Our bead shows here on Maui are tiny..nothing in comparison to those on Oahu..or especially the mainland. But I am very happy we have the little one that does come out here. They've added two new vendors too...one at my request! I'm so jazzed that they come now because it was hard for me to connect with this supplier to get what I needed otherwise...the language difference makes it quite difficult over the phone and he has no catalogue.
So here are a couple of new necklaces with some shell pendants I purchased from him. The gold lip plumeria is gorgeous..I've only had this in white mother of pearl. I bought another one in black lip shell but have yet to use it. And this was a new shape in the abalone shell for me..I like it much better then the straight round donuts..this one has a bit of retro appeal to the shape. 
Cool retro donut abalone with top drilled green and purple pearls on silk. Available here
Saturday, December 31, 2005
Latest jewelry from new pendants found at bead show
Gold lip shell plumeria pendant with champagne coin pearls, gold pearls and Swarovski crystals. Available here
More L.A. Trip pics
Visiting my half sister Amy and my stepmom..I haven't seen Amy since my son was 7 and haven't seen my stepmom since he was just a couple of months old. She and my dad got divorced when my son was just a baby. I'm so glad I got to see her..she was the funnest step mom when I was a kid :) 
More Maui vacation time with my posse pics :)
Having our coffee on the Trilogy boat ..waiting to sail off to Molokini and then to turtle town to see some turtles. We saw a few turtles that day..some pretty close..but mostly the water was murkey. Supposedly there were some nurse sharks out there..the little surfer dude that helps on the crew and sits out on his surfboard making sure all the snorklers are doing okay saw them and was telling us to follow if we wanted to see. But when we saw him ask another person.."those were nurse sharks right?" my freind and I decided maybe we better not go see! Just after we got out of the water and on the boat for the lunch call..a huge pod of dolphins showed up right where we were swimming! My camera's film was out..only one of us had a camera..I still haven't received those pics..I hope they turned out.
Me driving the Trilogy boat to Molokini. I managed to get us back on course...it wasn't too hard..just had to aim for the volcano head that sticks out of the water..but I was nervous trying to keep us straight and driving the whole tourist group of people..so I handed my post back to Felicia..she's a good boat driver :)
A beautiful suprise! These popped up in a potted heavenly bamboo plant we got from our freinds yard when they moved out. I had bought these for her as a gift and her husband must have stuck it out in the yard. She doesn't do well with plants and last I'd seen it it looked pretty dead in it's pot. It must have wilted away even more to where the leaves were completely gone and only the root left underground..cuz we had no sign that it was near this plant when we dug it up. Our orchids here grow year around too..just like our roses. Maybe it will loose it's flowers for a while, but the leaves are always there. A little watering and some plant food for the other plant and walla..these beauties popped up!
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
New Wood Jewelry
Wood jewelry has been a hot trend this year...I found it very fun to work with and the results quite pleasing. While I do like some tribal styled jewelry..depending on what mood I'm in..thats not the direction I wanted to go with my jewelry line and wood kind of reminded me of that style of jewelry so I wasn't sure if I'd like working with it or not. The tiger ebony wood is just beautiful and suprisingly provides a very classy look...it also feels wonderful on. Last year my husband was making koa wood knives..the curly koa wood was amazing. He offered to make me some beads out of his scraps and I just laughed at him. Now I wish I had taken him up on it because those beads would have been gorgeous!
Here are some of my latest offerings using wood components:
