Pretty new beads

My latest stash to play with

Earrings...

Some earrings that I made for part of a wholesale order this week..

pics from June

These pics are from June...Paul and Cameron entered an RC car race a few weeks ago..it was a long hot and very LOUD day with all the cars racing..but kinda fun nonetheless. I had fun taking pics of the cars crashing ;-)


Is it a boy car or a girl car?







I took this one of our friend Brice using the jump in our backyard..turned out pretty cool!





more pics from the day.....

Jamaican Lilikoi

At least that is what I was told these were....I don't know if they use the word lilikoi in Jamaica since it's Hawaiian..perhaps they call them Jamaican passion fruit because that is what lilikoi is. I LOVE lilikoi..it's a bit strong and tart with a certian special kinda flavor all it's own. My husband hates them..he thinks they smell like cat pee :\ However this new kind I got to try today..it does not smell strong and while it still has an essence of lilikoi flavor...it's not tart...it's all sweet like someone dumped sugar on it. Very YUM!

Kinda cool..I've lived here in Hawaii for 15 years and while I've tried some fuits that are totally new to me here over the years..I thought I'd tried all that was available here. Dragon fruit was the last new one I tried a couple of years ago...a very colorful fruit..almost seems fake..but it has nothing in flavor over these jamaican lilikoi.

Success! On Jonara Blu Maui's second corporate order!

I finally got word back that my latest corporate order was a success! The person in charge of organizing this with my company had two, back to back, corporate events so I had to wait to hear from her until she got back from the second one. I knew all must have been okay with the last batch of bracelets reaching their destination since there were no complaints...but to get the final word back that all the women loved the bracelets I designed for them and that all went smoothly is a very big relief. There is always a worry that something will get lost or broken in shipping or who knows. Especially since these were shipped from Maui to their offices on the mainland and then again out to the Bahamas. The order was so big and done over a period of time that I did it in 3 different shipments..shipping each batch out as that set of bracelets was finished.

Oh and I learned that shipping packages that large and expensive...it was cheaper to send it Registered mail AND it was watched much better in the shipping process. I can't remember exactly..but it seemed to save us about 20 bucks in shipping.

So since this was a success the company is looking to use Jonara Blu Maui again in 2008...I hope it works out!

Maui Spring Rainbow - Long Knotted Silk Cord Necklace

Fresh and colorful for spring this knotted silk cord necklace features lustrous freshwater dyed pearls, citrine and Swarovski crystals all hand knotted on lime green silk cord. Pendant is hand wire wrapped with 14k gold filled wire and hangs 1 3/4" from the base of the necklace.
Findings are all 14k gold filled. Necklace size is adjustable from 20" to 22"

Available at Jonara Blu Maui

Juicy Carnelian Bracelet

I tried out a new supplier and found these bright juicy faceted carnelian beads...they were so scrumptious I had to use a bunch of them together so they would keep their intensity. I've hand wire wrapped the little beauties together with 14k gold filled wire and added dangles of amber, light and dark carnelian, citrine and vermeil daisy spacers. The size is 6 1/2" to 7 1/4" and it's available here at Jonara Blu Maui

Happy Anniversary to us :)

June 2nd was me and my hubby's 19th anniversary..We were too busy to celebrate that weekend since my dad had his bypass surgery..which went great by the way! My sis flew out to the mainland to be with them and I helped watch the kids. So This last weekend my sis had a little dinner for us..yummy mexican food and of course chocolate deserts :-P

Then Saturday we went to the park with some friends and played baseball..I hung out with the little ones. We had a bbq after...it was good to get out and run around :)

My son Cameron


My nephew Kana


My nephew Koa

Crash and Dewey

My kitties...aren't they cute? ;)

Peacock Invasion!

We had visitors the other day! I knew there were peacocks roaming the other side of our little upcountry suburb..and I've been hearing them more lately. I walked past the dinning room and there they were out my sliding window! So I ran and got my camera and went around the back side. You'll have to excuse the yard..it really needs to be mowed. But the birdies are so pretty!

I saw a woman at this last craft fair I was in that was wearing a necklce with a peacock feather pendant..and she had taken little sections of it and beaded and glued little peacock colored sead beads on it. It was so striking!






Speaking of peacocks...here's one of my latest creations...a black silk cord necklace with black peacock petal keshi and semi round pearls and peacock coin pearls with a black lip shell mother of pearl hibiscuss carved pendant. I still haven't put it up on the website yet...still working on that..price for this one is $69

Pile O' Gems

So this was the pile of beads I had to wade through. Not that it wasn't fun..just a lot of work! While I was working on my big corporate gifts order..and buying beads for it...(I made about 12 different bracelet styles so had to search out whatever I could find to make these big batches of each style of bracelet..not the easiest task as bead strands often vary and aren't available in large quantities) I would toss in bead strands for myself on the order that I would need for next years line of jewelry. Usually I keep up with this as the beads come in..but I was too busy..so the pile grew and grew and grew lol! I really liked this pile though..they aren't nearly as fun all put away in thier plastic compartments.

Learning my new camera

so I got a new camera...a Canon Rebel XT....it also says EOS on the camera..not sure what that all means. My sister the photography buff at Aihara Visuals said it was a good deal...a special on amazon because they were coming out with the new one. This is an 8 megapixel..my old one being a 5 and just a point and shoot. This one is also an SLR..which I'm told is what professionals use. I'm not a professional photographer..so I've been getting a bit frustrated with it..but I'm learning little by little. I must say though, I do enjoy the little sound it makes when taking the pic lol!

