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This week, I've been preparing for the Navona Handmade photo shoot for our fourth collection, the Mid-Century Modern Collection. What's Navona Handmade, you might ask? It's a small business I started with two other female artists. We go on group outings to gather inspiration, then collectively brainstorm color palettes, patterns, and textures that will guide our collection. Each artist makes their own work, but throughout the creation process we make sure to check in with each other for support, guidance, and critique. Here's a peek behind the scenes at our photo shoot this week. The new collection launches on March...

I designed a one-of-a-kind crow pendant for Lancaster County's "Something to Crow About" Festival. First, I did some research on crows to get an idea of what their distinguishing features look like, especially their feet and beaks.   I laid out the pendant in Rhino, and spent a lot of time nudging around the feathers to get them to lay and overlap properly to resemble a crow's feathers. Then I milled the pendant in two parts: the body, and the head.  That way I could get more detail on the head.   Once the head and body were milled, I...

Birthstone month: JanuaryColor: Red, orange, pinkish orange, purplish red, green, gray, black, blueFamily: GarnetMoh's Hardness: 6.5-7.5Transparency: Transparent to semi-translucent (there are opaque varieties, though these are generally not considered gem quality)Garnet is a transparent to semi-translucent gemstone that comes in a wide range of colors, though it's most recognizable as a dark, brownish red. Rather than being a single, cohesive mineral, the garnet family is actually comprised of several types of closely related minerals. Red garnets are the most recognizable of their family, but color variations include orange, pinkish orange, purplish red, green, gray, black, and even blue! The garnet...

My client asked me to create a tough, hammered cuff bracelet as a Christmas gift for his boyfriend. To start this project, we examined and measured some of his boyfriend's bracelets to figure out the right size. I decided that it would be easiest and fastest to design the basic shape in CAD, mill it in wax, then carve a hammered texture in the wax. I used a large ball burr to mimic the texture marks that a planishing hammer would produce on the surface of the metal. After I laid out the hammered texture, my client reviewed the bracelet....

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