Dragon Happy Chinese New Year

Step out of your comfort zone!

In all my years of making jewelry I never entered a competition.

Until December of '23.

 I entered two.

The 1st was👎 a big no, zero, zilch, nada, nothing.

So, can imagine my surprise when the I won 1st place in the second 😳😱! 

OMG, to say I'm thrilled, honored and humbled doesn't even come close to how I feel. 

But because I took a chance, pushed myself, tried harder I created a piece I otherwise never would have! 

Grow, learn, fall, make mistakes, grow some more!

NEVER forget life is full of possibilities! 

This is my dragon to celebrate the Chinese new year, 2-9-2024.🐉

Chinese New Year heralds the year of the dragon.

To celebrate I've created this female dragon. The appropriateness of her not only in my life but in the world is profound. 

So why and what does she symbolize….. Let me start by explaining that every item I used in this piece was intuitively selected. The first thing I used was Argentium silver. Silver is the metal of the feminine, Luna. Because of its bright and clean appearance it is said that it reflects our souls as others see us. It represents purity and clarity of vision. It is said to bring balance and healing into our lives along with patience and protection. 

I had a very specific vision for this piece, and it is one of the few times I had a specific stone, shape and pattern cut for my design. 

Palm Root was my choice for her. I wanted to represent fire in a subtle way through its pattern. Fire is powerful, transformative and cleansing. Palm Root is grounding, calming, healing it also brings protection and luck. 

To accent the palm root, I choose champagne-colored diamonds. All diamonds symbolize strength, clarity, endurance and eternal love. Champagne color also brings us order and stability. 

The eye of the dragon has a black diamond. Black is the absorber of other energies. I placed it as the eye so that it can ‘see’ evil and absorb it thus rendering it useless all while the dragon is giving its wearer protection. 

May the New Year bring all that the dragon offers us along with many blessings and peace 🙏🐉

Emboldened

Gum drop 💜 don't you think that's what that amethyst looks like? 

Perhaps I should have called the ring ‘gum drop'. 

Yet I couldn't. 

This ring represents much more to me than a sweet candy.

It speaks of the challenges we have in life.

The kind that almost shattered  us. 

You know, the ones that are so painful, so disruptive to our sense of peace that we feel ……. broken.

The kind challenge that leaves us with only two choices.

We can wallow in what happened. 

Become angry, bitter and weak.

Or we learn from it and  rise.

To rise we must go deep within us. 

We must look at what happened, and with gratitude for the lesson it taught us. 

We can then look at ourselves and see the how and why and once seen, the healing can begin. 

From then on we gather strength.

Fortitude.

A voice. 

And power.

We become so much more.

We are alive, 

stronger, 

empowered 

and we rise to be 

emboldened! 

💜

Stealing

I  have written this to share in my community. It's a public post in the hope that some may share it.  Maybe someone, somewhere will see a person wearing these pieces or trying to pawn them and report it. This is how I keep my hope 🙏

‘Some people steal to stay alive, others to feel alive’ unknown.

Someone I welcomed into my home stole from me. 

They went into the sanctuary of my space, refiled through my personal belongings to ‘cherry pick’ certain pieces I made, and stole them.

I make lots of jewelry but rarely for myself. The pieces that were stolen had great personal and sentimental meaning to me and were to be passed down to my sons and their children should they have any. They represented personal history. 

They contain love stories of my parents and love stories of my husband and I. 

They contained acts of love in trying times. They represented personal strength of character and the beauty of life.

And now they have been taken.

I don't know how anyone can steal 🥲. 

But I know this for a fact, that the person that stole them is small, weak and powerless. That they are unloved and never were loved. I know this because I was and still am loved. That love has made me strong and gives me insight into right and wrong. 

Stealing is ALWAYS wrong, it is always done by the small and weak who think it gives them power, but it does the opposite. It stains their souls . Those items which were stolen will not fill the empty hole where their heart should be.

I do not hate this person or feel anger towards them, I simply pity them. 

They might be sitting there laughing at me, thinking me a fool, that's ok. 

Karma is complex and each interaction creates karma. Are you creating good or bad? Because we were given free will we can choose to do good or do bad. 

Be careful which you choose! 

“You are free to choose, but you are not free from the consequences of your choice.” – Unknown.