Featured Artist: Giftbearer

Fine Silver Early Budding Vine Bracelet
with Chrysoprase Cabs
$600

Today's featured artist is jewelry designer Pippit Carlington. She developed an interest initially in making art furniture, but there was no facility or classes close to her over 23 years ago. She then started looking for smaller things to make using wood and began experimenting with slabs of pressure-treated pine. She found that the contrasting grain made very pretty jewelry when carved into shapes, and started making only earrings and selling them on the street.

As you can see by her designs, she "branched out" (get it!!) and began learning beadweaving, then metalwork, and began experimenting to come up with new designs combining all these techniques learned along the way.

Inspired by nature, texture, and her surroundings, she states "I see a bug and say to myself, 'Now that would make a neat pendant, or a fancy carved light fixture', and think, 'Now that would be beautiful to make a mold of and use for the surface of a ring!'". You never know what's going to evolve with her!

Hemlock Wreath Reflecting Mountain Stream
Bracelet $125

Her designs are made with setting stones on silver or gold, and most recently she has really been excited about working in copper and in precious metal clay. In some of her lines she also use seedbeads and fiber, and of course she still likes wood as long as it's high-end; not the really cheap OT kind of wood, but the more upscale, particularly exotic woods that are polished or sanded to a very smooth finish such as ebony.

Enjoy browsing her shop, or reading her blogs, and get started on some holiday shopping while you're at it.