Aspen Rocks!!

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail".

Ralph Waldo Emerson



I just returned from a great trunk show/personal appearance in Aspen at a gallery named Chepita. It was an amazing show; not only was it successful in terms of sales, but I met some great people! I loved meeting the clients who enjoy collecting my work. Seeing what my creations mean to them makes it all seem worth while.
The people who work at Chepita are great too, and I really enjoyed hanging out with them. They were fun people, very knowledgeable, and they promoted the show extremely well, too: Chepita put half page color ads in the local newspapers for a week, put a full page ad in one of the local magazines that is in all of the hotels, sent out a ton of postcards and also gave stacks of the cards to all of the hotels. On top of that, Aspen Magazine did a wonderful editorial on me for this month!
I had a staggering amount of interest in my one of a kind "Gothic Harlequin Cross", which was featured in the newspaper ads. I ended up selling the original piece and getting a special order on a custom version of it! It was very hard to part with that piece, it felt so personal... but I loved how happy it made the woman who bought it!

Below are pictures I took of the Chepita storefront, and my jewelry on display inside. Isn't it a beautiful store?! (The picture above is the view from outside my hotel.) I also attached a picture of the Gothic Harlequin Cross, to commemorate its sale. I'll miss it, but now I get to make a new version!

Tucson Trip

Hi Everyone!
As Jilienne mentioned, we just got back from back-to-back business trips. Our first stop was Tucson, to shop at the annual Gem & Mineral Show. This is a sprawling show that takes over Tucson for the first couple weeks of February each year; it’s usually a lot of fun, but also overwhelming. I always go with my list of Needs, and then open myself up to be "wowed" or "inspired"… to see something that’s new to me. Sometimes it is not necessarily new to the industry, but just hits me as “right”; other times it is so new that I can only find a little bit of the stone and the next year it floods the market! (This has happened to me several times.) I also get very enticed by certain stones that end up sitting in my vault for years, crying out for me to use them. (A few times, these vaulted stones turned out to be the next big trend, which I missed because I didn't get around to making the new design.) I usually try not to follow trends; I prefer to close my eyes and follow my heart. That is why it is funny to me when someone says, "I see you are using a lot of 18k Pink gold. Is that in?" I laugh and say, "I have always used a lot of 18k Pink Gold. The rest of the world is just now catching up!" This happened with the Copper Rutile (a very special Quartz) that I use too!
I am very picky about which colors I like to use, and I tend to make myself mad trying to find the right shade of gemstone. Last year, I fell in love with Grey (Grey Quartz and Rough Grey Diamonds,) but it had to be that perfect light charcoal color that looks amazing with my Crushed Melange (tri-color) Collection. This year, everything looked the same to me… nothing was calling out, “Pamela! Make something with me!” (with the exception of bi-color Tourmaline, which I always love but rarely use.) By the third day of walking the Show, I was getting a little depressed… even though I’d found some beautiful rough cut diamonds, I still hadn’t found my Wow! Stone. And then it hit me, (Wham!) from two different directions! Iridescent Milky Diamonds, and Platinum Rutile! My mind has been waking me up in the middle of the night to draw and sculpt new shapes to go with these fabulous stones! This particular Rutile is very rare -- I can only get it from one mine in Brazil, and everything they mined is already carved, so I can’t get matching stones for earrings -- but I can make rings, necklaces and bracelets and it is soooo cool. It looks great with all of my metal colors! It is very specific, and not for everyone, but I absolutely love it!! The Milky Diamonds will probably become a bridal-ish ring group (yes I wrote “bridal-ish”) because I think they’ll make great right-hand-rings, but a cool bride would love to wear one as her wedding ring.
I can't wait to show all of you what I do with my new stones!

Cheers & Crushes!
Pamela