Mother's Day Gift Idea!

Our Tree of Life Jewelry is a cherished Mother's Day gift! Customized with additional birthstones to symbolize children, crafted out of 100% recycled Harmony Metals and 5% of each sale donated to Jewelers For Children!

Mother's Day is one of our busiest holidays. It's still a couple months away so if you'd like us to create a heart felt, custom gift for your loved one please place your order now. Each piece is made to order by the two of us. Please check out our Testimonial Page to see what our customers have said about the orders they've received.

Looking forward to creating a special gift for the amazing Mom in your life!

Turquoise - The Color of 2010!

We are thrilled that Pantone chose Turquoise as the color of 2010! We'll be seeing so much of this vibrant yet soothing color this year in fashion and interior design. We've all had intense winter weather and Turquoise conjures up feelings of peaceful, tropical waters.

Two of our favorite stones to work with are American Turquoise and Gem Chrysocolla. There are many Turquoise deposits in the world occurring with Copper Mining - some of the biggest in China, but we prefer to showcase stones from America. They are rarer and part of the history of our country. Native Americans have revered this stone in their culture. Called "Sky Stone" it has been a symbol of happiness and health utilized in sculpture, pottery, jewelry and ceremony.

Turquoise is available in many different grades. It is typically a soft stone - often treated to harden or enhance color. We seek out Hi-Grade pieces, hardened by Mother Nature with no enhancements or treatments - that is also why you'll see ours set in gold. When the stone itself is rare due to its grade it deserves to be set in gold. Most turquoise settings are Sterling Silver.

If you are thinking of investing in a quality piece of Turquoise Jewelry we urge you to check out this publication Turquoise Unearthed. It covers everything from the history of the stone, to educated purchasing, and descriptions of all the domestic mines and their characteristics. We bring this book to every show we attend as an educational tool.

Nurses Week Gift Idea

Every year from May 6 (National Nurses Day) through May 12th (the birthday of Florence Nightingale) we celebrate men and women in nursing. Celebrations are held across the country in appreciation. We would like the opportunity to make a custom Tree of Life Jewelry piece for the special nurse in your life.

Nurses Week is a only a couple months away so if you're looking for a meaningful semi-custom gift please place your order now. http://www.blackmountainjewelry.com/

Southwest Arts Festival, Indio, CA

We've had quite the adventure this last week - escaping the snow at home and driving to Indio, CA for the Southwest Arts Festival. It was an experience being at sea level and seeing the beautiful snow capped 10,000' mountains ringing the valley. The show itself had some of the most talented artists in the US. There were lots of fine jewelry artists too - amazing work. Once again we were blessed with great neighbors and made some new friends.

Our morning commute to the show. Surreal. Dessert, palm trees and snow.

Our one neighbor Jack Charney. Jack's not only a ceramic artist but also a writer. His pottery is vibrant, colorful and free-spirited just like him. Please check out his website for more info and his show schedule. www.jackcharney.com

Jack's Acrobats are really cool!

I was really drawn to Melissa Graves Brown's paintings of trees and groves. Colorful Aspen trees reminded me of home in the fall. I hope we cross paths again in the future, I would love to purchase one of her pieces. Please check out her website www.melissagravesbrown.com

Kent Kraus and his partner Susan were directly across from us. New friends from Santa Fe, NM. :) Kent's ceramic sculptures and fountains are flowing, organic, abstract floral designs. I was coveting his bronze finish Calla Lilly Candlesticks. Please check out his website at www.kentkrausstudio.com

It felt so good to get back to Mark's Sister's home after the show. Sam was really happy too because he could play again with his new friend Riley. All three of us are relaxing and enjoying being here - not looking forward to going back to our snowy frozen home.

Gifts of Grapefruit, Tangelos, Tangerines and lemons from Kath's yard. Taking them back to our neighbors that have been looking out for us while we've been gone. I'm used to picking tomatoes and other veggies, growing up in NJ but it's really cool to go into the back yard and pick buckets of citrus fruit off the trees. They're so sweet and delicious too!

So that's it. Don't want to leave but can't wait to get back home and work in the studio again. It was a great trip and an experience from the snow storm before we left, to the show and the relaxing times with Family in Phoenix.

Alpine, AZ January 2010 Blizzard - What An Experience!

Constant shoveling. Our truck is about 7-8'. You can see how high the snow is where we shoveled it. Over the week we had about 6 feet or more of snow fall. I'm interested to find out exactly what we had when I get home!!

