7-21-2014
We have been in Minnesota now for 2 weeks. I finished my first week at my new assignment and was welcomed by friendly folks in a beautiful new clinic. We did manage to get some antique shop browsing and flea market shopping for new jewelry creations for the Etsy store. I have finished some earrings and have done about 5 resin filled pendants that are currently drying, which is a great new way to use the antique watch components. Mitch has also started showing our jewelry at the local farmers market. We are not sure this is the best venue but it is great exposure. We have learned of several flea markets and craft shows that will be going on while we are up here that we will be looking in to. Just don't want to take too much time away from grand baby time. We just missed one in Anoka where I am working that would have been a great one to display at. Oh well next time. Found some great old bus tokens in a second hand shop that are working out great in some designs. The centers were all cut out into different shapes that we were told corresponded with the different routes.
Having a blast reconnecting with my youngest grand daughter. She is a very smart little girl and is such a joy being around. Good to spend some adult time with youngest son and daughter in law. It has been quite a dry spell in between visits.
Otherwise all is good. Loving the Minnesota green. It is always so pretty up here and if not for the winters would be very tempting to be up here more.
Here's the latest I have pics of. Some are in the boxes to go to Farmers market..
M&D Design
Monday, July 21, 2014
Monday, June 23, 2014
Wire Wrapping, Silver Shopping in Mexico, Rock Shopping in Texas
6-23-2014 It has been a very busy month. We started by going to an International Living Conference in Puerta Vallarta, Mexico and had a blast going local and finding best deals on Taxco silver. It will be showing up in our designs very soon. Finished a custum order using a Taxco silver box chain and it looked great! We got back from Mexico and started our long awaited oldest granddaughter time ( we have youngest granddaughter time starting in July) and together we found a great rock shop in Dallas called The Rock Barrel. After a couple of hours in their shop we came out with some great stones to incorporate into our jewelry and I finally found a wholesale supplier for sterling silver wire. Which brings us to the wire wrapping- I sat down with a beautiful turquoise green agate and wire wrapped it in the sterling silver wire I got from The Rock Barrel and was quite pleased with it. The piece is now for sale in our Etsy shop. It is great fun to let your creativity take flight when you start to design a piece of jewelry and currently it is done under the watchful eyes of a 7 year old. Please check out our latest in the Etsy shop as we have added quite a few new pieces. Have a great week!
wire wrapped agate
Custom Order Turbo
Shell &Taxco Silver
New Zealand Turbo Shells
New Zealand Paua,shells
with Hawaiian Jobes Tears
and silver beads
Fun and Funky Glass Bead
Earrings
wire wrapped agate
Custom Order Turbo
Shell &Taxco Silver
New Zealand Turbo Shells
New Zealand Paua,shells
with Hawaiian Jobes Tears
and silver beads
Fun and Funky Glass Bead
Earrings
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Settling In At Arlington
5-25-2014 Good morning and Happy Memorial Weekend. Hopefully you are enjoying the long weekend. Please take some time to honor those who have served our country in the past or present, alive or who have given the ultimate sacrifice. To all we say thank-you to them and to their families.
We have been very busy making jewelry since we arrived at our new temporary home base. With me having a break from working I have pitched in to help again. I have included some pics of the earrings I made for the special ladies that I had the privilege to work with in Lubbock. I tried to capture each ones personality in the choices of design and I think got pretty close. I have also included some new designs that are in the shop. I have been experimenting again with the natural stones and redesigning old pieces of jewelry. I had hoped to take some silversmith courses while on work break but unfortunately the classes are 18 weeks long and we won't be here that long. Someday I intend to find a class we can attend. I have seen some beautiful work come out of the Arlington Gem and Mineral club. I am back to trying some wire wrapping and finished a pendant I like. This is an area I need to work on, it is fun and a great creative outlet.
I promise to try and do better on updating the blog . For now here are the pics I promised.
We have been very busy making jewelry since we arrived at our new temporary home base. With me having a break from working I have pitched in to help again. I have included some pics of the earrings I made for the special ladies that I had the privilege to work with in Lubbock. I tried to capture each ones personality in the choices of design and I think got pretty close. I have also included some new designs that are in the shop. I have been experimenting again with the natural stones and redesigning old pieces of jewelry. I had hoped to take some silversmith courses while on work break but unfortunately the classes are 18 weeks long and we won't be here that long. Someday I intend to find a class we can attend. I have seen some beautiful work come out of the Arlington Gem and Mineral club. I am back to trying some wire wrapping and finished a pendant I like. This is an area I need to work on, it is fun and a great creative outlet.
I promise to try and do better on updating the blog . For now here are the pics I promised.
Sunday, May 4, 2014
SURVIVING DUST STORMS AND MAKING JEWELRY
5-4-2014 Goodmorning. I apologize it has been so long since last post but the internet connection and the wind in West Texas do not go well together. We have been trying to survive major dust bowl days dust storms out here and continue to try to make jewlery when the RV is getting shaken about. We got thru it and will be heading back to Fort Worth area next Saturday.
Life partner has been doing most of the shop jewelry while I have been busy making gifts. I finally got to sit down yesterday and make some for the shop. It had been awhile since I had made spirals in wire work and laughed how long it took me to make some decent ones.
We celebrated daughter in law and grand baby birthday this past week. This time of year seems busy for birthdays as sister in law and good friends birthdays are happening soon also. Thoroughly enjoyed watching our newly 2 year old granddaughter open gifts. Oh, to recapture that sense of joy and wonderment. The one thing I truly miss this time of year are the forays into the garden centers and working on a garden. I guess we will have to live thru others labors from now on.
Here's wishing you calm days and lots of sunshine. Here are some of the gifts I have been making an some of our new listings on Etsy.
amethyst and silver beads
Rubies in Up-Cycled, redesigned necklace
dainty blue and gold dangles
Our moto
Wedding gifts for friends
Life partner has been doing most of the shop jewelry while I have been busy making gifts. I finally got to sit down yesterday and make some for the shop. It had been awhile since I had made spirals in wire work and laughed how long it took me to make some decent ones.
We celebrated daughter in law and grand baby birthday this past week. This time of year seems busy for birthdays as sister in law and good friends birthdays are happening soon also. Thoroughly enjoyed watching our newly 2 year old granddaughter open gifts. Oh, to recapture that sense of joy and wonderment. The one thing I truly miss this time of year are the forays into the garden centers and working on a garden. I guess we will have to live thru others labors from now on.
Here's wishing you calm days and lots of sunshine. Here are some of the gifts I have been making an some of our new listings on Etsy.
amethyst and silver beads
Rubies in Up-Cycled, redesigned necklace
dainty blue and gold dangles
Our moto
Wedding gifts for friends
Sunday, March 23, 2014
JEWLERY MAKING IN AN RV
mandddesign@facebook.com
3-23-2014 Goodmorning!
Spring has arrived by the calender we are all awaiting it in
reality. It continues to be a big dust bowl here in west Texas and
we are all suffering with allergies because of it. However the
weather has been fine for life partner to be busy in the jewelry
making business. He has produced several nice pieces this past week. We are finding that crafting in the RV is not as hard as we thought just difficult if both of us are trying to work at the same time. One of the reasons we bought this model was for the built in desk area which we knew we would need for the jewelry. We were not ready to give up the living space to buy a bunkhouse which would have given us another room for our crafts. We will see if that turns out to be a good decision. For now we are doing fine and loving the full time RV living. It continues to come with surprises such as we have found out that our next place in Anoka, MN all the RV parks close Oct 15th ( help we needed thru the 30th!) and that the park we were planning to stay in May- early July back in Burleson is now not taking monthly rentals. Now we get to start looking again! All that said we are still glad we made the decision to go mobile. Enjoy the Spring sunshine and here is hoping for rain. Here are some of life partners creations from the last week from our new smaller work area. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
New Zealand turbo shellsAdd caption |
an old Mikey Mouse watch re-cycled into a great,fun pendant |
beautiful up cycled watch with rubies |
A gorgeous day in rural Texas- note the yarn bomb |
Work shop in the RV |
I will leave you with these very wise words to live by |
Saturday, March 8, 2014
WE'RE BACK!
manddesign@facebook.commanddesign@facebook.com3-8-2014
It has been a while since our last blog. Life got very busy for a while. We decided with our life style it made much more sense to go mobile. So we furiously went thru our home, sorting out things to give away, keep and sell. Had 2 big sales and put the house up for sale all in 3 weeks. We bought a beautiful 39 foot fifth wheel which is now home and workshop. We just got our our jewelry supplies out and I got several pieces done today. It is interesting going from a large workshop to a small desk in a fifth wheel , but we bought this fifth wheel because it had the desk area we could work in. After all you can be creative anywhere. We look forward to some beautiful places that will inspire our jewelry. For now we are staying in Lubbock again while I help out a community clinic. I have enclosed some of our new pieces. Please visit the Etsy store and take a look around and share the site with your friends. I will be talking soon on how we are doing in our small workshop and sharing some new ideas so stay tuned.
our new home
Life partner in new kitchen
New Designs
It has been a while since our last blog. Life got very busy for a while. We decided with our life style it made much more sense to go mobile. So we furiously went thru our home, sorting out things to give away, keep and sell. Had 2 big sales and put the house up for sale all in 3 weeks. We bought a beautiful 39 foot fifth wheel which is now home and workshop. We just got our our jewelry supplies out and I got several pieces done today. It is interesting going from a large workshop to a small desk in a fifth wheel , but we bought this fifth wheel because it had the desk area we could work in. After all you can be creative anywhere. We look forward to some beautiful places that will inspire our jewelry. For now we are staying in Lubbock again while I help out a community clinic. I have enclosed some of our new pieces. Please visit the Etsy store and take a look around and share the site with your friends. I will be talking soon on how we are doing in our small workshop and sharing some new ideas so stay tuned.
our new home
Life partner in new kitchen
New Designs
Sunday, January 12, 2014
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
1-11-2014 Wishing all of you a wonderful and blessed New Year!! Our time seems to not be our own anymore. We have been very busy the last several weeks coming back home for a brief time and trying to get chores done. Our New year has been blessed with the news life partners cancer is still in remission! Thank-you again to the docs at MD Anderson. We have also made the decision to sell our home and become mobile. We have talked for years about going back to the RV life style and since we seem to not be in our actual brick and mortar home much we thought now was the time. So here we go sorting thru a lifetime of memories and "stuff". It is definitely bittersweet but yet exciting to start another chapter of our lives. No worries though we made sure our new fifth wheel has room for us to continue in our creating of jewelry for M&D design.
Sine we have not had much time to create I thought I would share some pictures of happy clients who are showing off their new unique pieces from our collections. It is wonderful to see people enjoy our creations. Remember to continually checkout the Etsy shop for new listings. Again may this year be a year filled with wonder and love.
Sine we have not had much time to create I thought I would share some pictures of happy clients who are showing off their new unique pieces from our collections. It is wonderful to see people enjoy our creations. Remember to continually checkout the Etsy shop for new listings. Again may this year be a year filled with wonder and love.
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