Sterling Wrapped Gemstone Necklaces

Another new collection to show you this Monday. I love the rustic beauty of combining fringed edged, up-cycled corduroy ribbon with sterling silver wrapped gemstones. Each of these three pieces contain a Chinese Picture Jasper stone and as you can see in the pictures, each stone has different hues and patterns. All are stunning, if you ask me, but I am a bit biased. I'll admit that.

The other thing that I love about this particular stone is that each stone has a variety of colors that will easily fit in with a broad array of wardrobes.

These particular necklaces hang at approximately 21 1/2" and are secured with a hook clasp. All metal is sterling silver and hand forged/hand wrapped. The pendants are approximately 37mm wide by 30mm high. I have yet to post these on etsy as I'd like to debut them officially at my Valentine's Jewelry Party this Saturday. I plan to make more of this type of necklace with various other gemstones so if you like this style keep your eyes peeled for the Sterling Wrapped Gemstone Collection. I want to make matching bracelets as well but have yet to actually do so.

If you absolutely love these pieces and can't wait for the party or me posting them on etsy, send me an e-mail and we'll get you hooked up. Reference item #HJD1934 $44 each. PA sales tax where applicable.

Did You Know??

• Picture jasper is named so because the patterns in the stone resemble a small landscape?
• This stone can also be found in Angola, Algeria, Asia, Germany, Peru, Idaho and Oregon?
• It is thought that picture jasper helps promote global awareness by bringing the wearer closer to nature?

Lesson over.  Have a great Monday! ~Heather

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone out there had a wonderful holiday season. It's been busy here as usual and now the time has come to look forward to see what the new year holds for us.

First off, nothing new with the kids. They never stop going, going, going. At the moment all are healthy (knock on wood) and aside from the typical teenage angst, all are relatively happy. :)

Potty training continues to be a struggle but I must take the blame for that as I am not consistent. I definitely need to buckle down and help my child with this as she will be 3 on the 23rd. Geez! Where'd the time go?

Last month hubby and I celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary! It's been quite a journey --marriage that is, over the years but I am happy to say it's all been worth it. My guy is amazing and we've both grown so much over the years. Here's to many happy years ahead.

Business is good. I'm getting ready for tax season and organizing, tweeking and revamping pretty much everything. The biggest noticeable change is in the appearance of my etsy shop. I recently joined the Busy Moms of Etsy Team, http://busymomsofetsy.ning.com , and have met some wonderful ladies and received some much appreciated advice. In particular, advice on improving my photos. Boy do they need it. The past few weeks I've been learning more about photography and my camera and have been working on the quality of my pics. Every day I try to add new photos to my products on the etsy site. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at the lighting and detail in the new pics. http://www.heathermgannon.etsy.com/

I have a few custom orders in the works as well and will post those pics as they are completed. But in the meantime here's some new bling:

Have a healthy, happy and productive 2010! ~Heather

Tis the Season

Happy Holidays Folks!

Where oh where did this year go? It flew by! Good news is that I've been super busy since my last post and if you've read that post from October, you may remember my comment on the economy. That weekend at the craft show in Leesport turned out to be a pretty decent show. I had another craft show in Leesport after Thanksgiving which was even better! Yay! My in-home jewelry parties have also been surprisingly successful. In fact, the 3rd annual HJD Holiday Show and Sale just recently took place in my home on Dec. 5th and despite the snow storm that just had to occur an hour before show time, I ended up with 15 guests in attendance! I am so grateful to my wonderful friends, both old and new, who braved the tretcherous roads to attend. We had a great night with yummy food courtesy of my friend Jess who sells Tastefully Simple and spiked jello jigglers courtesy of my friend Teresa who drove 45 minutes over snowy slushy roads to get there. I also must thank Miss Caitlyn, my 14 year old daughter who really came through for me that night with multiple shoveling trips up and down the driveway. We only had 1 vehicle get stuck in the snow but thanks to my hubby and Jess' hubby they were un-stuck in no time! Whew!

The kids continue to keep us busy. Zoe earned her first girl scout badge, Caitlyn's Rage soccer team made it to Nationals in Florida where they came in 2nd place and she was named to the All Tournament Team as goalkeeper and Zach was elected Senior Patrol Leader of his Scout Troop. Aeryn continues to surprise and amaze us on a daily basis but seems to be getting in less trouble these days. Following my last blog entry, Miss Aeryn managed to shave one of her eyebrows off. Fortunately she didn't hurt herself in the process and her eyebrow has grown in nicely.

So the holiday season is upon us and the kids are going nuts waiting for Christmas to get here. Funny how the excitement we had as children changes when we become adults. It is pretty cool to see the excitement in the kids but when did it turn into so much work? Christmas prep that is. I still have a few presents to wrap. Cards are finally in the mail. House is decorated and the trees (1 live, 1 fake) are trimmed. I had a bunch of last minute custom orders but they are done and ended up being really cool projects to work on.

