Hiking a Rainforest on Maui

Sunday my husband, son and myself took a little trip to Iao Valley.






We hadn't been for a quite a number of years even though it's only 1/2 an hour away. It's a great place for a picnic and there is a paved hiking trail for an easy hike...or you can go off the path and hike along the creek.



I didn't remember these signs we saw posted along the stream...



I guess I never paid attention to them...beacause Iao valley is an actual rain forest, seeing these signs now made me wonder what this area got like during the huge storm we had Dec of 2005. That storm caused so much damage. A house was even washed off it's foundation. Here's a car that got taken by a flash flood caused by that storm..it's unrecognizable



This day we took the easy way and stayed on the trail..my son is just recooping from that flu so was not feeling too strong..he just needed some fresh air. I took it as an opportunity to bring my camera since I normally wouldn't want to be burdened down with it on a more intense hike. We went to the part where I used to take my son swimming when he was little..it seemed so big to him then ;-)



The air was cool and there was a slight breeze...it was perfect



Sadly my battery was getting weak so my camera lost the ability to auto focus..it took me a while to figure out how to do it on my own. But I did end up with some awesome pictures. This is just off the path..in amongst the trees are tons of ginger plants. They weren't blooming yet..usually they have white flowers and smell so sweet as you walk through...





After the Iao we went down the hill just a little bit to Heritage Gardens where we layed out a blanket and had a picnic. In this park there are monuments and different types of houses to show how the different races that came to Hawaii lived. They are fun to check out and look so pretty in the park

this is my favorite snapshot of the day:









There gardens are beautiful





and there is even a little bamboo forest to walk through





Good thing it's small and has a path..that stuff grows so thick!

New Unconventional Bridal Necklace

I have wanted to make some bridal jewelry using more of an off white colored pearl for some time, however I have had a problem finding that color of pearl..esp in coin pearls. Any ivory color I get in other shapes is so similar to white and with how small they are it's hard to tell a difference. Ivory is hard to find to in the all the shapes and sizes I want to work with. It's nice to have different shapes and sizes to add texture and design to a pieces. So I decided to mix some white and ivory and to put them with some tan silk cord and some golden shadow colored Swarovski crystals. It may not be for the conventional bride..but then most of my bridal jewelry isn't.

Here is the result..the little bit of tan coloring mixed it helps to take away from that conventional 'all white' look...perfect for a beach wedding...




This necklace is available here

Visit Jonara Blu Maui for more beach wedding jewelry.

Monarch Butterfly Coming in for a Landing!

Every morning we get monarchs and white butterfies flying around our grass..we aren't sure why...but guess that they are drinking the dew. Between the butterflies, the skinks crawling around our sandstone stepping stones and the cardinals...it's a fun little coreographed dance to watch while hubby and I drink our morning coffee. This monarch pic was snapped a couple of days ago while I was out taking pics of jewelry...



It's definitely warming up here (I know, I know...it was always warm compared to everyone else...but remember we had SNOW! ) Some days I'm hating how hot it's getting already..my bead room gets about 10 degrees hotter then the rest of the house..but most days it's still cool enough to be completely comfortable. Nights are still cool too..so right now the weather is pretty much perfect in my book ;-)

Flowers from my garden:

Green Pearls and Paua Abalone Shell

I made this necklace a couple of months ago to match the bracelet you see below and completely forgot to put it in my shop. So here it is...


Available here


Available here

Sapphire Dreams

I have finally escaped my tax prep prison and am back with some new jewelry to offer. I am in love with these new sapphire blue pearls..they are so lustrous as they shimmer blue with a hint of purple. I bought the petal keshi shapes about a year ago and had nothing to match them until recently when I came across some coin pearls and fat rice pearls at two different vendors. They all match perfectly. I'll be sad when I'm out of them. Coin pearls are becoming harder and harder to come by..esp nice ones like these.


available here


available here

Spring flowers for all you winter people out there

Christina from This Girl Beads suggested I post some pics of flowers blooming here on my sunny little island. We have had cold weather but not near enough to stop all the plants from blooming. My plumeria tree does go dormant every year though. And my gerber daisy's..I thought they died because of the drought..but with two weeks of rain one popped up and said "Hello!" Perhaps they go dormant too? A lot of plants bloom year 'round here.



