New Camera, Bad Pics

Ed and I opened our Christmas presents a bit early. To be honest, they weren't even wrapped. But I wanted a smaller camera for my jewelry pictures and Ed wanted a new monitor. So we bought our presents and agreed to use them.

Unfortunately, as these cameras get smaller, the learning curve seems to get larger! I played for 3 days and still couldn't figure out what settings to use and how to save the ones I tried. So I ended up using my old camera, and will work on learning the new one.

I thought at first that this pin was made by Liz Claiborne, but the mark is a bit different from the LC marks I found online. So I guess this just gets to be call designer signed without a designer.

Vintage Signed Christmas Tree Pin

Signed JJ Christmas Ornament Santa Cat Pin

This cute pin has a whimsical cat in a Santa's hat perched on top of a blue-green Christmas ornament that is covered with sparkles.

Signed on the back with the copyright symbol and the letters JJ. This is part of the Artifacts line and was made in the mid-1980's. The pin is 2.25 inches tall and 1.25 inches wide.

A great Christmas pin!

Vintage Spiderweb Turquoise Choker Necklace

I wish my neck were just a little bit smaller so I could wear this lovely necklace. At 14 1/2 inches, it definitely falls in the choker range. I am not sure if it belonged to my mother or grandmother, but it has been around for a few years.

Vintage Spiderweb Turquoise Necklace

I've had this necklace since the 70's. It combines my love of fossils with my love of jewelry.

The pendant is made of fossil walrus ivory and hand painted with a bee sitting on a thistle. The 18 inch chain is made from sterling silver.

What is really cool about it is that a similar image is on the storage box.

Fossilized Walrus Ivory Pendant

I found this in an old trunk from my grandmother's estate. I was helping my parents clean out their garage where my grandmother's things has been stored since her death. Also found some Victorian porcelain that I claimed for myself.

Art Nouveau Belt Buckle

Laurel Burch Swan Necklace

I bought this for my mother in the 1980's and it has come back to me through her estate.

I have to admit that I don't really want to sell this one. I have been searching the net for a couple of years and have been unable to find anything at all like it. I have asked at the eBay boards and they didn't know anything about it either. This is quite unlike her usual style, but there is no doubt she made it. It is marked on both the main swan panel and the extender.

Unique Laurel Burch Swan Necklace

Rebajes Copper Necklace

Another of my mother's necklaces. This one has always fascinated me because of the way the the copper leaves are formed to join together. From the 1950's, the necklace was made by the Modernist master Francisco Frank Rebajes.

Rebajes was a forerunner in producing copper jewelery. He was born in the Dominican Republic in 1906, and emigrated to New York in 1923 when he was 16 years old. In 1932 he was out of work, and collected some tin cans, took them to his friend's workshop and fashioned the scraps into animals. He displayed his work outside on an ironing board at an Art Festival, where Juliana Force (Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art) saw it. She liked his work and purchased the whole lot on display for $30 - a lot of money in those days!!

With this windfall, Frank Rebajes' rented his first workshop and store. His pieces were signed simply "Rebajes'". In 1942, he opened his first retail store on Fifth Avenue in New York, employing forty workers, and a National sales and distribution network was set up. His work was featured in Saks of Fifth Avenue, and was advertised in top fashion magazines. The rest is history!!

In the early 1960's, he sold his workshop, and moved to Spain, where he lived until his death in 1990.

Modernist Rebajes Copper Leaves Necklace Signed

Lucky Dragon Necklace

My Father probably brought this lovely necklace back from one of his trips to the Far East while he was in the Air Force. It is a lovely combination of carnelian and cloisonné beads with a carved carnelian dragon for the clasp,. The beads are hands made as there are small variations in size and shape.

Vintage Carnelian Oriental Lucky Dragon Necklace

An Unsigned Beauty

I can remember Mom wearing this brooch on one of her formal dresses. (I need to see if I can find a picture of her wearing it.) She also wore long dangling clear rhinestone earrings. The dress was red and gathered at the bust line. She wore the brooch where the material was gathered.

