In this new batch, I’m getting in white, yellow, and blue 2.5mm stones which will make very tiny studs, even smaller than my usual 3mm itty bitty studs. They will be good options for “barely there” studs to leave in all the time, and for upper piercings.

I’m also getting in a few 3mm pinks, which are a pretty rare color in Montana sapphires.

While we’re on the topic of tiny stud earrings, check out these teeny chrysoberyl studs for a stunningly pretty rarity!

There will be some big 5.5mm bicolor stones too. I don’t know yet if I’ll be able to match any of them for earrings, but at the very least there will be some awesome Montana sapphire pendants and rings to be had.

In other news, I’m currently working on photos of a bunch of gorgeous green tourmaline stud earrings. I’ve also acquired some interesting little 3mm green to brown color change sapphires which may need to go to the gemologist before I set them, but I think they are going to be really neat.

Faceted blue kyanite for earrings is on its way, although the international mail is taking its sweet time on those.

I’ll just start with these, because, well….do I have to explain this? Let me repeat myself: FIREFLY eyeshadows!

When is it that you realize you take your fandom a little too seriously? Not when you buy the cosmetics inspired by the show; hell, that’s almost entirely normal in my world. If football fans can paint their faces, I can wear geeky eye shadow.

No, that turning point is when you actually start critiquing the eye shadows based on how well you feel they represent the characters. Yep, I’m going there. These are the shades which make up the Big Damn Heroes line:

Little Albatross:

This steel blue shade has a hidden gold shimmer, and is perfect for the darkness tinged with light that is River. It’s a good match for her wardrobe as well as the dark blues and River-centricisim of the Serenity movie. Even better, it’s a fantastic shadow color. It’s dark and shiny and awesome, especially foiled.

I have very fair skin, and when I attempt a smoky eye I’m more likely to get handed a flyer on how to escape domestic abuse than I am to receive compliments on my sexy makeup. This is the first dark shade I’ve tried that’s flattering, gives me that cool dark look, and doesn’t make me look like an abused heroin addict. This is the holy grail of dark eyeliner and smoky eye shades for us pale Scottish types.

Captain Tightpants:

Seems to me, your coat is of a orange-ish color. *punch* This shade really doesn’t do much for me, as a shadow or as a character representation. It’s way too orange to be a match to the famous browncoat, and the orange-brown isn’t too flattering. Another Geek Chic shade, Chewie, is much more browncoatish. Sorry, but I gotta kick this one through the jet engine.

Ambassador:

Did you know wine is the color of the Companion Guild? Sorry, but I just totally made that up. This is a pretty decent shade for Inara; a complex deep purple/pink/brown shade. It’s a little darker than I would have chosen, and it could be a touch sexier. This is a little Victorian-Goth-Romantic for my taste; I’d like a little more lushness in the color. It’s reasonably attractive to wear, especially as a crease color.

Very Fine Hat:

I have to admit that as much as I adore Mark Sheppard, I’m a little miffed Badger got his own color before the rest of the crew. The good news is this shade rocks. It’s a dirty, grimy black-gold. It’s a perfect reflection of Badger and a really sexy eyeliner, black with a generous overlay of darkened gold. Great foiled.

Inevitable Betrayal:

This is a pretty darn good Wash color; I actually can’t complain at all. It’s a soft shade between khaki and olive drab, with a little more green and gold than either of those colors. It’s kinda soft without being wimpy, like Wash. It looks like his flight suits, and it’s even a bit of a leafy green. Perfect. As an eyeshadow, I don’t care for it dry (a little dull and a bit too yellow), but I love it foiled, when it becomes a gleaming tan-ish green with a gold sheen.

And….that’s it. Nothing for Zoe, Simon, Book, Jayne, Kaylee, or Serenity herself. Nooooooo! What would I add? How about:

Strawberries & Layer Cake:

A light but very rich, vibrant pink with gold shimmer and dingy brown sparkles for engine grease. Let’s make the golden and brown in this look good with Captain Tightpants and Trauma Surgeon.

First Mate:

A soft, slightly muted warm brown; the shade Captain Tightpants should have been, but with a slightly softer, more feminine tone.  Should be able to be used with Captain Tightpants and Strawberries & Layer Cake for a pink and brown look to compliment hazel eyes.

