Green wedding earrings

I didn't really believe I could make earrings for a wedding - natural pieces of jewelry tend to be more ethnic than that but my friend again helped me to discover more of the possibilities and what I can do. She has been talking to me about her need for a nice pair of earrings for a wedding but I tried to avoid this task for lack of confidence in being able to make something that can work with a cocktail dress.

Well, in the end she succeeded and here is the result with the matching hairband. Actually I am happy she convinced me! We agreed on using my (and as it turned out, hers too) favourite mineral: tiger's eye combined with glass beads and a piece of shell.

The happy face in the end was well worth it!

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Landscapes

We have come to the age when births and deaths happen at the same time. When some of our friends get married and you go to their wedding and when at the same time some of the people around you leave forever.

We have come to the age when love, life, beauty, loss, and death are there with us at every moment, they hold our hands and take us to new lands to discover, new sights to see and new messages to understand.

What kind of lives are we leading? Did we find what is important? Do we really see what matters or do we only see what is right there in front of us?

Keep the faith. We will all leave some day. A new journey comes where there will be no other holding our hands than death.

This pair of earrings is dedicated to a person who has just left this beautiful land and walked away. Peace be with you on your way.

Caretta

Today we browsed photos of Zakynthos, the island where I used to work and live for a while and I showed one taken of the Caretta caretta, the giant turtles which lay their nests at a southern beach of Zakynthos. If you are lucky enough you can see them swim next to your boat in the sea.

This key charm I made yesterday at the fair is my version and tribute to these wonderful animals.

5 Things You Can Do When Your Job Is Eating Up Your Life (And It's Not Too Late Yet)

This list might seem to be a good joke which lacks any seriousness but don't get misled by the funny way I put it. This is bloody serious: you have only one life and nobody else will have fun in it or discover your limits instead of you.

So what are your options?

1. Be a Waiter/waitress or Tourist Guide in Greece

I was lucky enough to try both and it was one of the best periods in my life. I left a serious job with a promising outlook for months of complete freedom and full of discovery. It cleared up my mind and I came back knowing exactly what I wanted to do - and it was not what I had left behind - so I put my life on a completely different new track.
This was years ago and by now Greece is not the best destination so you can replace it with Mallorca or Phuket upon your wish.

2. Sell paintings in Portugal

If you work in sales or marketing, this is your chance to get back to the roots and see things from a different perspective. You will literally work for every cent. But your office will not be neon-lit anymore: you will change it for the beach or the avenue where lovers stroll in the evening. If you are lucky, singles will also stroll your way.

3. Become a zookeeper

Not the cleanest job, we must admit. But just imagine all the kids looking at you with envy and respect when you feed the penguins! Be careful, being a zookeeper for more peaceful and harmless animals is much funnier than feeding the polar bear so you might get a good use of your networking and negotiation skills you had developed in the multinational environment before.

4. Volunteer!

If you are as lucky as to be able to afford this. Use the internet, discover the opportunities and get on the road! There are so many fields that need volunteering work: disabled kids' camps, saving endangered animals, day-care of AIDS-infected, and so on, but there are also programs that offer consulting and free know-how to developing countries' rural people in the field of agriculture or small business management.
The choices you can make are countless but the result will be only one: the most useful time of your life ever.

5. Self-employment

This needs dedication just like any of the mentioned options but here we must also consider dedication in financial sense.
Make a good plan, prepare, save money, research your market - in a nutshell, use all the skills you use in the office every day. You can open a private nursery or make goat cheese - there is no limit to what a person's creative and entrepreneurial side can achieve when it is used to all its effectiveness. Probably this is the one of all the above listed ways of escaping that needs the most preparation. You will be taking risks and might not have a single day off for the next couple of months or years to come. Think about all this, discuss it with people you trust and when you get really excited - jump!

And for the rest of us, whose lives are not eaten up by our job: be nice to waitresses, tourist guides and zookeepers! They might be your boss next year!

Giulietta

... I know what can be better than a day off: adding two more days to it!

We were doing nothing else than recharging our batteries during this 3-day-weekend. I could have gone to a fair on Sunday to sell my jewelries but I chose to stay at home and relax, then going on a small bicycle trip together with our dogs. It was the first time they had to walk on a leash next to our bikes and they were doing just great.

And weather was perfect throughout the whole weekend, felt like summer is here, oh yes!

So Giulietta... The photo was taken on a car, I will not tell you what kind. But the title "Giulietta" is already a hint...

Lateralus

It was high time I should name a piece of jewelry Lateralus. What's more, still I am afraid these earrings are not as good as to deserve this name.

Some time ago we received a payrise from the company. I don't know what others first do when they get something as this, I know many people around me were running to shop for clothes. For me the first thing to do was going on Amazon and finally order this album from Tool on an original CD. On Ebay I found an LP with the band's signature but that would have cost me my yearly holiday more or less. As the CD was coming from the US, I had to wait some weeks for it to arrive. When it arrived, I was waiting for the right moment. This is not the kind of music you use for background but you must sit down, turn up the volume, switch off the lights and LISTEN.