After many years, this brooch is still bright and shiny, due to the heavy rhodium plating. All of the rhinestones are in excellent condition.

Vintage Rhodium Plated Clear Rhinestone Brooch

Amber or Plastic?

I bought this bracelet on eBay a year or so ago because it liked it, not because it was sold as amber. At least I didn't pay amber prices for it.

However, it probably does have amber as its base. My guess is that it is made of reconstituted amber, also called melted amber. Basically it is amber that isn't usable for normal jewelry that has been melted, claified and mixed with a modern resin. Amber is chemically a resin, so it is difficult to identify he real stuff from the fake.

So, do I call this amber? Or do I call it plastic?

As usual, I have this for sell in my Bonanzle booth.

I've been Lazy and a Spice Jar

It has been over a week since I blogged, so time to get my act together.

Actually, I've only been lazy about posting on the computer. Instead I've been working on the house and yard, getting ready for winter. Most of the state actually had a hard freeze last night. Of course, the Cape stayed a lot warmer, and with any luck at all we won't get that cold for a while.

Today I am promoting a cloisonne ginger jar that I bought when I saw the Imperial Tombs of China Exhibit at BYU in 1995. The jar is made of a type of cloisonne called Plique-a-jour.

Plique-a-jour (French: open to light) is an enameling process. The enamel, like cloisonne, is laid between thin raised metal lines and heated. However, unlike cloisonne, There is no metal under the wires.The finished piece has transparent enamel held between the thin metal wires. It is different from cloisonne because it is translucent. The technique is designed to produce an effect of a stained-glass window in miniature through the use of translucent enamels. Developed in France and Italy in the 14th century, this technique has been used largely for making vessels, jewelry.

Click here to see the jar on Bonanzle.

Too Much Rain and a Pair of Vases

We were hit with over 2 inches of rain yesterday. The Cape has been rather dry so it was needed in general. But unfortunately, I had seeded and fertilized the lawn just 2 days earlier. Now our street has a haze of seeds and fertilizer and the lawn is still bare.

I haven't had much luck in identifying this pair Japanese bronze vases.

They are a set, but not identical: the pattern is mirrored and differences can be seen if you look closely. Unfortunately, there are several chips in the patina. The gold and silver don't look like inlay work, though there is some relief to the design. It is more like foil was applied before the patina was applied.

Japanese Damascene Vases

Taxco Mixed Metal Earrings

I'm moving slowly today. Yesterday I reseeded the front lawn, and my muscles seem to be objecting to the exercise.

Today I am going to highlight a lovely pair of mixed metal clip earrings. These are from Mom's jewelry box and were probably bought in the '80s.

The earrings are made of sterling and brass. A large silver dome is surrounded by a brass rope on a decorated scalloped silver rim. They were made in Taxco de Alaarcon, Mexico, by Javier Molina Torrescano. Taxco is well known for its silversmiths.

It seems to be working!

After visits to my booth slumped for the last month, my stats jumped almost 200% yesterday! So something I'm doing must be working.

I am going to try to update at least one item each day. It would be better to add a new item daily, but I'm not quite that ambitious yet.

Here is a link to my updated item for today: Artisan Seraphinite Necklace and Earrings.

Seraphinite stone belongs to Chlorite Group of minerals. This type of stone is commonly colored deep forest green to green-black with silver-colored inclusions of Mica. The Mica inclusions display a chatoyancy, giving Seraphinite a moving sheen. The prime sources are Siberia (Bratsk and Baikal region), and Russia. Chatoyancy is the optical effect that most people know in Tiger's Eye stones.

Been on vacation..

...Mental vacation, that is! I haven't twittered or blogged for almost 3 months.

Bonanzle has changed it's method of updating booths to Google Base as Google isn't going to allow separate booths to upload their own products. So I am going to need to pay more attention to updating my items.

I sold my first expensive item in August - the old Persian bracelet. Hopefully I can get some more items up soon.

Here is the link to my booth (because cross links can raise my Google position):

My Bonanzle both

I've learned how to advertise my items on Facebook and Twitter. Today I advertised a lovely mosaic pin from the early 1950s.