I Call Her Vera:

Military olive drab with gunmetal shimmer.  Looks good with Little Albatross.

Too Much Hair:

A gleaming silver with black sparkles. A highlight color to go with Little Albatross and 03-K64.

03-K64:

Muted metallic gray with blue-steel overtones. I’m thinking a shade similar to and coordinating with Little Albatross, but lighter and more metallic. The two could coordinate nicely with each other.

Trauma Surgeon:

A pale cool gold-based highlight color with blue hilite. A cool, haughty, luxurious color with strong doctor-ish blue highlights.

Next Post: Swatches, review of the shadow formula, and other notes.

Rabid Fangirl out.

My favorite products from The All Natural Face are the lipsticks, oily lid eye shadow primer, under eye concealer, and eyeshadow/eyeliner sealant for foiling. Ones I was not so fond of or choose to buy from other companies were the foundations, deodorant, fragrances, brow color/wax, and bath and body products.

The All Natural Face

Great Stuff

Vegan oily lid eye shadow primer in buff : This is one of my two HG (Holy Grail) eye primers, the other being Too Faced’s Shadow Insurance in candlelight. It’s inexpensive, lasts forever, applies as a concealer as well as a primer, and keeps shadows from sliding off my oily eyelids. Their black primer is also nice; I don’t use it much because it tends to make me look too goth, but it makes a good matte black eyeliner and a way to make sheer hilite eye shadows pop. It doesn’t stick to my lids as well as the oily lid primer.

Vegan Lip Sticks: The best lipstick formula I’ve ever encountered. These can be sheer, or build to vivid color. They last like nothing I’ve ever tried (a bit of a lip stain effect), and don’t make my lips feel coated or sticky. Seriously the best lipstick ever; all others are fun but ultimately lose out to these.

My favorite colors are Sunrise Peach and Sunset Peach. I like Sweetheart Pink for a bright pink lippie, but it tends to be a little too vivid for me. Sweet Wine looks bloody red in a bad way on me….it grosses me out a little. Cherries Jubilee is a nice color, but just not quite right for my coloring.

Midas Cream Concealer pot: Awesome under-eye concealer as well as face highlighter for use under foundation. Unfortunately I can’t find it on the website right now

Patina Vegan Mineral Concealer: The best redness concealer I have ever used. It moderates redness without turning skin tones muddy, plays well with foundations, and applies/blends well.

Brushes: This is my go-to brush shop. Her brushes are reasonably priced, effective, long-lasting, and overall “just right.”

Seal-IT: This is just water, glycerin, and a couple of preservatives. I find it to be quite superior to plain water for foiling.

Average to scary stuff

Scary: Sunless tanning lotion! It works, but it’s streaky, smelly, and one of the more hideous oranges I’ve seen in a sunless tanner.

Average: Eye shadows. Mind you, they’re good. It’s just that there are so many good eye shadows out there that they have to be really something special. French Vanilla and Deep Steel Teal are unique and really effective shades, the others I’ve tried aren’t memorable.

Average: Mascara. Actually this should be something above average because it’s so rare to find an indie, natural mascara. This one is natural, vegan, and really does work nicely. If buying natural, indie, or mineral products is foremost in importance to you, here’s your mascara. Otherwise, I prefer Sephora Full Action Extreme Effect Mascara.

Meh: Fragrances, both in crystalline form and roll-on. The crystals are hard to use and the roll-on is short-lived and one-dimensional.

Average: Gel eyeliners. These are actually quite nice; they apply well and stick nicely. With a good brush, these are excellent eyeliners. I just tend to prefer the variety of shades I get with using my mineral eye shadows as liners. The formula is great though, and I wish she would offer an un-pigmented base I could add my favorite shadow colors to.

Scary: Brow powder and wax. This made my brows look terrifying! I’ll stick to a little bit of brown eye shadow swiped over my brows when they need it.

Untried

There are a few other things I’d like to test out from this shop, including liquid foundation, Magic Vegan Eyeshadow Primer, and the color correcting liquid concealers. Her products tend to be well worth trying.