Yesterday was the evening for that.

Pure progressive rock symphonies in the darkness.

Listen and watch here if you dare.

Turquoise keys

It is always a lovely moment when one of my creatures find an owner near me, someone I know. It is especially nice when I know I will see my jewelry being worn because the new owner is a person whom I see day to day.

This is what happened today to this piece.

This pair of earrings is made of turquoise - I think it is one of the most beautiful minerals besides tiger's eye.

As for the keys, I bought them maybe two years ago at the Historical Carnival in my hometown, Szombathely, and they were waiting patiently in my medal collection until now.

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Cold heat

Earlier I already showed you a pair of earrings made of howlit: Beautiful technology.

This is another pair made by using this kind of mineral, but dyed in a different color. As far as I know howlit is the name of this mineral only when it is colored, normally it is white and is called "türkinit" in Hungarian, should be something similar in English but I did not find the name anywhere.

This kind of mineral heals problems associated with digestion and relaxed the nervous system. It also contains calcium therefore stimulates the body's hormone and enzime production.

And besides all that, also looks good on you!

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In the name of recycling

Because recycling is great! Just think about how many reusable stuff we throw out all the time: paper that can be recycled, clothes that could make someone happy, food that could feed hungry children, and yes, this also applies to jewelry.

A good friend of mine offered me the jewelry she does not wear any longer. She collected them in a small bag and I could choose the ones that are not plastic and can be reused. I demounted them and now will reuse the beads and pieces.

This earring contains all bits of different stuff: metal coin, wooden and shell pieces, jaspis mineral fragments and the tiny rounded beads that are carved from real bone and have just been given another chance by getting recycled.

Rainy anniversary - and my first-ever jewelry set!

Yesterday we celebrated an important anniversary with my boyfriend so again we went back to the same place and to the same event as at that first time we met. It is the annual meeting of a car brand with around 20 people from across the country, combined with the 1st of May programs of the small village where it is all organized. The main event is the outside cooking competition which this year took place in unstoppable rain so we all got totally wet and cold but still were having lots of fun. Well, only until we started feeling that now it was really too much of rain and cold. We both came home feeling a bit sick. I drove back to Budapest where I work from Monday till Friday but today I stayed at home to get rid of the fever I have had since last night.

For this special day I am presenting you my first jewelry set! It is not the usual composition because I dislike things that smell from being overcomposed so it is an earrings and bracelet couple, no necklace was made. I was thinking about it but then I imagined all the three pieces worn at the same time - hm, maybe just too much... But I might make a leather necklace using the same items later on as I am sure it would look lovely too.

All the materials are natural as one can be: mineral (turquoise), untreated wood, and metal fragments and beads on an adjustable leather string in the case of the bracelet. For the earrings I also inserted crops painted in the color of dark purple onto the double metal string, which I doubled this time for a strong hold. The wooden bits were drilled on another cold and little bit of sick Sunday, my post from March here.

I am really proud of this as now I feel like I could do something that might be able to reflect the clear beauty of nature itself.

Moonlight over the sea

I have just received some good news: I can come back to exhibit and sell in Káptalantóti!

As you can remember, I was really excited about it here last week when I was first preparing for the event. This fair is very important to me. It was great meeting and talking with people who were interested in my works, to chat with fellow sellers, to take a look around in the fair - although it was not very easy with the two dogs.

So hopefully we will be back next Sunday morning, but later on I will announce here the exact date.

To have some words about the earrings I present today: it was the first time I have used calzedony ("kalcedon" in Hungarian) and it matched perfectly the blue shell fragments. For me the two together look just like moonlight over the sea on a clear night.

Akhellouf

It is one of the places I dream of going to. I would love to discover every corner of the world this is why I never go to the same place twice, but if I had the chance to visit all the countries this would be the second to go to after Chile.

This year my dream might come true.

It all started with a magazine article I read many years ago, which described life in the most vibrant city of this country from the point of view of a foreigner who has got a house there. Ever since this has been the only place where I wanted to own a house.

I am not sure if this dream will ever come true, but if not, that is still not a big issue after all I hate the idea of owning a house in general.

This is why I named this necklace made of amethyst and wood Akhellouf - if you take a close look you will see the name of this village on the map.

Morocco...

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The simple blue bracelet

For many long years I collected fashion photography and editorial scans on my computer. I loved fashion and I loved photography so the combination of the two was really a kind of hobby. Then I lost my hard drive and all my photos on it. I started collecting again and some years later when I had a nice huge collection on another computer, I lost it all again. Then I did not start it all over partly because these two cases and partly because I was not that passionate about it any longer.