A customer asked me to make Autism Awareness jewelry to give as gifts to the many specialists that help her autistic son. I immediately thought of a sterling silver puzzle piece charm to hang on a sterling chain and suggested we personalize the necklaces with an additional charm such as a crystal. The charm next to the puzzle piece is representative of the logo colors used by their autism management support system and consists of 4 Swarovski cyrstal cubes wrapped in fine gauge sterling silver wire within a sterling silver square. The initial order of 5 necklaces grew to 8 as we discussed details of the project. With the addition of a chakra balancing necklace and a pre-made anklet as additional gifts, I really had my work cut out for me!

Another fun project I recently worked on was custom grandmother necklaces and a custom aunt bracelet. Did I mention I'm accepting custom orders again? Yeah, give the people what they want right? Anywho...The grandmother necklaces consist of each grandchild's name hand stamped onto sterling silve sheet metal to dangle along side of a sterling silver wrapped pearl necklace. Each pearl repesents a child. The customer wanted something "funky" for the aunt bracelet. Again, I hand stamped AUNT onto a sterling silver disc that I cut out of sheet metal using my newest jewelry toy...I mean tool...and added crystals and a pearl for the birthstone of each niece and nephew of the Aunt. Fun Stuff. I also hand forged the sterling links of the bracelet.

Thank you to all my customers both new and repeat, custom and pre-made, life-long friends and new acquaintances, for all of your support and encouragement over the last year especially during these difficult economic times.

Well that's it for me tonight. Sorry this was so long but I had lots to catch you up on! If I'm not on here again before Christmas, have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! ~Heather

Trying to find balance

I crave balance in my life. I am a Libra, you know, the scales? When I feel like life is imbalanced I get a little wackier than normal :) Lately, the scales don't come to mind but for some reason I have this image of a seesaw that can never really stay horizontal for long. It's not natural for a seesaw to be like that. A seesaw is more about the extremes-high or low and that's what makes seesaws so much fun, if you go with the flow of the ride and enjoy it. Hence my problem. I'm always fighting the natural ebb and flow of the seesaw. I get too much weight on my end so I put it off to the other end. That's where hubby sits. He balances the load and he does it well and I know if he weren't on the other end I'd be on my keister on the ground. Are ya all following me? Problem is, when he's all the way down there at the other end, we rarely get to meet up and that's what it's been like lately. He is wonderful with the kids, the food shopping, cooking meals and paying the bills and ladies, you can't have him! He's so great with the kids that I find I'm seeing less of him and the kids as I throw myself into building my little business. I miss my family. It is the price I pay and so I've decided that while I do not wish to sacrifice my entrepreneurial endeavours, I need to change something so that I can make the time to see them. After much thought and consideration, it finally dawned on me that hello...I am the boss, I can call my own shots, right? So, the shots have been called.

I am discontinuing my custom design services. All current projects will be filled, however, going forward, I will not be accepting new custom orders. Custom design can be extremely rewarding (as well as frustrating at times) and time consuming. In the current market it's not as profitable as one would think. I will still be making my unique, funky, wonderful (okay, I'm biased) designs and selling them through in home jewelry parties and craft fairs. I am also in the process of listing pieces for sale on my new etsy on-line shop, http://www.heathermgannon.etsy.com/. The shop is up but it's looking very sparse at the moment so feel free to stop by but please be patient as I figure out all the etsy ins and outs and get my products listed. For now, I plan to put all the newest items in the etsy shop. I will be removing items from the original http://www.hillcrestjewelrydesign.com/ website as they sell so you may want to view both sites. You may purchase directly from the etsy shop, however please send me an e-mail at hillcrestjewelrydesign@comcast.net if you would like to purchase an item from the hillcrest site as the hillcrest site does not have a shopping cart on it. Confused? I hope not. Let me explain.

I set up the original website with the intention of adding a shopping cart at a later date. I found out after the fact that the options I chose with the website necessitated certain requirements for a shopping cart that would have been costly and time-consuming. Live and learn. The website serves as a sort of on-line catalogue though so I kept it going. When I'm having a show, my customers can preview stock prior to party time. I do not have a printed catalogue as my inventory is constantly changing. So that's that, in a nutshell.

Now, getting back to the basics. The jewelry making continues as I prepare for an in home jewelry party this weekend. Potty training is in full swing: potty, pull ups and pee accidents OH MY! We missed dance class this week as someone forgot her dance bag and mommy didn't remind her prior to leaving the house, so more than half way there, we turned around to get the bag only to realize that we'd be missing more than half of the class by the time we got there. The amazing goalie got to play the field for the school's varsity team yesterday and managed to score a goal from the center fullback position!!! She was quickly pulled off the field as her coaches didn't want her to push up the field that far. Big picture people--she scored! She also had an assist from the same position. For those of you not in the soccer mindset, the full back position is way back on the field far away from scoring position. In addition, more soccer, volleyball, a yearly check up at the pediatrician, a school field trip and Zoe's birthday party mark the calendar this week. Did I forget something?? Probably.

Enjoy the pics, enjoy the wonderful weather we're suppose to get this weekend and happy belated earth day! ~Heather