With that out of the way, I have to show off the new Kindle 3 cover I got myself for Christmas. I’ve already got two covers for it, one a black leather gizmo from Amazon and a lovely fabric thingamajig from etsy.  I use and like both, but something was missing. Something that would not just protect the Kindle, not just look pretty or hold pens, but enhance the actual reading experience.

For a reader, the main drawback to a Kindle is that it’s just.not.a.book. Instead of the tactile experience of a cover and pages, we get this slippery electronic thing that feels like it just might place a phone call at any moment. Books gain a cool factor but lose their romance.

Groupon had a nifty deal on a “Verso” case with a faux leather exterior that was inscribed with the names of cities around the world, and I decided to order it.  Never would have taken the chance without the Groupon, but I’m glad I did!  Should you want to track it down for purchasing or ogling, it’s the Verso Artist Series – Cities By Sharyn Sowell. I paid $15.00, retail is $39.00.

The pictures don’t do it justice because what it returns to the picture is that missing tactile experience. It feels like nice leather on the outside, with a suede interior. The inscribed writing is not only attractive, but adds grip and texture.  It’s precisely fitted and made with precision, so the whole package now feels solid when you pick it up.  The elastic holds the Kindle very snugly.

My Kindle now feels like a quality leather-bound book, filled with the promise of mystery and romance within its pages. It feels like the sort of book one might pick up and open to reveal a glowing orange orb that sucks the reader into another world. Now that is an appropriate home for a magical electronic device that holds an entire library at your grasp.

There are two ways to come by precious metal today: you can mine it, or you can melt down and refine existing pieces.  Using gold as an example, there are active gold mines all around the world.  They come with certain ecological problems like deforestation, toxic chemical use, unfair labor practices, and more.

Fortunately for the conscientious consumer, recycled gold is also plentiful.  Gold is used in a wide range of jewelry, electronic, and industrial applications, and its high price per ounce prevents it from being thrown out when no longer useful.  Jewelry gets sold to pawn shops, jewelers, and cash for gold vendors.  Industrial gold gets removed from its initial application and sold to refineries.

Regardless of source, it all ends up at a refinery, where it is melted down and the gold separated from the waste metals it was alloyed with.  This purified metal is then either sold as is or re-alloyed, mixing the gold with precise amounts of other metals like copper to create what the industry knows as 14k gold, 18k gold, etc.  The output is identical in quality and purity to newly mined gold.

Occasionally, a jeweler will even melt down an existing piece of jewelry and make another one with it.  Some jewelers also buy their own pure gold and other metals and mix their own alloys.  Far more commonly, a jeweler will buy pre-alloyed (mixed) gold in the form of casting grains, sheets, wire, and cast components.

The recycling process is the same for other precious metals like silver, platinum, and so forth; I just chose gold to illustrate this example.

The ring in the photo is 22k gold, and I made it by melting down 22k gold jewelry a customer sent me and hammering it into wedding rings for her.  This time consuming, direct recycling process is uncommon, even in my studio, but raw and enjoyable.

The gem (a Rhodolite garnet) was reflecting the trees and sky above it, and the camera focused on the reflection rather than the gem.   There’s no photo manipulation involved here at all.

If you see the narrow skinny version at the top of this post, just click on it to see the whole photo.

Suddenly, your mom emits a string of words pertaining to unknown movement, windshields, and mice. Her voice is calm and interested, with a telltale high-pitched squeak in the background that tells me what she really wants to say is, “Holy shitballs, is that a mouse? On the – um – in – the….eek?!?!”

My eyes shift from the road to the windshield wipers, then to a similar back-and-forth movement on the dash.  Only this one is suspiciously rodent-shaped.

I should mention that neither of us are afraid of mice; we actually rather like them.  I think both mice and rats are adorable.  This does nothing to change the fact that no drive home on a dark and stormy night is better for the addition of shadowing, fast-moving somethings scurrying around on one’s dash.

I make for the side of the road like the police just lit me up with flashing Mickey Mouse ears, and there it is.  It’s scampering along the dashboard and onto the molding of the passenger-side door, where my mom asserts right-of-way with her elbow.  Mom and rodent share an expression of slightly terrified fascination.

