Palette Pondering and What Happened to May?

I haven't been here in quite some time and it makes me a little twitchy!  I like to blog, I like to read others...and I've missed this very much.  So!  Cowboy Poetry was a success for me, a very respectable quantity of my work went riding off into the sunset, I had a birthday back then and it was made so lovely and special by my best peeps, and then the rest of the month...well, I wouldn't go back there for all the coffee in Costa Rica.  Major creepiness with a rental property (not ours, but in the family) but I think we're d.u.n.  Pretty much.  Being kept away from the studio makes it all the sweeter when I finally do get back, and I spent a couple of days catching up on some custom work.  Today I just puttered and pondered and piled palettes.  So this what I have to show you after my stress workout.  Palettes...

Design work happens for me in different ways.  Sometimes I sketch, sometimes I pile things up, but no matter, it's always an evolution process.  These pictures are just beginnings.

Tourmalines, one of my all time favorites.

I found this old celluloid cat brooch and think the grossular garnet and smoky quartz might be the thing with the chalcedony...ponder ponder.

Carnelian, faceted citrines, antique carved bone and a yummy old reverse painted glass brooch....sigh.  I've set a tintype into a cavity on the reverse of the focal.

I am thinking that the matching brooches will soon be earrings, and kyanite drops with antique mother of pearl just has to work in....

I'm pretty anxious to get to work on this one....the focal has an amazing story to tell.

These little "ponder piles"...well....some will be realized and some will have to wait for that perfect little bit that I must locate, or construct...the only thing I know for certain is that it feels really fine to sit here and be still......

I've missed you!