Bling.

A while back, my dad was out of work for about 2 1/2 years, which royally sucked. To pass the time and avoid being carted off by the men in white, dad spend a lot of his time doing what we lovingly/loathingly called "hunting for rocks." 

Actually, dad was finding quartz crystals in the creek across the street from our house.

I'm not talking a few crystals, I'm talking hundreds of the damned things. And some of them are quite beautiful. 

Recently dad got a wild hair (funny, he's bald) and decided we need to actually do something with the crystals instead of allowing them to take up space without paying rent (kind of like me, and only I'm allowed to do that). 

Glad to have something to do with dad, since we're both sort of artsy-fartsy but need a lot of badgering to get on with it, I agreed. So now we're making jewelry with them! Of course that means having money to buy all the supplies you need to make decent jewelry, which is actually a significant chunk of change...so it comes in spurts. Last night I glued up some badass crystal pendants. Here they are drying...

I also put caps on some teeth dad found while walking in the woods. Maybe dog, maybe possum, who knows? They're big suckers. And you can see some of many boxes of neatly organized crystals they're sitting on.

Sorry for the crappy photo quality. We had one of those gloomy winter days that didn't provide much light.

If everything goes as planned we'll be opening  shop on Etsy sometime early next year. I just need to decide on a name for our little "business." I've been tossing "LeeLee Jewelry" around, since my middle name is Lee, and his middle name is Lee. Isn't that cute?

In case you're wondering, most of my jewelry findings come from LuLuLaLaLand, one of the most successful supply shops on Etsy. They have a wide range of quality findings for delightfully cheap, with the added bonus of honest shipping rates and friendly service. Do recommend!