DanaArts Podcast

Happy New Years!

What a wonderful time of year. I just wanted to wish you a very Merry Christmas!

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas!

Anyone else out there have a dog?

We are excited to be getting a dog. We are naming him Red. We will pick him up this coming Saturday. I have to get ready for the sleep deprived days ahead. :) It's our first dog so this will be fun for the whole family. I had dogs growing up, but I never had the responsibility of the overall care and expenses that goes in to having a dog. This is all new to me and I'm a bit nervous. My kids are a blessing in my life and help challenge me in new ways. Thanks to them we will have this new life form join our family. Welcome Red...

Red Miniature Poodle at about 4 weeks old

I'm having some fun with these designs. They are some of my earlier designs that never get old. The square came from the round version just to change things up. I've always loved creating these and wearing them because they are not your standard bands that you can find anywhere. These are just solid designs that are not just found anywhere. I love to come up with new patterns. They don't always translate from sketch to reality so in the design process I have to adapt as needed while creating them. Hopefully you'll have able to enjoy wearing them as much as I enjoy making them.

I love to Render objects I create in CAD. It's fun to try and figure out how to do it well. This is a scene that I created for a design contest many years back. It did not win anything, but I had fun building the scene. The water is what I am most proud of. I was able to create pretty good looking running water which for me is hard to do. Hopefully this year I can try and do another something cool. We'll have to see. This was more about the render than about the jewelry. Hope you like it...

rendered in V-ray

It's here! Such a fun time with family and a break from work. I've always enjoyed this season with getting together with family and well, food. Now that I have kids of my own it's fun to see them with cousins playing around together. It seams as if the retailers always skip Thanksgiving holiday and jump right into Christmas after Halloween. Well I'm certainly celebrating this time of thanks and I wish you all the same. Relax and eat up!

Now is the time to place your orders. Well you have maybe 1 weeks before it won't make it in time for Christmas. This is a busy time of year and packages can have a hick-up because of weather, etc., so please order soon to make sure there is no delay in receiving your items.

A few Rings I just finished

I've always have loved to make things with my hands. All growing up I found things to make from woven string bracelets to leather work. I preferred staying home to make things rather than go out to a party or have fun in other ways. Now that I'm all grown up and still growing up, I still prefer to stay at home when ever I can to make something rather than go out and tour the city. The only difference now is that I don't have much time to do the crafts that I enjoy. Work gets in the way of my hobbies as it does with most of us and when we have time we are tired and have less energy than we once did especially if you have kids like I do.

I feel I have even less time now with a job and a family and my side art that I make and sell. My crafts are more of a hobby because I can never find the time to work on them and selling them may cost too much for most people. The time that goes into making some things I don't feel I could ever get paid what it's really worth. Either way I don't want to not offer it for sale either. I will start to add crafts to my crafts section as I finish projects. There will be very few and the price may or may not reflect all the time put into the project. I'll have to decide that when I list it.

My crafts will consist of a variety of things. Leather work, coil pots, gourds, or any other mixture of materials used to make them "my way". They are made with love since they are done in my "spare" time and I do my best to use natural materials. I hope you'll enjoy viewing them if you are not purchasing them. Fun Fun Fun. :)

This is a new design from old parts. I took a few old parts and combined them into something new. Wings are always cool. This one has 4 wings or 2 sets of wings with decorative patterns in between them. The is just a simple CAD render and not exactly how the finished product will be, but should give a good idea.

The design process is very interesting with any design. They all start in different ways. This one started off as a simple drawing. That didn't work out. I scratched everything except for the long lines that go along the edges. Then I just jumped into CAD and started with a band. I inset the middle surface and started to try and get ideas for the rest of the design. I pulled out the wings and just loved how it went with the long stripes. I then made some new patterns to go in between them. That is the quick version of how one thing led to another. :)

I don't really like the idea of Halloween, but taking all the meaning out of it it was always fun to dress up and get candy growing up. The same is true with my kids.

My younger kids love to dress up and Batgirl wins again. I hope you all stay safe out there this year and have fun.

Batgirl with a smile