Yesterday I lost my hard drive on my work laptop too. I was not that scared or stressed about it - I already did this twice so why worry about losing things again.

In the end, we could recover most of the data and save them on the new hard drive so the end is happy.

The photos that help me present the simple blue bracelet are from many different photographers who I cannot credit as I do not have the names, but for those interested here is the list of the fashion designers: Chloé, Beige, Armani, Peter Som and Marni.

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Kenya

Tonight we saw another great movie (hey, I haven't told you about movies for such a long time now!) called Haevnen, directed by Susanne Bier from Denmark. It depicts two different worlds and mentalities collide, in the end of the film producing a winner of these. The African scenes were shot in Kenya.

So in honour of this Oscar-winning movie I call today's necklace the Kenya necklace.

As just another piece of natural jewelry made by me, the main material is wood, mixed with tiger's eye. Can't help it, it is one of my favourite minerals I guess. Ladies, because I know many of us like pink, not only the bigger beads are pink but if you look at it closely you will find some more tiny little pink cubes hiding there like little candies to put a smile on our face and some color in the world.

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Beautiful technology

Yes, technology can be beautiful. When it is real technology and not just the imitation of it. When a car is made of metal and not plastic just as an amplifier that is made of metal and not plastic. When it is for moments or hours of providing you every beat and detail of quality music, when you can sit down and each time discover a new sound in your favourite song, when it gives you the freedom to just listen to quality music instead of being only fit for background whatever-is-on-is-OK radio humming.

Good old metal amplifiers are there with you for a lifetime.

And then, when you have the chance and find something even better on Ebay or in a small second-hand hifi corner in yout town, you are free to pass it on to the next generation of quality music lovers.

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Powder dust

I used to have a necklace that I loved and that went perfectly with almost any outfit but years ago I tore it. I planned to fix it but never actually did. Now I am recycling it, this earring is the first one created out of these white mineral beads. The pink beads are of course made of wood.

The rest of the photos of the collage are works of David Hamilton, Patrick Shaw and Patrick Demarchelier. Dresses by Atelier Versace (from here), Monique Lhuillier and Juliana Jabour. I hope you get the feeling of this earring with the help of these wonderful dresses...

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Leaf

We are having holidays in Hungary, a kind of long weekend and the extra treat is the wonderful spring weather which keeps us out of the house as long as the sun is up. Nature is in the process of waking up, the forests are full of blooming early-spring flowers and it was time for us to clean the garden of all the remains of the winter too - but only after wandering in the nearby forests with our dogs yesterday.

These days inspired today's wholly natural earring with a bit of ethnic touch. It ends with a little leaf motif made of mineral. All the rest of the beads are wooden ones.

And a diferent kind of (sad) news: I had an external attack on the blog which made it unavailable for about a day. I could recover everything but this episode again makes me even more convinced that our world is going in a wrong direction somehow and destruction gains more ground than it should, even on such a small scale as a natural jewelry craft blog. Sorry from everyone who tried to access the blog in vain during these hours, I am happy to have you back here!

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Golden sunset

This is the first piece that was made using one of the drilled wooden bits we prepared last weekend. I hope therefore that not only its golden shades but the love also shines through it.

I took the photo in the delicate light of the sunset in the house's garden in the Hungarian countryside. Everything is gold here: the shade of the wooden piece (achieved by a special spray), the color of the shell, the golden brown shades of the tiger's eye pieces, and the wonderful natural lights too.

This is truly a piece of natural jewelry to be put on sale soon.

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Hello, goodbye!

Life is nothing more than a series of changes. Life evolves this way. Nothing remains unchanged, not even our oceans, our mountains. Things come and go. People come and go. And when they go, you say goodbye.

Sometimes you don't even realize they go, they are just gone when you raise your head and look around. Did they leave something behind or is it just the smoke of their cigarette still lingering in the air?

It's relieving to say goodybe in the way that you can still leave something behind or give something in return for the moments of your life that you have passed together. It's important to give and not just to take.

And then, it might even turn out that the goodbye was just a hello.

A walk on the beach

La Kukac wanted to feel some summer breeze today.

Walk on the beach, feel the sand between your toes, step on tiny shells, hear the fishermen from the distance, see as the sea and the sky become one on the horizon, feel the smell of the seawater, step into it and on the small pebbles at the bottom, walk along the shore, going nowhere. Look up and see nothing else but the light brown sand and the light blue sea.

This necklace is the way I made this dream come true today.

Made of wood and another lovely mineral: a kind of jasper or jaspis (képjáspis in Hungarian). It is a semi-precious stone. Said to relieve the feeling of guilt, bring us closer to the past and to the earth and cleanses the kindeys, while at the same time strengthens the stamina.

For whoever believes in astrology, this mineral fits mostly the Capricorn and the Taurus as these are earthy, solid signs which the jaspis helps to develop and deepen their inner good qualities.

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