More flowers from the yard:


Strange alien plant I have no idea what it is. Hubby brought home from a job one day a bulb that grows on top of the ground..we planted it and this is what grew. The bulb is huge now..like a football size.


This rose was so bright..in the picture it looks like I photoshopped it onto the picture..I didn't!


Geraniums amongst some heleconia stalks





Now for some spring earrings:


I love the powdered almond color of the Swarovski crystal faux pearls. They match so nicely with the champagne colored plumeria shells I use in my jewelry. They are new in my shop, just in time for wedding season. these would be so perfect for an island bride getting married on the beach.Available here

Lime green and pink are the epitomy of spring colors. These plumerias are carved from the conch shell and have lime green dyed tuquoise accompanying them. Available here


White mother of pearl plumerias with spring green freshwater coin pearls. Available here

Weekend stuff

I planned to not touch my tax stuff this weekend..I worked so hard all week that I felt I deserved a break. But here I sit...working on tax stuff again..there is just so much to do. I literally drowned in receipts every year around this time. It's so overwhelming but little by little it starts coming together. The reason it's such a pain is that I fall behind with my bookkeeping for both my jewelry business and my husbands business (Offshore Window Tinting) every year..so a lot of receipts need to be imput into the books. I never ever learn my lesson. I need to rest my brain though so I thought I'd add a post to the blog.

I don't have any new pics to share so I will share some of what my husband does for work:

here are just a few pics of the many things he does...

installs sunroofs




paints and repairs bumpers:




window tinting...


So not much going on this weekend... the family has been home sick. It seems everyone is getting this cough. I'm finally feeling better after 3 weeks..but still have an afternoon cough. Funny I'm coughing in the afternoons..our son is coughing at night so none of us can get to sleep and my husband wakes up at 6 a.m. coughing and wakes us all up. It's been very tiring! At least it's finally warming up and drying up..we had like 2 weeks straight of pouring rain. Now we really need to get out and soak in some healing rays at the beach. Hopefully next weekend.

Yesterday I made a big order of coin pearls from one of my new suppliers I was really excited about. They started having problems so I wasn't able to use them for a while. They made a move though and are now back in business..so I hope this order works out. I'm really excited about these as I've never had this color of coin pearl before..I hope it's as teal green as the suppliers pictures shows it here..its hard to capture the true color on pearls. Thats why I take my pics outside preferably in cloud cover..if not on the edge of the shade next to the sun..but never full sun:



Also on Saturday I completed the last 2 of 5 special orders I've been working on over the last couple of weeks. I should have gotten pictures of them today..the weather was so nice..but I forgot. So I will do that in the morning and send them off to my customers for final approval.

Hubby worked on the yard all day Saturday. It looks so nice. The drought had gone on for so long there were big dirt sections in our lawn. But now with all this rain finally it's really over grown. It looks nice all freshly cut..but I have to say I do love all the dandilions and other wild flowers that show up when it's overgrown. We have the cutest little raspberry skittle colored wild flower poofs that grow out in the grass. I don't know what they are..but I love them. Amazingly a lot of my plants came back after the drought. A lot of my potted flowers that my husband has bought me over the years that we had planted in the ground all made it. :) 2 of my 3 gerbers died though..and my pink carnations died. They were strange though..just kept spreading and growing leaves..but never anymore flowers. Also our red impatiens in the front yard died..hubby just replaced them all for me with pink ones.

