I thought I would post a photo of my bench which is part of my studio.
This is what I see when I sit down to work in the morning, or at night, just before I pull my chair in or just after I push it away.
My bench of 15 years
At this point in time I actually have quite a few new designs happening, clusters of stones, some of the same color and some different, some in silver with gold accents, and some, just because I can’t avoid it in rich 22 karat gold.
Iolite, Carnelian, turquoise
More to come 
This made me smile. Thought it was worth sharing.
Via A Cup of Joe
One of my favorite trees to watch blossom is the pomegranate.
pomegranate flower
photo credit creative commons license
Its like a never ending burst of beauty, constantly changing, always surprising.
Even when they drop from the tree, they don’t loses there wonder
Blossoms
Blossom
Garnets are often represented by pomegranates in Greek mythology, and are closely connected with both love and war….
Since I am obviously in love with the pomegranate, that will be the subject of today’s story.
Persephone was not one of the goddesses of the Olympus, she lived far from the rest, planting seeds and taking care of plants, and a bunch of the gods were wooing her, among them Hades who decided to abduct her and take for his own, down to the underworld. Without Persephone life came to a standstill, nothing grew or blossomed and hunger ruled.
Zeus decided to put a stop to it and sent Hermes down to the underworld to retrieve her from Hades and the underworld.
Hades knew he couldn’t refuse Zeus on this, but didn’t want to leave Persephone so he gave her a pomegranate, to eat, knowing full well that when she saw the beauty and tasted the sweetness she would return to him.
And so she did. Every year for 6 months she would go down to Hades and the underworld, winter would descended on earth, leaving only when she reappeared every year, bringing spring with her.
Since then, it has been a well known fact that the sure fire way to make sure your lover returns to you is by giving them a garnet.
dd couple earrings 22 k gold garnet peridot moonstone 14 karat gold
I have been unsuccessfully photographing my own jewelry for years.
Even though in recent years I eventually take a lot of my work to be photographed professionally, I always take my own photo’s, for record, until I get them professionally photographed.
Finding a photographer that will do justice by your jewelry isn’t a simple feat either, since not all photographers know how to deal with the size and the reflections and the transparencies any better than I do, and as you will soon see - I don’t.
Silver flower earring with Carnilian and rose quartz
Anyway, I do want to post my new work here, even before I get it photographed professionally.
All new work will be posted in the New work category, and I will state if I or my dear photographer Shahar took the photo’s (though it will be quite Obvious, I would say). I will also update the photos in the blog to professional photos once I have them.
I am going to post a few of my latest photography efforts here, and if anyone has advice I would be grateful 
Sterling Silver Dogwood on chain, with gold leaf, cold enamel, peridot and Iolite
I lost the beautiful peridot green on this one - I guess I should have direct lighting for that.
Dogwood with Aquamarine, pearl gold leaf cold enamel (sterling silver)
I want the backgrounds to be white, so that the piece will jump out a little bit more, but I have no Idea how to do that on photoshop 
Anyone???
A trend that I am seeing in more and more blogs of other artists is daily something or others. Some do a daily sketch, and posts it, others do a small daily painting, or collage…ect.
Every time I run into this on the blogsphere I get intensely jealous.
Its quite amusing and silly that I get jealous of this, because all it would take for me to join the trend is to decide what I am going to do daily, and to do it and to commit to it.
Of course committing is the most difficult part, and that is probably where the jealousy comes from - the fact that they have already made the decision to commit.
A long time ago I read a book called The Artists Way but Julia Cameron, in which there are all sorts of exercises that promote creativity, one of them being morning pages.
Each morning, before you did anything else (even brush teeth or have coffee) you had to sit down and write 3 pages by hand. The content of these pages was completely unimportant, in fact, if I remember correctly, the recommendation was never to let anyone else read them and not even to read them yourself - thus avoiding any kind of judgment on what you were writing, allowing complete freedom to write well or terribly or Sanskrit, if you so desired. A lot of people I know, actually would finish writing their 3 pages and then destroy them immediately.
Anyway, I did morning pages for quite a while, until an especially nosey boyfriend read them… and in one second flat all of the fun and freedom was squeezed out of them, and of course I stopped writing them.
