Jewelry Party Success!

Saturday August 22^nd was a big first for me-the first time that I undertook the responsibility and privilege of organizing and putting together a jewelry party!  It offered some unique challenges (coordinating invitations, spending 10 minutes in Walmart agonizing over which gift bags to put purchased snowflake ornaments in, transportation of 45+ cupcakes by myself, etc.). 

Despite complications though, it was a very enjoyable experience for me and one that I will definitely repeat in the future! My good friend Beth hosted it at her beautiful house for me. (My humble apartment wouldn’t have worked, unless you wanted to party in an oversized cubicle.)  In addition to my sterling silver and copper jewelry, I displayed snowflakes, which I used bead weaving techniques to create with seed beads and Swarovski crystals.

However, the most important part of my party was the fact that I donated 25% of my sales to another good friend of mine, Emily, who will embark on a five year mission term to Italy starting in 2012.  Here’s a link with more details about her trip and Avant Ministries, which she does her mission work through.

http://emilykatehuffman.wordpress.com/about/

Finally, here’s a few snapshots of the event-enjoy!

I had some assistance for putting the ornanments up!

Tree of Life Pendants!

Me with my display table

 Emily examining my selection!

Creation of a Tree of Life Forest

I described in an earlier post, my Biblical tree of life pendant necklace, inspired by a passage in the book of Revelation.  Since then, I have created over a dozen more trees of life pendants.  I decided to create a post about them, because a few days ago, one of my co workers referred to them as my “signature item”.

My various trees of life are definitely among some of my favorite handcrafted pieces.  I first saw the pattern for them in a Beadstyle magazine and wanted to give it a try.  After examining the pattern though, I thought that the 3mm rondelle crystals used in it gave the tree kind of a “shrunken” look.  So, I substituted 4mm round Swarovski crystals to serve as the main decoration. 

At first, the seasons inspired me in creating my trees.  For spring, I used lavender and tanzanite crystals to represent blooming purple flowers, while I utilized emerald and fern green crystals for the lush summer foliage.  Indian red and smoked topaz crystals served as the bold changing colors of autumn and for winter, I used white opal crystals for snow covered branches, with blue zircon crystals as the ice at the tip of it.  Here are some examples of my spring and autumn trees.

Then, I decided to expand my little forest by creating a wide variety of fruit trees!  So far, I’ve created apple, blueberry, lemon, orange, plum, and grapefruit trees.  My favorite of these has to be the lemon tree as you can see, the yellow is brilliant.

I’m always looking for ideas for new trees and so far, I’ve thought of nut, blackberry, cherry and coconut trees.  You will see these new additions to my little forest in the near future!

Biblical Jewelry Inspiration-the Tree of Life

As a Christian, I believe that it is a goal in my business to create jewelry pieces to the very best of my ability, in order to glorify God and give him back the talent that he granted me. However, besides having business principles which reflect God’s Word, it can be difficult to demonstrate my faith through my actual jewelry pieces.

However, about two months, I was reading the Bible and came across this verse:

“On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”  ~Revelation 22:2

I enjoy making wire wrapped tree of life necklaces, so the idea suddenly popped in my head: “Why don’t you make a Biblical tree of life using different color crystals for the fruit?”  I happily followed that train of thought and here’s the result:

Although I think this tree is beautiful, I feel that it is a pale reflection of the real, eternal one waiting in heaven!