**Where Blogger's Create II**

Welcome to "Where Blogger's Create II" hosted by Karen at My Desert Cottage. I have been so excited about this for so long. I'm so glad we're finally here.

So without further ado, here we go...

I am pretty new to blogging as well as jewelry designing, so I am so excited to participate in "Where Blogger's Create II".

I started my jewelry design company in September of 2009, 1 year after I almost lost my husband of 16 years to a ruptured brain aneurysm. Over the years I had stuffed away all of my creative dreams to raise a family and then to take care of my husband. But once he was well, the whole experience made me think that, like the saying goes, life is too short, so I decided to follow the advice and start creating jewelry, an art I had been interested in for years. 

I come from many years of retail and visual merchandising, mostly in home decor and antiques, and I love using beautifully worn objects and vintage pieces in my home as well as my jewelry design.

Many of my jewelry designs incorporate vintage elements as well as new, so each piece tells a story of years past blending old and new to make a beautiful one-of-a-kind piece. 

Most of my jewelry is designed using a wire wrapping technique, although this can be time consuming, I really enjoy the artisan quality of the piece once it's finished.

Along with my necklace, bracelet, and earring designs, I also design soldered glass pendants. By no means are my soldered pendants made to look smooth or perfect, I like the piece to look rough and worn, I think it adds to the vintage look of the design and really finishes the piece off.

Here are a few of my jewelry designs:

Group of necklaces with soldered pendants.

"Vintage Mary"

bracelet.

 "The Cross" with "Matte Baroque".

"Jadite Green" earrings.

"American Princess" necklace.

My work area, where I design my treasures.

My "Royal Monogram" Pendants ~ Waiting to be soldered.

Another area of my work room.

As of now, I am selling my jewelry exclusively on the internet at Alabaster Rose Designs Boutique, but I am planning on doing shows around Southern California starting this August. I have a few people who have shown an interest in selling my jewelry in their stores as well. The opportunities are endless! I love the possibilities!

Please check out my online boutique for the entire Alabaster Rose Designs collection.

Alabaster Rose Designs Boutique

or you can e-mail me at:

Alabasterrosedesigns@yahoo.com

I hope you all enjoyed the tour of my Jewelry Design business, thank you all for stopping by. And thank you to Karen at My Desert Cottage for hosting this wonderful opportunity!

Please go to My Desert Cottage to view all of the talented women for "Where Blogger's Create II".

Sincerely,

~Melinda