Blog

Amsterdam is in full spring bloom! The city fields and roadsides are sprinkled with daffodils and flower stands are overflowing with tulips. Our house is all of a sudden so bright and colourful, with loads of that beautiful crisp, early-year sunshine beaming in and tons of little vases and baskets with flowers scattered about. I love this time of year!

With Easter only a couple of weeks away, we just set up our traditional Easter tree. Normally I get some branches of pussy willow for this purpose, but this year we used the cuttings of our neighbour’s cherry tree that he kindly gave to us. They are blossoming so beautifully!

Amsterdam is in full spring bloom! The city fields and roadsides are sprinkled with daffodils and flower stands are overflowing

Amsterdam is in full spring bloom! The city fields and roadsides are sprinkled with daffodils and flower stands are overflowing with tulips. Our house is all of a sudden so bright and colourful, with loads of that beautiful crisp, early-year sunshine beaming in and tons of little vases and baskets with flowers scattered about. I love this time of year!

With Easter only a couple of weeks away, we just set up our traditional Easter tree. Normally I get some branches of pussy willow for this purpose, but this year we used the cuttings of our neighbour’s cherry tree that he kindly gave to us. They are blossoming so beautifully!

Amsterdam is in full spring bloom! The city fields and roadsides are sprinkled

Amsterdam is in full spring bloom! The city fields and roadsides are sprinkled with daffodils and flower stands are overflowing with tulips. Our house is all of a sudden so bright and colourful, with loads of that beautiful crisp, early-year sunshine beaming in and tons of little vases and baskets with flowers scattered about. I love this time of year!

With Easter only a couple of weeks away, we just set up our traditional Easter tree. Normally I get some branches of pussy willow for this purpose, but this year we used the cuttings of our neighbour’s cherry tree that he kindly gave to us. They are blossoming so beautifully!

Amsterdam is in full spring bloom! The city fields and roadsides are sprinkled

Amsterdam is in full spring bloom! The city fields and roadsides are sprinkled with daffodils and flower stands are overflowing with tulips. Our house is all of a sudden so bright and colourful, with loads of that beautiful crisp, early-year sunshine beaming in and tons of little vases and baskets with flowers scattered about. I love this time of year!

With Easter only a couple of weeks away, we just set up our traditional Easter tree. Normally I get some branches of pussy willow for this purpose, but this year we used the cuttings of our neighbour’s cherry tree that he kindly gave to us. They are blossoming so beautifully!

Amsterdam is in full spring bloom! The city fields and roadsides are sprinkled

Amsterdam is in full spring bloom! The city fields and roadsides are sprinkled with daffodils and flower stands are overflowing with tulips. Our house is all of a sudden so bright and colourful, with loads of that beautiful crisp, early-year sunshine beaming in and tons of little vases and baskets with flowers scattered about. I love this time of year!

With Easter only a couple of weeks away, we just set up our traditional Easter tree. Normally I get some branches of pussy willow for this purpose, but this year we used the cuttings of our neighbour’s cherry tree that he kindly gave to us. They are blossoming so beautifully!

Amsterdam is in full spring bloom! The city fields and roadsides are sprinkled

Gorgeous jewelry blogger Becky Stone has wonderful timing with her story about “the Warrior Woman” in InDesign Jewelry‘s fall edition. As Becky writes, “The Warrior Woman is a power player and she knows it.”

This is my obviously my type of lady: Most of my jewelry designs are inspired by female badasses. Becky selected several pieces of jewelry for her Warrior Woman, including my Empress Matilda sword necklace.

Click for Becky’s original tweet.
I adore her introduction to the Matilda:

“The Warrior Woman is never without her weapons: her wit, her mind, her heart. But given the chance to make things more literal without sacrificing elegance, she can’t resist.”

I wrote a detailed post about the Matilda necklace and matching sword earrings in June.

I’ve been a fan of RuPaul — Nicki Minaj’s real inspiration — since “Supermodel” in 1993. I mean, a song that shouts out my beloved Linda Evangelista? After that, when RuPaul told me, “You better work,” I got to work, dammit.

I was happy that after eight seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race, RuPaul won his first Emmy for Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality-Competition Program statuette. And he won it in style. As Deadline Hollywood reported:

“Earlier this year I was quoted saying I’d rather have an enema than an Emmy,
[RuPaul] said while accepting the trophy. “But thanks to the Television Academy, I can have both!”

A big thank you to Jennifer Heebner from the jewelry trade publication JCK for including me in her post about jewelry inspired by customers. I’ve told the story of “Mud Flap Jill” on the blog before, but that was a long time ago, so click on the photo of the wimmins with the ruby nipples to read the JCK version!

Click here (and scroll down) to see the 18K gold necklace version on Rihanna. Click here to shop. And here is the giant version of Mud Flap Jill that I recently made for another customer.

As you can see, we skipped the ruby nips but added a diamond choker.

The reports of the armed robbery of Kim Kardashian in Paris — with millions of dollars of jewelry stolen — reminded me of advice my late business partner used to give to customers. Always insure your jewelry, she would tell people who were nervous about getting a sizable diamond. If (“God forbid!” she’d exclaim) you’re threatened with physical harm, give up the jewelry without hesitation. Keep yourself safe. File a police report. Then, she’d say, if the jewelry can’t be recovered, “We’ll use the insurance money to make you a bigger and better ring.” Kim might be an exception when it comes to that last step — at least when it comes to engagement-ring diamonds — it’s difficult to go bigger than Kim’s 20-carat Lorraine Schwartz ring and still have the use of one’s hand. Embed from Getty Images However, she could go from a skinny band to something more substantial. But that’s not important right now! No one — including Kim — should spend too much time mourning for jewelry. I

You know what I like about October? Halloween. And you know what I like about Halloween? It gives me an excuse to repost this gif starring my hockey mask and chainsaw earrings. (The gif was created by the fine folks at Spring, the Instagram-like shopping app.) The combination of a hockey mask and a chainsaw has come to be a recognizable reference to movie serial killers, even though it muddles together two different horror flicks. As I wrote in 2014 when I introduced the earrings, the character of Jason Voorhees in the Friday the 13th movies wore a hockey mask but wielded a machete. The chainsaw belongs to Leatherface of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series. Leatherface does wear masks, but his are made of human skin. But the Jason/Leatherface blend of killer accessories dates back at least to 1993, when The Simpsons used it in its “Cape Feare” episode. You can see how the earrings look on here. If you’re not into slasher movies, I’ve got skull jewelry (for every budget) that’s