Time for a commercial spot...

In August last year after finding and tumbling rocks as we traveled around the country, Dick decided he wanted to learn to wire wrap them. We also purchased some rocks that caught his or Jackie's eye.


Here are some of the results of teaching himself to wire wrap various stones in no order of projects.


This is a stone that Jackie picked out at a show in Quartzsite Arizona this year.

A purchased fossil from Morocco.

And another purchased stone; wish you could really see the beauty of this stone this time with gold filled wire.

An unusual shape that is quite difficult to form the sterling silver wire around.

A little fun with silver wire and beads on a polished chalcedony that we found in Arizona.

Just for fun Dick used copper wire on this Mastodon shark tooth.

Playing with some arrowheads.

It's time to try something new so he took a class at Quartzsite Arizona and produced this gold and silver bracelet.

Then using a friend's (Ray Howard) bracelet he made this one for Jackie. He has orders for this set but not sure what to charge for them, any ideas?

Using the basic design of the bracelet he designed the earrings and then the necklace. Guess who ended up with all of the pieces? (and is very proud to wear them and accept the compliments!)

He then designed this bracelet using all sterling silver. It is based on a bracelet that he saw and then modified the design to his liking. Deanna really liked this one when we were together in Las Vegas, in fact wearing it. (But Jackie made sure to get it back before they left!)

With the bracelet made he had to design a pair of earrings and then a necklace.

Guess who ended up with most of the pieces?

We can't forget the first contract job he did. Thanks Judi for letting me make these sets for your family and I hope they enjoyed them as much as I enjoyed making them for you.

This is just a sampling of the jewelry Dick has made. Jackie really can't wear it all, so if any catches your fancy. let us know. Maybe you can buy that one, or he can made you one like it. He still has the 38 lbs of petrified wood we collected and are tumbling to wire wrap!

That's all for now so stay tuned for pictures of Zion National Park where we are thoroughly enjoying ourselves and trying to stay cool.

To be continued...

Happy Thanksgiving & Dick's new hobby...

We want to wish all our family and friends a very happy Thanksgiving. We are sad being away from family but will still have a good meal with lots of other people that are in the same boat here at the RV park. We are watching the parade on live feed out of New York and then maybe a football game this afternoon.

If you are out there reading this, drop us a line or two and cheer us up.

@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_@_

No travel Blog today, just showing off what Dick has been doing in his spare time.

It's interesting what you can learn from a book. Dick started to wire wrap some stones that he purchased and then moved on to use some of the rocks that he has found and polished.

I think this piece was posted another time. It is the first one he made.

Again this is a purchased stone and wrapped with silver plated copper wire.

Showing the front of another.

And the back. Still trying to figure out what to do with the top wires to make it look good.

Dick's Dad and Mom spent time on the beach picking up pretty rocks and his Dad polished them. Dick found his collection and thought it would be fun to wire wrap some of his rocks and thereby have two generations working to create one piece of jewelry.

This is another beach rock that Dick's father polished and Dick wrapped. Notice the new style at the top. Dick is also tumbling some of the ones his Dad never got around to and hopes to use some some of them in the future.

We picked up this fossil sand dollar from the Port Aransas beach at Texas. It's over one million years old. If you look close you can see the center of the sand dollar.

Dick decided to try something new so using one of the chalcedony stones that he picked up from Quartzsite, Arizona polished and turned it into a bracelet to fit Jackie's wrist.

He plans to try a ring and earrings in the future.

To be continued...