Now all I need to learn is how to show them properly here, how to make an use a lens on Squidoo, and how to actuality make a social network when I don't consider myself social!

P.S. Update. I just finished my first Squidoo lens. You can see it here:

My Squidoo Lens

Learning about Widgets

This is a pathetic attempt to learn how to use widgets.

A Lost Week and a Road Trip

I've been a bad girl about keeping up with my social sites, but made progress in other things.

Ed and I actually took a road trip (two actually, but that is another story) so I could drool over all the lovely rocks and gems.  The show was in Springfield, about 150 miles from here.  With Ed's encouragement, I brought some goodies home.

The pictures are of tourmaline from the Congo, an aquamarine from New Hampshire and a piece of Ulexite from California.

I can see an angel in the aquamarine :)

Ulexite is found with the mineral borax and can be found in a vein-like bedding habit composed of closely-packed fibrous crystals, also known as "TV rock" or "TV stone" due to its unusual optical characteristics. 

The fibers of TV rock act as fiber optics, transmitting light along their lengths by internal reflection, and when a piece of TV rock is cut with flat polished faces perpendicular to the orientation of the fibers a good-quality specimen will display an image of whatever surface is adjacent to its other side. 

Progress! But Outside, not on the Computer

What a lovely day we almost had yesterday.  The temperature managed to get up to 50, but the sun wasn't out as much as I was hoping for.  

First thing accomplished was getting flowers in the window boxes.  As these are artificial, I didn't have to worry about when our last freeze is.

The major effort yesterday was working on the utility trailer.  When Ed moved it last time, he managed to run into a tree and damage one side.  We made a run to Home Depot to get 3 sheets of  OSB (oriented strand board).  Between Ed's arms and my legs we managed to get them in and out of the Suburban.  Then it was removing the crushed panel (at least 1000 screws. bolts and nuts had to be removed first),then putting the new panel in.  We  didn't quite get all the nuts bolts and screws back in, but that can hold off  until warm weather returns.  Ed will still have to unbend one of the bars, but he says that will be easy.  We should be OK by the time we leave next month.  

I was a bit broken last night after all the heavy work, but am doing good this morning.  Today I need to do grocery shopping, laundry and cleaning today, so will probably not get anything done online.

Following Blogs

My new attempt at updating my tech skills is following other's blogs.   BorneoDiva started a thread over at Bonanzle to have each of us follow each other's blogs.  As I write this, I am following 34 new blogs.

I missed posting here and on Twitter yesterday because we had a tree crew here to remove almost all the trees in our front yard. (I did talk Ed into saving one old oak.)  The problem was that most of the trees were pines and were too tall.  Any high winds could have brought them down on the house.  Also, we were tired of getting pine needles out of the gutters.  At least we still have a lovely oak out front.  And now I can plant some ornamental tress and shrubs.

The animated GIFs from yesterday didn't animate for some reason.  Will have to see if there is some way to fix that.

The More Things Change

Today is just a reminder that in basic ways, things still stay the same.  This was popular over 40 years ago.

The Merry Minuet (They're Rioting in Africa)

Written by:Sheldon Harnick  

Intro: There are days in my life when everything is dreary

I grow pessimistic, sad and world weary.

But when I'm tearful and fearfully upset      

I always sing this merry little minuet:  

They're rioting in Africa They're starving in Spain 

There's hurricanes in Florida And Texas needs rain.  

The whole world is festering With unhappy souls 

The French hate the Germans, The Germans hate the Poles  

Italians hate Yugoslavs South Africans hate the Dutch 

And I don't like anybody very much  

But we can be grateful And thankful and proud 

That man's been endowed With a mushroom shaped cloud  

And we know for certain That some happy day 

Someone will set the spark off And we will all be blown away

They're rioting in Africa 

There's strife in Iran 

What nature doesn't do to us 

Will be done by our fellow man. 

I Blew it Yesterday :-(

No blogging, no tweets, no new items on Bonanzle yesterday.  

