Maddie’s Mom not only writes, she also makes jewelry.

I’ve been making jewelry for nearly 30 years. I began with stringing seed beads. They were cheap and colorful and a lot of fun. I made necklaces and bracelets.

But then, I wanted to add pendants. I’d been collecting shale locally (lived in Arizona at the time) and carving petroglyphs into them and selling them at one of the local museums and a couple small shops downtown. So I chipped out some small pieces of shale and carved petroglyphs into them and drilled holes for hanging them on a necklace. But it wasn’t quite enough and soon I found myself also making earrings to match the necklaces and bracelets.

Flash forward and these days I’ll still do some straight stringing, but mostly I like to cut and polish cabochons, set them in silver mountings I’ve soldered together and hang them, or not, on necklaces that I’ve either strung, knotted, or wire wrapped together. There is something very satisfying about taking a dull stone and putting a nice shine on it to bring out the colors and the patterns.

I’ve done needle work as well. And made numerous bracelets on looms. I cold forge silver and copper. I make cold connections and hot connections. I even work a little 14K yellow gold into some of my creations.

My husband, Bernd, also makes jewelry. He has a background in fine jewelry. Growing up, his dad owned a fined Jewelry store. His dad was a master watch maker from Germany. Bernd worked in the store from a very young age.

Bernd works a lot with wire and has a particular love of faceted gems. But he will cut and polish cabochons and use some in his work.

He surprised me on one of my birthdays by piercing out a Superman emblem from a slice of a meteorite. He broke a lot of saw blades cutting it. It’s hard stuff. He mounted it in wire and added a faceted chrome diopside. It’s beautiful.

What’s this all leading up to? I’ve decided to highlight some of our creations on my blog. In the coming days, I will add a category to the navigation named “SyZyGy Jewelry.” Under that will be pages devoted to special pieces.

I hope you enjoy looking at them and reading about them.