Hello and welcome to my blog!
My name is Gayle, and I design and create unique jewelry. I've grown up (but never old!) crafting. I was born near San Francisco, we moved to the Midwest after kindergarten and I spent the next nine years living in four states [Indiana, Missouri, Michigan, and Illinois] before we moved to the Los Angeles area when I was in High School. During those years, I was very busy crafting in all sorts of areas - crocheting, embroidery, macrame, acrylic painting, sewing, calligraphy, wire art, Christmas ornaments, rock & shell art, and some very basic jewelry. This blog has been created to give you a peak into my crazy, crafty world! My crafting takes me on a wild ride sometimes, and I want to share it with you.
Once in high school and college, I added even more crafts to the list: clay, horseshoe nail figurines, stained glass, knitting, and I also earned a Certificate in Floral Design (the class turned out to be designed for people ready to open their own shops, but I enjoy it as a craft). Along the way, I also earned a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology from Pitzer college and then an Associate Arts Degree in Interior Design from the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising. After I got married & had my own home, I got to indulge all of my crafts in our home and did a few intensive things like make a stencil from our bedroom fabric & stenciled the bath area in matching paint to tie the areas together.
After seven years together, and some amazing vacations, we began our family and I became involved my girls' lives: I still substitute for our School District; I was a Girl Scout leader - along with several positions - for several years; and I began to teach Craft Classes. I started at a JoAnn Fabric & Craft store in our area teaching Cricut (the computerized paper cutting machine) and later also added Jewelry Classes there. It was at JoAnn where I became addicted embellishing with color and fell in love with all the varieties of Tim Holtz' line of Distress Inks and Alcohol Inks, as well as water coloring, chalking, stamping, and all of those delicious things in the paper crafting aisle.
Currently, I'm teaching jewelry and Cricut classes at my local Hobby Lobby. Once I decided to begin teaching Jewelry at Hobby Lobby, I jumped into some areas that I'd always wanted to explore but couldn't seem to justify the cost for 'trying out something new': various resins; metal stamping and texturing; metal embossing; and wire wrapping. Since Hobby Lobby doesn't have national craft classes, that means I get to teach things that I want & the students want to do! So I began making jewelry pieces that I could show to people when I was at the store demonstrating as examples of what sorts of things they could choose to make, but not have to make! So many people were interested in buying pieces, that I've finally decided to get some duplicates made & a lot of brand new designs for an Etsy store! I've been working hard on getting jewelry photographed for my shop; which I'm hoping to launch in the next few weeks.
Outside of crafting, I am a mother of two grown daughters, and three young kitties.
I can't wait to post about what I've been doing recently!
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