I have some lenses of my sisters that she doesn't use anymore, one is a macro one and one is telephoto with macro on it. I thought I put the macro on and couldn't for the life of me figure out why everything was blurry through the lense when I was trying to take up close pics. I stood up from these flowers I was testing it on, called my sis to get some help and then tried to take a test snap pic of them from across the yard and walla...they came out so clear. Duhhh I had on the telephoto lense and not the macro on.



pretty cool! so I took another from far away of some roses in my yard:





and then later on I put on the actual macro lense and went outside to take jewerly pics..but this bumble bee came along so I took pics of it..I was afraid to get too close..I guess the telephoto lense would have been better for this one.

I am here...I promise!

Man..time sure did get away from me! Last post was December 2006...and I see that I already listed all the family stuff that kept me from blogging. Thankfully I had a huge corporate gifts order to keep me busy from thinking about my mom and dad moving away. I had to make 225 bracelets for Volvo Trucks. That was one crazy deal to put together..but I seriously enjoyed every second of it. I've done a corporate order before...but not quite as large.

Heres some work in progress:







I'm telling you...it was perfect timing. I've always said beading was theraputic...and this proved it beyond the shadow of a doubt for me. This large order kept me busy for about 3 months with not much time to create other then a few special orders I accepted. With it being right in the middle of busy shopping season, Jonara Blu Maui got stripped Clean! We went from 6 pages of inventory to about 2. So now I'm busy trying to stock the shop again and having fun creating new things with all the news beads I've purchased.

Okay..so what else has happened? My mom came out in February...that was fun! Heres some pics:


We went on a sunset cruise whale watching trip...it was my mom, my sister, my aunt and myself. Here you see me, my aunt Jackie, and my mom Judy. Mom has chocolate on her lip cuz we were eating chocolate cookies. It's okay to have chocolate on your lips, teeth, face...it's chocolate! Enjoy!








It was a fun trip...but not the greatest close encounters with the whales like we've had in the past. Still who doesn't LOVE a boat ride...it's so invigorating :)



This is as we are leaving Maalea Harbor..facing Haleakala ...thats the volcano I live up on. Oh and these are all snapshots my sister took...her camera is much better then mine..so I just let her do all the picture taking ;-)



and now for some eye candy... Black and White is in for spring..I've been having a lot of fun working with it.







Okay...thats enough catch up for today..I'm sleepy...night!

New Crab Fire Agate Beads

I love these! They are so different and remind me of candy. An interesting color to work with, I was a bit intimidated by them at first..but ended up having the most fun. I've mixed them with some crazy lace agate that had a lot of orange on it, carnelian, rhyolite and olive opal. available here

Gladly saying goodbye to 2006

This year hasn't been the greatest for me...my grandmother died in March... a few months ago my step dad had a heart attack....we had that crazy earthquake that freaked us all out and reminded us that we do in fact live on a volcano with no way to quickly get off and run to saftey (everyone here wondered if Haleakala was finally waking up when that one hit)...and now my mom and step dad just moved to the mainland after living here for 15 years.

That last one was the hardest blow and very unexpected. I still feel like I'm having a really bad dream and I'm going to wake up any minute and things will go back to normal. The whole family is here because of them...and now they are gone. Dad's work wasn't going so well and he really needs to be on insurance because of his heart...plus there is some non-evasive treatment my mom is hoping to get for him over on the mainland.

It all happened so fast too, us kids (me, my brother and my sister all live here with our little families) were taken totally by suprise when they told us they had to leave. and they were gone in under 2 weeks! We are a very close family and have all taken it pretty hard...it just seems wrong :( We've worked so hard to all stay here together.


Mom and Koa

Travel is difficult as it is expensive to live here and flying the whole family to the mainland doesnt' happen very often. We know we will be sending for mom as much as possible. Dad is like me..he hates to fly. My sister doesnt' think he will come much. But that's not even the point...sure it's pretty here and we have nice weather..but there really isn't much to do here...family is all we had..it's the main focus of our lives..I hate to sum up the rest of me and my mothers time together in a handful of visits. She is my best friend..I would talk to her everyday..see her multiple times a week, go out to lunch once a week and do our grocery shopping together. When my kid is sick..she has always been right there. I miss her so much already :(


My mom is so cute here..but it's a horrible picture of me...I was crying and had no makeup on...it was a horrible day saying goodbye to my momma.


Mom and my sister Kim


Mom and my brother Jason


Cameron and his grandma


Heres my dad and Kana....I hope he can get the care he needs over there. It's sad thinking that something could happen to him and we might never see him again...plus my sister and I aren't there to help.


mom, kim and I...early in the morning the day they left.

In an attempt to keep us in touch..I went right out and bought a webcam for myself and my parents..my sister already has one built in to her computer. Her's seems to have a clearer picture..but I did mess with some settings and got the color to work a little better. Her's a snap shot from it of me and my husband..but before I worked on the color. It's pretty washed out...but it will be better then just phonecalls



Sorry to make such a downer post...I'll try to post some pretty jewelry tomorrow..I got some amazing crab fire agate..it's so beautiful and different..very fun to work with! I need to keep beading so I can make money to send for my mom! I wasn't feeling very creative but forced myself to bead last night and it felt really good! Will post those pics tomrrow.

my sis took this nice shot of my son Cameron