I empty out a coke cup and dry it to capture our hitchhiker, but before I can hand it to her along with a “mousepad” fashioned of of fast-food napkins, Whiskers is tucked safely under my seat, snickering.

He remained hidden for the rest of the trip, and I set a live trap containing a chunk of cheese, a cherry tomato for hydration, and a folded paper towel bed.

24 hours later, we opened the trap to reveal one very content-looking gray and white deer mouse.  Whiskers was about the glossiest, largest, most laid-back mouse I’ve ever seen, and he exited the trap with a certain leisure that implied he was quite accustomed to his rock-and-roll lifestyle, being chauffeured around and staying in hotels eating organic cherry tomatoes and Tillamook cheese in bed.

First of all, welcome to the new website!  There is still a lot of work I need to do, of course, but here it is in all its shiny newness.  The biggest changes are the addition of the still unfinished jewelry fashion look book and a brand new shopping platform.

I’m very excited about the new shopping platform; it’s faster and easier to navigate, browse, and check out, and allows options my old site never even dreamed about.  You can choose your metal (gold, silver, platinum, etc.) on the fly instead of going through the old upgrade process, check out without creating an account, and even share your favorites on facebook.

The jewelry fashion lookbook shows Distinction Jewelry on models, so you can visualize what each size of gem will look like in real life.

I also have a jeweler’s CAD setup for custom ring designs now, and am just starting to be able to share the output of this amazingly powerful tool with you.  Watch my custom rings section!

That’s not even all!  I now have beautiful collector’s gems for sale as loose stones, and will be adding to that selection greatly over the next few months.

The Bad Blogger will be checking out now…..until next time!

Her 40-second promo spot was written, directed, acted, and edited with utmost professionalism. It is entertaining and fun to watch as well as being a fantastic advertisement for Distinction Jewelry. It was also the winner in overall popularity with the youtube audience. Look for it to be featured on YouTube as well as on my website and newsletter. Thank you, Rose, for your outstanding video!

Rose will be taking home a $100.00 gift certificate for Distinction Jewelry and a one-year listing with co-sponsor Ellie Bean & Models. She’ll also be appearing in many future still modeling shoots for Distinction Jewelry.

Thank you very much to all of you who entered. Your creativity and hard work was remarkable and showed through in every single video. There was no plan for runner-up awards, but things change….

Jade Doheny is our first runner-up. Jade is only six years old, yet she memorized a long and detailed script, performing it in one continuous take. Amazing! Her viewers thought so too, because her video is second only to Rose’s in popularity with many views, likes, and positive comments. Jade will also be offered the opportunity to model for Distinction Jewelry and a 6-month listing with Ellie Bean.

Both Rose and Jade are listed with Ellie Bean & Models.

There are certain basic facts about what men do and don’t like in their jewelry which circulate on jewelry designer’s message boards, but at the end of the day most people are as stumped as I am.  The most popular men’s jewelry seems to be cheap, mass produced earthy trinkets from Asia – not exactly my niche

Ask a guy, and his answer will likely be either “I know what I like when I see it,” or “Whatever looks cool.”  Veeeeeery helpful indeed!

I have designed a number of masculine jewelry pieces in the past, and they all sold fairly quickly….to women.  I rank among my single accomplishment as a men’s jewelry designer a couple of grainy photos of a very handsome TV actor wearing two of my necklaces.

Enter….the muse.  While – ahem – admiring some photos of a male model, I was overtaken with the desire to see him modeling MY jewelry.  But, wait.  I don’t make men’s jewelry.  Hrrrm.  Must change that.

The epiphany came while driving home one morning.  Forget what vague notions men have about jewelry design.  What’s the one thing most men want above all?  To be sexually appealing in every way possible.

In that case, my design goal becomes fairly simple: to make jewelry that makes me want to tear a man’s clothes off….and leave his necklace on.  And nibble on it.

This proves to be a rather enjoyable research project.  I open my file of stills of my favorite actors (What? Yes, I have such a file…so?) and study them.  What are the design cues that most inspire me to drag the subject of the photo into the nearest coat room?

Suddenly, I find that it’s no longer hard to come up with designs for men’s jewelry.  I’ll let you all know how it works out