Chico's Bizarre Bazaar was our last fair of 2023

We had a great fair in Chico on Dec. 2nd & 3rd. Lots of our regular customers came and bought new Mixed Metal Jewels and the weather was fairly pleasant. I had planned to do another selling event at the Makers & Bakers Holiday Fair on Sunday, Dec. 10th at the Caspar Community Center near where we live on the coast, but the intensity of the Chico Fair and all of the driving has kind of tired me out and I have broken one of my teeth & need to take care of that so I have decided not to sell at the Caspar fair. I'm not a 70 year old youngster any more, 81 coming up next month. I will continue helping to organize the Caspar fair though and it will be fun with some interesting vendors. It runs from 11am to 4pm on that Sunday. Lots of good food available too. Below are some of the new jewels that I took to the Chico fair. In the next couple of weeks I'll be adding a lot of jewels to my online store (link just below) and will continue to do that throughout the next year. https://www.eventeny.com/company/?c=11060

Link to our online Store

   Online Store

 We will be at the Los Altos Rotary Club's Fine Art in the Park Fair on the weekend of August 12th & 13th, hours 10am to 5:30pm. It takes place in Lincoln Park, along Foothill Expressway across from downtown Los Altos. We will have a good selection of our Mixed Metal Jewels. The fairs website for directions, details and a list of artists and links to their websites is http://rotaryartshow.com/ 

Some of our new work:

Circle Wave Pendants

I recently posted on my Face Book page a collage like this one with 16 different versions of what I call my circle wave pendants and got a lot of likes and comments from FB friends. Thought I would post this one here for my blog visitors. These are different ones than the Facebook posting. These are ones that I've made in the last 20 years and all  have found homes. I think that I first started this series back in the mid 1980's when I lived on some property we owned on the North San Juan Ridge north of Nevada City. At least the first drawings of them that I've found were in a journal from then. I would guess that by now I have made several hundred variations of them and the series continues, probably 8 to 12 a year or so. I make a fair number of jewels that are one of kind pieces but a lot of my jewel work is like the circle waves, starting with one and then continuing the series but each one changes, shifting size, gemstones, metal mixtures, details, bails and so forth. They are like cousins to each other. I'm working on a couple of new ones now. I enjoy them and they sell very well which is always a factor in continuing a series. Sometimes though I feel like I'm stuck in making circles (not just these) and I consciously make myself break out of that pattern and make forms that are triangles, squares, ovals, abstracts, free flowing forms or whatever. That's always good for me and leads to interesting jewels. Where will I go next?

 

Link to Our Online Store Just Below

   Online Store

We're Coming to Chico Dec. 3rd & 4th

We will be coming to Chico to sell our work at Chikoko's Bizarre Bazaar located at the Chico Fairgrounds on Saturday & Sunday December 3rd & 4th from 10am to 5pm. This will be our 3rd selling event for this year. We looked but didn't find a Sacramento area fair that worked for us this year. We'll try again next year. We will have a good selection of mixed metal jewels for Chico, some are in the collage below. I have a lot of other finished pieces that I haven't taken pictures of yet and many more will be finished before the fair. Looking forward to seeing all of our Chico friends and customers, we've been selling our work in Chico for over 40 years. 

 

We're Coming to the Bay Area

 We're happy to say that we will be coming to the Bay Area in a couple of weeks to do our first live show there since September of 2019. We will sell our mixed metal jewels at the Los Altos Fine Art in the Park fair in Lincoln Park just across Foothill Expressway from downtown on Saturday & Sunday the 13th & 14th of August. The fair moved it's timing last year from its many years in May to August. We are sad to say that we won't be doing the Kings Mountain Fair this year. In our old age we are moving in a direction of making our lives easier in a number of ways. We love and will miss the Kings Mountain Fair but it is a much more energy intensive event for us. More driving, 3 days instead of two and so forth. We hope that we will see you at the Los Altos fair, we will have a great collection of our jewels and look forward to seeing old friends and customers. The collage below features some of our new work but there will be many more that we are in the process of finishing.

Butterflies and Suns

One of my doodle drawings, Butterflies & Suns. Done when I lived on the San Juan Ridge in 1983. Each line and dot put on the paper one at a time. It's crazy but I find it relaxing. I started playing with drawing suns 65 years ago or so. I Started making metal suns about 1975 and butterflies probably in the mid 1980's. I'm working on a butterfly jewel currently and just sold a sun brooch a few days ago. I would guess that I've probably made a couple of hundred sun jewels in the last 45 years. I've been wearing one for over 25 years.

 

Hoping to do Live Art Shows Later in the Year

Trying to line up some live art shows to do later in the year. We may do a local show in Caspar in July. In August we will do the Los Altos Rotary Fine Art Show that has now moved from it's old date in May. We will not be doing the Kings Mountain Fair. Although we like the fair and it is always successful for us it is a somewhat challenging show for us and we are getting old. I'll be 80 on my next birthday.  My friend Warren Cook who has organized the Sacramento Arts Festival for the last 20 something years is retiring from organizing fairs so we are looking for another venue to sell our work at in the Sacramento area. We are looking at the Crocker Holiday Artisan's Market on Thanksgiving weekend at the Scottish Rite Center and for next year we are looking at the Kiwanis Art Fiesta at the Pavilions Shopping Center in June. If you've gone to either of these shows and have input about them or know of some other shows that we should check out, please email us at jica@mcn.org

We hope also to do the Bizarre Bazaar show in Chico in December. It worked well for us at the fairgrounds there last year. We will continue to sell on our Eventeny online store which has worked very well for us. To go there click on the the Online Store link above. I am committed to posting an image of a new jewelry piece there at least every other day for the rest of the year.

At this point Carlie is in a retirement exploration phase of her jewelry career but I am spending a few hours a day 5 days a week making jewels and will probably never stop as long as I am living. Collage below of a few new pieces.