We've had quite the week in Alpine, AZ! The waves of storms from the Pacific started dropping snow last Monday with the worst Thursday and Friday. We lost our power 9pm Thursday night and it wasn't restored until 11pm last night. We didn't know when it would be back on so decided to leave yesterday morning - also before any more storms rolled in. We are all so lucky to live in this country. We learned first hand what it's like to live without electricity or water supply. We have a great wood burning stove but it's small and you need to stoke it every 1/2 hour to keep it going. So our pipes or we wouldn't freeze, we had it going 24/7 until we left. I wanted Mark to be in good shoveling shape (since we were doing it every 2 hours to keep our driveway clear to get out to our upcoming show - I helped but he was the real muscle moving tons) so I manned the fire. For three nights I set a kitchen timer for every 30 minutes so I would wake up to stoke it then he'd take over at 4am. Also interesting to get on the schedule of do everything you can while there's daylight - then we only had candlelight. It was a very serious storm and luckily rare. There were some really nice moments of quiet and I did make some killer baked potatoes,beanie weenies and grilled cheese sandwiches on our wood burning stove :) but mostly hard WET work! I'm so glad we were able to get customer's orders in the mail before this immobilized us!

We got plowed the first couple storms but had to wait until the end of Saturday for our road to be cleared. You can see the road - that's over 2 ft there - impassable even with our 4 wheel drive and high clearance. We were truly cut off and on our own - even emergency respose vehicles couldn't get through it.

One of our local birds laughing at us, sitting on the broom we've destroyed by brushing off the truck.

Sam got REALLY tired of it too.

We initially planned on keeping our U-Shaped driveway clear - lofty ambition. We settled for just one side of the driveway. That was enough.

That snow pile from shoveling is OVER Mark's head!

Our road before plowing.

Our home as we left it. Those are actual snow boulders out front from the plowing. Some were the size of a small car.

Driving out our road yesterday. As soon as we got around the corner to connect to the main road which leads to the highway we were driving through 2-3 foot drifts. We were worried we'd even make it to the highway without getting stuck. Too scared, as Mark plowed through it to get pictures. :(

Yay! We made it to the highway - this is our powdered sugar meadow behind our house.

Another meadow picture. Soooo beautiful when you're driving by but unpleasant to be stuck in!

At the Alpine Divide - 8550' - looked like it was going to snow on us again as we were trying to leave.

Pretty cabin on the way out of town near Tal Wi Wi lodge.

FINALLY out of the snow line. In the dessert before getting to Phoenix. Before this went through two more dicey driving conditions - 50m of iced over highway from Springerville to Show Low then about 20m of an only one lane plowed road from Heber to Payson. The plowed snow was piled 12' on each side of the road and pretty scary when tractor trailers were coming at you head on!! (No pictures of that one either - too busy freaking out!)

Right before Phoenix - Four Peaks. The snow is such an amazing site in the dessert.

So here the three of us are - feeling like refugees at Mark's Sister's beautiful home in Phoenix, AZ. It's so wonderful to be warm, be dry, have power, phone, Internet, and get a break before leaving for our show in Indio on Wed. We were going to leave this Wed, spend one night then leave for the show on Thu but this works out so great. We feel like we're at a resort for a couple days!!

The Blizzard of 2010!

We're getting a lot of snow in Alpine right now - possible 3-7 ft more by Saturday morning!! All we can do is ride it out and get ready to leave for our show in Indio, CA 1/29-31. Thank you Mother Nature for hitting us with the storm this week instead of next!

Feeding the birds - yep over my knees in this spot!

Our road yesterday. We DON'T have a road today until the plow truck comes!

Valentine's Day Sale at Black Mountain Jewelry Co!

Happy New Year! Hope this year is getting off to a great start for you and that it's filled with health, happiness and prosperity!!

Hard to think of Valentine's Day already but it's on it's way! We have two holiday sales going right now that we'd like to tell you about.

All semi-custom Tree of Life Jewelry and Sonora Star "Casual Jewelry" 15% off - please use code # VL01. All in stock gold Art Jewelry 25% off - please use code # VD02. This offer lasts until 2/5/10. Just enter the offer code on your web order. http://www.blackmountainjewelry.com/

We can take your order over the phone if you'd prefer to call us - 928-245-9642. Orders placed by 1/29/10 are guaranteed delivery by 2/13/10! (After the 29th we'll contact you to confirm if we can make the deadline and if not give you the option to keep your item on order or cancel.)

We'd also like to offer you Free Shipping if you place your order by 1/27/10. Our website won't apply two discounts when you enter your order - we will manually remove your shipping charges before we process it. If you are thinking about a one of a kind gold piece please place your order by the 27th - that way we can pull your item as "sold" before our show in Indio, CA 1/29-31.

Thank you so much! We appreciate your business and hope 2010 is a fantastic year for you!

January 18-22nd - we are expecting to receive 3 - 7 feet of snow!!! We may have some power outages - up to 15 hours long. If you place an order and you don't receive an automatic order update from us, that is what's going on. As soon as power is restored we'll be in touch and confirm your order. Thanks!