Today I celebrate that yesterday I made my six hundredth sale on Etsy!

When I opened my shop in 2011, I sold a single item that entire year. Five years later, I earn my living exclusively from what I sell online.

I am grateful for the creative freedom this allows me, and for the beautiful connection that I have with each one of you. Thank you for being so kind and generous with me!

In my quest to lead a more creative and productive life, I overlooked the most important ingredient: my health. When the year began, I focused all of my energy into my work, and in doing so neglected my body. The price I paid was to spend the last month in bed with influenza, feeling weak and vulnerable.

When I first got sick, I thought I had contracted metal fume fever, a respiratory illness caused by inadecuate soldering safety practices. Fortunately this was not the case, but it could have been, due to the harmful chemicals and improper ventilation system I had been using for the past six years.

After many tests, a wonderful doctor (Dr. Juan Tamayo), gave me the correct diagnosis: I had not been eating well and my undernourished body could not fight the virus. This came as a surprise, because I considered myself healthy: I never eat sugar or refined foods, I don’t smoke, I hardly ever drink alcohol, and I practice yoga every day, but I was clearly not eating enough nourishing foods to sustain me.

From now on, my task is to improve the safety measures in my studio*, and make sure I eat wholesome and varied meals every day. To do this, I’ve been studying my favorite cookbooks: The Plantpower Way, by Rich Roll and Julie Piatt; The Medicinal Chef, by Dale Pinnock; and Crazy Sexy Kitchen, by Kris Carr and Chef Chad Sarno. If my dear sister had already published her Noble Baking cookbook, I'd also include it (her wholesome baked goods are the best I’ve EVER tasted!). 

I am learning to prepare delicious and healthy meals with the same love and creativity with which I make jewelry, motivated by the fact that with every bite, I recover the strength I need to return to my studio (which I miss dearly!).

Fellow jeweler, please follow these precautions when you work. Your future self will thank you for it: 

-Sparex –the pickling agent most of us use– is toxic! Use a warm vinegar and salt solution instead. 

-Use a ventilation system that directly reaches the fumes that come from your soldering station. If the ventilator is suspended above your head (as mine was), you will inhale the fumes first. 

-Always wear a face mask and a respirator whenever you sand and solder. 

-Wear finger tape to safeguard your fingers from cuts. I never did, and it took weeks for my wounds to heal.

I must have have intuited that today’s piece was not going to work when I took this morning’s picture. There are four talismans instead of the five that I need to complete my work week. That alone should have warned me to pay closer attention. 

In my distracted state, I made one bad creative decision after another, which led me to ruin three finished pieces, cut my finger, and just barely finish a necklace that I will photograph tomorrow. 

Still, I appreciate days like this, because what would life be like without contrast?

I just finished reading Twyla Tharp's, The Creative Habit, an insightful book on how to form habits that nurture creativity and keep you inspired. 

The book offers simple exercises to generate new ideas using promts. My favorite is called, "Do a Verb." You begin by making a list of ten verbs, and then use one of them to create something.

Twyla uses verbs to choreograph a dance, but you can use them to paint a picture, design a house, or compose music. I used mine to design a ring. 

Twirl ring.
Handmade with chalcedony and 100% recycled sterling silver.
Soon in my online shop.

Things I’ve learnt (so far) from my one-piece-a-day jewelry challenge: 

Time is extremely limited. 
Everything that can go technically wrong, will.
Decisions have to be made fast. 
Always shoot 400 pictures to get 4 that work.
The natural light needed to take pictures is gone by 4 pm. 
It is possible to go from intense metalsmith mode to relaxed model pose in minutes.
Editing pictures of a piece takes longer than making the piece.
Photoshopping damaged fingers takes longer than all of the above.

Aligned ring.
Handmade with taupe moonstone and 100% recycled sterling silver.
Soon in my online shop.

Last week I began the challenge to make a piece of jewelry a day, five days a week. I thought I would end up exhausted, but making my creative work a priority fills me with energy. I’ve been wanting to make only one-of-a-kind pieces for so long, that it was a relief to begin this adventure. 

I’m always amazed at how complicated I can make my life when I loose track of what I want, which is to make jewelry that moves me and others deeply; to expore the beauty of primal and rudimentary forms; and to inspire others to do their best work, because this will make the world a better place.

I have set guidelines for this challenge:

I will explore all of my ideas. Often what seems too simple on paper, is very interesting in three dimensions. 

I will not judge my work. It doesn’t matter if each piece is amazing, what matters is that I complete a piece a every day.    

I will not let perfectionism stop me. I am doing the best I can.

I will relax, have fun, and get inspired on weekends so that I can return to my craft refreshed (this seems obvious, but when you are self employed, disconnecting from work is easy to overlook).

I've just added the five rings I made last week to my shop on Etsy (plus the ring I made the day I decided this weekly ritual). Although I worked on each piece individually, it was important to me that they also work as a group. Now that I see the rings together, I find that they come from the world of biology. I see insects, seedpods, and microorganisms.

Thank you for your encouragement and support on this adventure. I am honored that you chose to come along! May you always be inspired to explore your creativity, and may your path be filled with discovery!

I know I procrastinate when my inner artist (who is about 5 years old) refuses to sit at her computer to finish her 55 Etsy listings, and instead plays around with metal clay and makes herself a ring.

I found an old Atlas in a used bookstore this Summer. I decided to use it as a canvas to paint on, because the paper was thick, and the pages could be easily removed from the metal binder.

Projects like this remind me of how free I feel when I work with inexpensive materials and pre-existing elements. It’s the reason I love working with silver: when everything fails, I can always melt what I’m doing and start again. I can also work with whatever wire, sheet metal, or gemstone I have at hand, and let each object give me ideas. A blank canvas tends to paralyze me, but a surface that already has an image and a distinct graphic layout awakens my imagination, and adds an extra layer of interest to each piece. 

This is still a work in progress, as there are many pages left in my Atlas, but in the meantime, here are my first paintings. I made them with gouache, and was inspired by what was on each page. I hadn’t wanted to show them to you because I was being too self critical, but I shared them with my dear friend Iris, and she encouraged me to do so.

I hope they inspire you.

A clay self portrait I made when I studied at Marlboro College, in Vermont.

Torch and Lightning rings.
Handmade with brass and nickel free bronze.
​Soon in my online shop.

Moonstone, Bull's Eye, Jade, Hawk's Eye and Turquoise. 
Soon to be transformed...

This week I took a sand casting course with the amazing jeweler Jesse Bert, at my dear friend Cristina Celis's studio in Mexico City. Sand casting is an ancient method that uses sand as a mold material to cast metal. It is used to reproduce everything: from car parts, to statues and bells. 

I took the course because I want to make jewelry with more volume, and this simple method lets you reproduce any piece made of a hard material and cast it into metal. The results were not what I expected. Some of my pieces came out with holes, sunken areas, or missing parts. I was disappointed at first but soon realized that these accidents enriched the piece, if I was willing to work with them. My first sand cast ring is now among my favorites.

We used Delft red sand as a mold material.

We imprinted the original piece into the Delft sand,
that was tightly compacted inside a two part cylinder. 

We used a thin metal bar to poke holes and let air circulate 
so the molten metal can flow freely into the mold. 

We heated pieces of silver with a torch until they became molten.

We poured molten silver into a hole in the sand that reached the center of the piece that was being reproduced.

An example of a student's first cast piece.

My first sand-cast ring. 
The roughness gives it character.