Creativity runs rampant...

I need to make a confession. The genuinely creative person in my household is my wife. Okay, I'm kidding, we're both artistically inclined it seems. My wife began making bead type jewelry a year or so ago, and has since progressed into mixed media type jewelry, namely wood inlaid with metal. Her preferred wood is cocobolo with silver inlay. Cocobolo is a fantastic wood for this application since it polishes well, is very tight-grained, and has beautiful colored streaks giving it character. Linda began with small square inlay and has since delved into irregular shapes such as diamonds, curved inlay, and multi-sided inlay. I mentioned to her I would post a photo of her work on this blog since her work does originate from here, not quite from my studio, but nonetheless. Linda also trained for a short while with a leading goldsmith in the area and has developed a excellent background on working with metal and forming metal, of course, the education never ends.

Linda's jewelry making has opened up new experiences for us, we often shop for wood together, visiting local dealers in the quest for the ideal pieces of wood. I've spent some time with her on a couple of the pieces, critiquing her work. This went surprisingly well in spite of what we thought would occur. She is appreciating how important a virtue patience is, and how important it is to spend the extra time to get things just right. The designs are all hers, I just rough cut the pieces of wood and she trims them, creates a recess for the inlay and applies the inlay. The shaping, finishing and polishing are her domain, I usually just see the finished pieces. The jewelry stand was created by Linda's father, another fine craftsman.

Linda is currently experimenting with other woods such as blackwood and is also developing some new designs. She keeps challenging herself with more interesting designs, working her creative side and very much enjoying this. Back to the regularly scheduled programming, I continue to refine the cabinet on stand design and should have a final design with mock-up ready soon.