I hung out inside to finish some custom orders. I watched some old Babylon 5 tv shows on the computer at In2TV - AOL Television . They have a lot of old funky tv shows you can watch for free. I go through and watch them sometimes when I'm tired of listening to music while I bead...just another background noise as it helps me to focus. I made 3 pairs of cute earrings but 2 are with gold and I'm out of gold ear wires. So today I made more orders for that kind of not so fun stuff to spend money on...findings...which are things like ear wires, head pins, clasps..etc. That stuff adds up big time!

I've got another bracelet layed out with paua shell, amazonite and labradorite with Hill Tribe silver...a combo that I love to do..but this time I'm toying around with putting in some white coin pearls and other white nugget pearls. Not sure yet if I will keep it that way.

Then I started feeling guilty about playing and rembered how BADLY I want to finish all this up by the end of February..so I got back to work. If anything...all this bookkeepign makes me appreciate getting back to jewelry making all the more. I've got 1/2 an hour before I hit the sack..hopefully I can reach the bottom of this pile sitting in front of me!

Cool Retro Chairs from Craigslist

I'm always reading Christina's blog This Girl Beads and am jealous of all her cool thrift store finds.(Not to mention I enjoy her taste in etsy finds and beautiful jewelry projects) We don't have a lot of places to find cool vintage stuff on Maui though so I was very excited when I found these really cool authentic retro chairs through craigslist for only $25 for the pair!



I didn't realize the chairs were so authentic until we got to the sellers house..they actually fold...my aunt has a card table and 4 wood folding chairs that she has had ever since I can remember..these seem to work the same..



I want to change my living room from all of it's deep purple and olive green and it's hodge-podge of bohemian beaded lamps and frames to a more clean retro look..although I don't wanna go too over board with the retro. And I want color..it seems so dark in my living room. So about 6 months before I found the chairs..I got this pillow at Pier One Imports as an inspiration for my color palate. I'd like to have a base of dark brown so I can really toss in any color accents I want...change them up or whatever..kinda like I do with my jewelry.




Oh and I also love reading Frecklewonder's blog she is a vintage diva! Her pictures are so fun and colorful to look at and all her finds are so cool...for some reason it just makes me happy. Perhaps it's the childhood memories the images bring up. You catch glimpses of her own house and how it's decorated..even how their table is set for family meals with dishes and tablecloths my grandmother and mother used...it really takes you back. I wonder what she would think of my chairs? ;)

Keshi Pearl Charm Bracelet Spotlight

This is one of my favorites..it's hard to capture in a picture the amount of actual sparkle and the way the pink keshi pearls and aurora borealis play in the light. The Swarovski crystals are a color called 'light Colorado topaz ABx2' so they are a light topaz color with a double coating of the aurora borealis effect. It makes the crystals appear more pink then they do the light tannish color of topaz..yet the topaz base makes it a very natural pink..it looks great with warm tone of the 14k gold filled metals. If you are interested this piece is available here

Wedding Season

It's that time of year again...time when all the wedding requests start coming in. My sister of Aihara Visuals Photography just got back from the huge wedding fair on Oahu at the Blaisdell Center..it was packed!

In anticipation of this season I had begun to make more wedding oriented pieces..however my wholesale account in England snagged up all I'd made so far for a bridal show they will be going to over there. And now I've been busy with getting my tax papers together and working on special orders so my bridal jewelry selection is begging for more attention. So yesterday I made these..and hopefully will have more soon:


Beach bride anklet available here



Heres an alternative if white is not for you..perhaps a little pink. This and the earrings below have not been listed on my site just yet..so you are getting a sneak preview.

'Pink Splash' earrings available here


This one is from last year and on sale for 50% off...it's perfect for that beach wedding you have been dreaming about. Available here

And here is my first custom wedding request for the year... The bride picked out earrings similar to these in my shop only she wanted the olivine Swarovski crystal replaced with a fuschia one to match her green and pink garden wedding. We made her 6 pairs of these :)

Turquoise Medley

A fun bright mix of turquoise...




available at Jonara Blu Maui