One of the things that I enjoyed about them most was the fact that in time, the kind of creativity that it promoted was completely different from making or designing or thinking about jewelry, which is great for inspiration. It was similar to unboxing brain cells that have long been bubble wrapped and putting them to use again.
If I commit to doing daily’s again, I would want it to be something, anything in fact that is not part of my daily tasks and routines. So writing or making jewelry is not what I am looking for.
I would love to commit to a drawing/ painting a day. When I start this ( I need to build up my resolve and think about how it will fit in my day, and especially how long or short a time I will spend on doing it a day.
It can’t be to long, since the day has only 24 hours, and doing a daily would completely miss the point and have a very short life if it takes up to much time.
Also, at least at first, I will treat it like the morning pages, and keep it completely private.
In my previous life, before kid’s career and husband, I use to take time to sketch. It has been so long since I have done anything like that and I would love to regain my confidence in this area.
Maybe my daily’s should be sketches.
We’ll see.
Since the wedding season is upon us, I thought I would expand a bit about the connection between brides and pearls, or why it is that so many brides all over the world and in most cultures wear pearls on their wedding day.
light cluster necklace - sterling silver and pearl
Of course, like most other customs, the origin of this one is in mythology.
The Greeks associated Aphrodite the goddess of love with pearls, in that pearls were created when Aphrodite climbed out of the sea on to Cyprus, the drops of water that fell from her body turned into pearls and everywhere she stepped turned green.
Cluster Bracelet - pearl and sterling silver
Another no less romantic myth claims that pearls are Aphrodite’s tears of happiness , and brides wear them on their wedding day to protect themselves from tears and sadness on what is supposed to be one of the most joyous occasions of their lives.
According to Arabic mythology, the pearl was created when moonlight, filled dew drop falling into the sea. (This is not quite on topic as far as brides and love go, but non the less, it is probably one of the most romantic and beautiful of all descriptions.)
14 karat gold stamped coin ring, with pearl set in 22 karat gold.
(More from the Stamped Coin Collection)
Last, but not really least, the most bizzar of all the myths:
Rumor has it that Cleopatra found her way into Mark Antony’s heart by betting him that she could make the most expensive meal in the world .
On the date which the meal was to be served, she set the table with two empty plates, and two glasses of wine. In one of them, she melted a pearl from an earring (who’s value nowadays would be something in the ballpark of 4-5 million Dollars) and immediately drank it.
Mark Antony was completely shocked by this, and contrary to what I would expect his reaction to be, he immediately fell head over heals in love with her. The other pearl from this very expensive pair of earrings was cut in two and sent to decorate Venus’s statue in Rome.
What ever rocks your boat, right? 
I have been seeing and reading a lot about the indestructibility of Tungsten rings and how very very strong they are. In fact, their hardness, which is 9 on the Mohr scale (diamonds being 10) does give them a lot of strength, but they are in no way indestructible.
Indestructible or not, extremely strong or not, I still find myself asking a very basic question here - how many people run around smacking their hands with hammers? (Those who do should be worried about more than their rings…) Its a bit of an overkill - gold might be a lot softer, but in all my years of making jewelry, maybe 3 people came back with squashed rings, and that wasn’t because they hit them with a hammer…and they were easily repaired and reshaped.
Any one who is at all familiar with my work knows that I love stackable rings, and rings that are not massive or thick, although those happen as well.
Also, the way my design process works is that one thing leads to another, and design elements carry on evolving over the years.
I have been using cold enamel now for about 15 years, and I am still using it, but in a completely different way than I was when I started out.
Flower Pins, Sterling Silver & cold enamel from some time 1994
Cold Enamel and Silver khaki leaf watch some time around 2002
Leaf Coin Cluster Bracelet - Sterling Silver and Cold Enamel some time in 2006 -7
photo credit Shachar Fleischmann
My dot collections have also been going on for a good amount of time and keep evolving into new and beautiful pieces which manage to inspire me to make yet more dot pieces.
One of the leading elements of the dot collections are my dot rings, either with or without tiny diamonds worn alone or in a stack. You can stack as many as you want with or without diamonds and other set stones and they are great to wear, having a really nice presents as well as being extremely comfortable and wearable.