Too tired yesterday.  Not much better shape today, as I am fighting a migraine.

I'm reading a couple of blogs about Tweeter, to see if I can figure out why the heck anyone would want to follow anyone.  Here are the sites, if anyone is interested:

http://twitpwr.com/4R8/

http://onceateacher.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/a-teachers-guide-to-twitter/

http://markmarshall.edublogs.org/2009/03/09/twitter-what-is-it-and-why-would-i-use-it/

I will probably finish reading C.S. Friedman's Wings of Wrath, the second book in the Feast of Souls series.  Really good book, but I should have re-read the first book, as I forgot some of the threads.

Is it Spring yet?

The calendar says it is almost here.  The high temperature the past few days says it is still winter.   It really should be above freezing by now!

But in spite of the cold, I decided to get a start on spring cleaning today.  So far I have started the  automatic oven cleaner on the stove, cleaned the burners, the outside of the stove and the drip plate.  I have also taken 6 bags of clothes to the car for donations.  It isn't much, but it is a start!

I have decided to keep Twitter up, and to just post to it once a day.  There is no way I can keep up with all the people there, and to tell the truth,  I really don't see what it is all about.

I did manage to get a couple more items listed on Bonanzle yesterday.  Since I have sold 2 things, there is hope that I can sell more.  I do get a reasonable amount of traffic to my booth.  For Jinger, as she loses my URL:

 http://www.bonanzle.com/booths/jilwil

Another day older and further behind

I just noticed that I forgot to title yesterday's blog.  I guess that is technically another mistake.

It seems like yesterday was another busy day.  Took lots of pictures, some of which I can actually use.  Researched the jewelry that I took pictures of.  Of the 10 items I was working on, I only managed to get 2 listed.  I guess at 20% I get an F for accomplishments!

I stopped following the person that was giving me all the followers on Twitter (mrtwitter), but I am still getting too many people following me that I don't care about.  I finally had to stop getting the emails telling me I have new followers.  I have posted at least once a day on Twitter, but I may soon just ignore it.  I still don't see the usefulness or entertainment value.  Maybe just spam my followers occasionally with my stuff from Bonanzle.

The sun is shining today, but we won't get out of the 30s.  It will be a tossup between staying inside and getting work done or playing in the cold sun.

It's a new day and I've already discoverd new problems to fix . 

First booboo - I somehow made myself my own follower.  And I can't find a way to get out of it!  I guess I'll just have to keep looking like an egotist.  Hmmm...I guess that is OK as I beleive anyone feeling their opinion is worth blogging about probably is one LOL

The other mistake was following someone on Twitter that promises new followers.  It did as promised, but I see absolutely no reason to have thousands of folowers.  That is just playing with numbers.   I have no need for someone who is just looking at numbers to follow me and vice versa.  Also, I really didn't need all the emails telling me that someone new was following me.  Rethinking this...If I use Twitter to promote Bonanzle, it might make sense.  Will ponder this some more.

It is amazing how much time the social networking takes.  While playing with Tweeter, I wasn't working on items to put in my booth.  It also didn't help that I couldn't seem to take a good pictures yesterday.  Some of them I had to take over 3 times.

I'm also going to have to relearn some HTML.  It has been too many years sisnce I played with it.  It would be nice to make this blog a bit more intersting than just typing. 

Learning to Blog

I am trying to keep up with the newer technology, but it seems to be advancing faster than I want to keep up with it.  I have been involved with computers since the 1970s so my age (60) and my gender (F) does not mean I don't know what I'm talking about.  It is amazing how many young people seem to think that gray hair means computer illiteracy. But as my body slows down, so does my desire to have the "Latest and Greatest".   I still want to keep my mind active, so I am going to try out some of the newer technologies.

I used to have a personal web page, but that isn't worth the upkeep any more.

I have set up a booth at Bonanzle to sell things that I no longer need to have cluttering up my home.  I have  joined Facebook to keep up with the younger generations of my family's families.  I have set up a Twitter account to see how that works.  And now I am learning to blog. 

So here is where you will get updates on all the above adventures.