Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Post Christmas offer from Kuukivi

Christmas is the time you think of buying for everyone else in your life. Now that Christmas is over, its time to buy something for yourself and we would love to help with our offer of "Free Shipping on all orders above $99" till Jan15.

Pamper yourself with one of the many unique designs or get ready for Spring with a cool anklet to match your spring closet.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Visit to Santa's Clause village these holidays

just one (well 1.5) more working days and its holidays!!!! My dear hubby is also taking off the 3 or so working days next week before New Years so we can take the whole 10-11 days and visit relatives around the country. His sister and brother live in Northern part of Finland and I haven't visited that parts of the land ever.

There is a place in Northern Finland (known as Lapland) called Rovaniemi and is believed to be where Santa Clause along with Mrs Santa Clause and elves live. If time permits, this seems to be the place to visit even if it is just after Christmas.

Closer to home, couldnt' get another time with the photostudio to reshoot the jewelry so all those 30+ new designs have to wait till next year for me to come back to US and get them photographed. That's a bummer but trying not to let that get me down in the holidays.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Design inspired and dedicated to the two friends in my life..

We three have been together for almost 10 years now. here's the three of us at the trunk show hosted by paddy (as we call her) in September.

We always had a blast and giggle like crazy eating tons of hot sauce in a thai restaurant or sipping a margarita and eating chips at chevys:) These two have been my bestest (is that a word?) friends and we went through a lot together. even with me half way around the world for a year now, we are always upto date on what's going on with each others lives (well, for most part anyway)...Thanks to the internet...

Although I decided to retire my earlier design of Opals with 3 big circles and 3 small circles within in the pendant and opals hanging from them, I still wanted to work with the circles. So, i decided to simplify the pendant (cut off two smaller circles in it) and use it. It left me with 3 big circles and one small circle that's holding all the three circles. Whatever it is that's holding us together, those 3 circles reminded me of us three going through thick and thin in the last 10 years!!. The result of it is this design in two different variations and 2 different colors of each variation. On the right is one variation with Opals and Blue Topaz with a blue topaz hanging from the small circle in the center. The other color variation was with dark maroon garnet briolettes (in place of opals) and Vesuvonite drops(in place of blue topaz).

The other variation is just simple Marquees (on the left) with a roundelle and Bali spacers in the small center circle. The other color variation of this is with Carnelian marquees.

Here's to Us girls....and all the best friends around the world.......may we enjoy the fruits of friendship until the end.

holiday mood

I am in holiday mood already and its another 10 days away!!. In Finland, Santa doesn't come in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve. He comes home in the evening before the kids sleep and for some reason dads or uncles are always missing when Santa comes:) and give the gifts in person to everyone!!.


Usually in the trunk shows, I always have a problem of displaying the earring especially. For the open studio at home, I tried something new. Not sure if I will be able to do it for other trunk shows but here, it worked out good. Since our backyard is full of trees that are dormant for the winter, I cut a couple of small branches and put them in pinfrogs (that i use for my Ikebana arrangements) and hang the earrings in their sleeves. Not sure if you can see it clearly from the picture but it was like a nice earring tree - all naturale:)


Here's one of the designs that is not on the website because of photography screwup but became quite popular in Finland. Five Smokey quartz marquees handwrapped. The center one is in a Sterling silver Rhombus connected to the chain with a smokey quartz roundelle. I have the same design with Carnelian marquees as well but this one has got more attention than the other one.


Sunday, December 9, 2007

Blogging for D4A

As I mentioned a while ago, Kuukivi and I became partners with Designers4Africa to support raise funds for different non-profit organizations. Recently, I offered/volunteered to start a blog for D4A and write about different projects going on with the different non-profits that we work with. Its been an experience just reading on different thing happening in that great continent of Africa.

I am excited about the opportunity to join D4A and really happy to be able to do more than just donate my creations. I am trying to help a little with D4A website too but writing that blog is becoming a passion. The first time I saw the video on "Invisible Children" it made me think of how fortunate most of us are to be able to sleep comfortably in our beds and homes while there are children who walk miles into a town to just sleep in a hospital because they are afraid of getting abducted if they stayed home!. Today I read about a particular district in Congo where women and girls (probably people in general) are giong into a forest just to sleep because they are afraid of gettign violently raped in front of their family members!.

I feel very fortunate indeed to be able to put the few skills I have to good use. I will be posting a few more here too as we get close to any fundraising events.

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Wintery show

This year it does look like real Winter in Finland. Last year, even for Christmas there wasn't enough snow and it felt like almost everyone was a bit worried about global warming (espcially after watching Al Gore's documentary) and so I guess we should be happy its definitely going to be a white Christmas here. Lookign out from my studio window, i see all the trees covered with white and about 5-6 inches of snow everywhere on the ground. Just started doing some Bridal designs after getting inspiration from designing for a friend here for a winter wedding.

This weekend is Open Studio show and sale in Tampere and excited about it. Making a few pieces that got sold and are popular. Serving Gloggi (a hot drink made with currant juice and spices), gingerbread cookies, homemade muffins and coffee (did I ever mention my other passion is cooking and cook twice a day almost everyday?). Apparanty Gloggi is also made with wine or fruit gloggi is served with Vodka in evenings but not for this show ofcourse:) Its a traditional holiday drink (I think even in Sweden) and tastes yummy especially (the fruit one, haven't tasted the alcohol version of it) when its nice and warm in your hands while its snowing and negative temperatures outside.

Worked a bit more on the Designers4Africa blog y'day and added a few pictures from the annual fundraiser for "Drop in the bucket", one of the non-profits D4A supports. And ofcourse, haven't taken the pictures to the photostudio yet for rework yet.