I thought I would share a little about my journey towards being a jewelry designer.  After all, it is my blog :-)

I played with beads as a child, my mom said she could buy me a little vial of beads and I would string beads for hours.  I went to kindergarten at our family church and mom explained that every time arts and crafts ended each day, I would cry.  As a teenager, I remember all my wonderful art classes I had along the way….slab clay, charcoal sketches, batik, floor loom; joy pure joy.  My senior year I decided I wanted to take wood shop, but my father told me it was only for boys (it was a different time) so I signed up for Metalsmithing, Lapidary and Gem Cutting.  Mr. Hicks, my hero – the only teacher I really remember.  He introduced me to many wonderful things – jewelry design, power tools (yummy) and how to identify rocks and minerals.  Then, off to college.  I will never forget the first drawing class with our nude male model and our design teacher who gave us such elaborate assignments I spent all my money on art supplies instead of food. 

Then my life was put on pause.  I was raised with modest means and school was very expensive.  I had to go to work to make ends meet and never found my way back to school.  I retired a little over a year ago to help my mother care for my father and all of my creative juices have returned.  I can hardly keep up with my desire to create.  In a future blog I will share my horrible experiences with learning how to blog; about social networking; photographing my work, etc.

Bye for now ----- Dee