The Big Picture Page!

This is a small sample of the sort of jewelry I do.

(In the near future, there will be a smaller version of the above picture which will have special markups, and act as a "road map" through these descriptions.)

• Starting at the top of the screen is the leopard-skin jasper (that's a variety of semi-precious stone, not related to any endangered species) necklace and earrings. These were not initially designed as a set, but they do very well together!

• Next, clockwise, is a metallic-ribbon based "found my marbles" necklace. It actually has some plastic beads (*gasp*) as spacers on it, which shows that even I appreciate a good-looking fake occasionally. Why "found my marbles?" Trust me, there are marbles in there...

• These big earrings may look heavy, but really aren't. They're just paper! And yes, the stones at the top are plastic, but a real stone would weigh very heavily on the ear...

• The large red-and-black beads on this mixed-media bead necklace were imported from India, and when I acquired them, I should have bought out the store! This is one work guranteed to be one-of-a-kind, unless I can travel to India someday.

• These wonderful swirly green stones are malachite. It's easy to produce a good looking set with a foundation like this.

• The large and unusually shaped beads that are featured in this necklace were identified for me by a USGS geologist in Menlo Park as volcanic rhyolite. And they are also in the category of a bead that I haven't been able to find more of since I picked them up. Maybe I should extend the focus of my art into lapidary...

• The "loops" at the end of these loooong earrings look like tiger's eye stone, but are really just plastic, in order not to stretch the ears of the wearer too much.

• This blue and yellow number is a sampler of the variety of beads I like to use other than my beloved rocks. There is brass, ceramic, wood, and glass, and maybe a few others I've forgotten. Which only goes to show ya, anything's a bead if it has a hole in it!

Prices on these works vary from $8 for the paper earrings to $200 for the malachite set. For further inquiries, I can be reached through e-mail [link deactivated -sw] at catz@watt.com.