Anyway, I wasn’t intending to talk about rings that I have already designed, but about rings that I have in my head at the moment, and am very excited about making.
The reason I went on about the dot rings is that these will be stackable as well, and I would also like them to be the second rings in my regular collection to be set with 1 or 0.5 point diamonds.
I will make two series of them, one of which I started on yesterday, with different colored stones (iolite, peridot and pink tourmaline) set in 22 karat gold, with silver ring shanks. I am tempted to have white cubic zircons flanking the stones for some extra sparkle.
New Stack Rings (not quite done yet)
Along the same lines, are the rings that I really want to make, with milky aqua marine and instead of the shanks being in sterling silver, they will be out of 14 karat gold. Flanking the aqua marines on each side will be three or four 1 point or 1/2 point diamonds.
The truth is - I would love to start working more with diamonds. The contrast between the precise aesthetic that is the usual fair with diamond jewelry and my more freestyle aesthetic is fast becoming something I would like to explore.
As Picasso said: “I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else.”
One last thing - Most of the photos on this post are photographed by me (which is why they are not so great) except for the one that I creditedto Shachar Fleischmann
When I was a little Girl, one of my two favorite things was reading and being read to. Nothing could beat the trip into a completely different world and the goings on there.
From the minute I could read, more often than not, you could find me with my nose buried in a book reading away.
Lights out meant nothing to me and my sister - or maybe that is not quite accurate. Lights out actually meant we needed to creep out of bed into the door way to continue our reading on the sly, and with noses buried in our books, our ears were tuned to the end of the passage, just in case we needed to make a giggly dash to our beds in the event of a parent closing in.
Time passed and I still continued reading a lot, probably more than most, until recently, when I had my children and seem to run out of time and mainly brainpower.
That has not dulled my love for books and stories though, and the fact that I am a jeweler is evidence of that, because jewelry might as well be a synonym for stories.
Very rarely will you come across a piece of jewelry that lacks a story.
It could be a heirloom piece, like the ring my mother wears. She inherited it from my paternal grandmother, and will in turn leave it to my brother’s wife, who will continue the tradition, leaving it to the wife of her first born son and so on.
It could be an engagement ring brought at great expense with great excitement, or, in the case of one of my friends it could be the ring that was brought to replace the engagement ring which was lost one day, playing with the dog on the beach. This dog, like all dogs, loves running after balls that are thrown for him into the sea, and luck had it that as my friend threw the ball into the sea, the ring flew right in after it.
"Replacement" Ring
To see more of the dot Collection, click here
The connection between jewelry and stories is not just on a personal level. The actual materials jewelry is made out of are full of history tradition and myth. There is hardly a gem stone to be had that is not strongly connected to mythology and believed to be full of qualities and abilities that in the end will rub of on or influence the wearer.
Throughout history, there have been many influential pieces of jewelry that have supposedly affected the course of history, like the ring of King Solomon.
Making jewelry is in a way like writing stories, or to be more accurate, supplying future buyer or wearer of my jewelry with the paper and pen with which to write their own personal story.
Roman collection Rings
Moonstone Cluster Ring, 22 k gold , Sterling Silver
Aqua Marine /cluster ring, 22 karat Gold, Sterling Silver
Rose Quartz Cluster Ring, 22 karat Gold, Sterling Silver
Triple Stone Roman Ring Rose quartz and Aqua marine set in 22 karat gold on sterling silver
Triple Stone Roman Ring, Garnet and Labradorite set in 22 karat Gold on Sterling Silver
Roman Collection Earrings
22 karat Stud Earrings - Cab
22 Karat Stud Earrings - Slices
Larger Stud Earrings, 22 Karat Gold (back sterling silver, post 14 karat gold)
Moonstone Roman earrings, 22 karat Gold, Moonstone (back sterling silver, ear wire 14 karat gold)
Rose Quartz and Moonstone Roman Necklace, Set in 22 karat Gold, on 14 karat Gold Chain
Rose Quartz Bead Necklace, Set in 22 karat Gold on 14 karat Gold Chain