I need to finish it because this doesn't do it justice!

I have a lot going on over here! Oh, and my sweet husband learned to cut discs for me this weekend and saved me at least an hour and a half of my precious time.

Welcome to the World

My sweet little niece with the blanket that I made for her.
I finished the blanket this weekend, finally!

Grandpa toasting the birth of his first grandchild

Princess collage by Jane Ruestmann

Dad with the baby cradle he made, and mom's quilt inside.

I spent the weekend in Austin with my parents welcoming my new niece Karlie Rose. She is so sweet and beautiful and I am so happy she is here. I can't wait to spend more time with her! She is named for my dad, Karl Lee, has lots of pretty dark hair and is just so stinkin' cute.

Flying things

I take my jewelry pictures for etsy in a window by my garden. Yesterday a Monarch was drinking nectar from my zinnias. Today there was a giant Swallowtail and a hummingbird! I couldn't capture the hummingbird through my dirty window, but I did get these snaps of the butterflies. They are so pretty and distracted me for some time, not that that is hard to do these days.

Crochet Inspiration

I went to a yarn shop in Fort Collins called My Sister Knits. It was around the corner from the Fry's house, and in someone's backyard. I really didn't expect it to be a full blown yarn shop with a great inventory but it was. I bought a skein of Noro for another planned Spring Ripple Scarf. I also got inspired by this blanket that they had as a sample. It was just a giant granny square made of Noro Sock yarn. Well, I can't afford to make one out of that, though I would love to, so I found some superwash in great colors on Elann that inspired me. Of course this is just a plan, I have no idea when I will be able to start this, and I have plenty more projects in mind.

Yarn from Elann and photoshop rendering of color scheme.

A giant granny square blanket from the Purl Bee.

Redicovering my sketchbook

I mentioned last week that I had started on a new one of a kind piece. It went through several design changes along the way, and using my sketchbook really helped to settle on which design to use. I usually just arrange stones and get to work, but have decided to sketch out each of these ideas in advance. I also like the idea of having a record on paper. Here are some of the pieces that I will be working on in the next few weeks.

Sketch and stones for Opal Clam Shell Pendant

Sketch and stones for another multi stone pendant

Sketch and progress on my Turquoise pendant