The Path is Never Straight

I keep saying that I want to challenge myself. And boy...I am challenged. I've been working on fabricating the most complex piece of jewelry I've ever done, and for quite a while, it hated me as much as I hated it. We were not in love at all.

It started a bit like this piece:

But that's part of the problem: it started like the piece in the photo above. Part of the way through, the design turned into something very different, which can sometimes cause difficulties. In this case, I'd already gotten to a point where I was using easy solder. And then I made some changes and found myself a little stuck.

Next it looked like this:

See, when you're soldering silver, you have essentially three choices: hard, medium, and easy solder. (there's an extra-easy, but most people I know never use it).

Essentially all solder flows (becomes liquid) at a lower temperature than sterling silver. Each solder has a bit more alloy in it, and thus flows at a lower temperature rate:

Easy solder: flows at 1325 degrees Fahrenheit
Medium solder: flows at 1360 degrees Fahrenheit

Hard solder: flows at 1450 degrees Fahrenheit
Sterling Silver: flows at 1640 degrees Fahrenheit

Since each solder will melt / flow at a lower temperature than the silver itself, ideally this means you should always be able to flow your solder before you melt your silver! AND it also means that you have three options for complex projects. You start with hard solder, then as you keep adding embellishements or additional joins, you switch to medium, and finally easy. Thus the next step has solder flowing at a lower temperature so you (supposedly) don't unjoin what you already soldered.

Sounds...sound, right?  :)  And it is. The difficulty lies in changing your design, and having already gone up the chain to easy solder for some joins...then when you have to join something else to your piece, you run a very high risk of re-flowing your prior join. And that happened to me several times on this piece. Very, very frustrating!

But it's part of the learning process. And I learned, learned, learned. I did several new things on this piece:

- Soldered big, flat pieces to a the big, wide bar (lots and lots of heat!).

- Soldered tubing to the edges of square wire for the chain (can't let them get crooked; tubing likes to roll around). Tubing and I really don't get along (yet). It tends to have a mind of its own.

- Cut out a matching top from sheet metal for the bottom of my piece (had I planned this initally, it would have been a lot easier to match). But I really, really like the effect:

- Hand set an apatite...when I got to the stone-setting step, I realized that for this design, I'd chosen an apatite. Pretty blue stone, yes, but a 5 on the Mohs scale, and also prone to fracture. So I held my breath all the way through the stone setting proces...but it didn't crack or chip. Hurrah! 

...and this bad boy is ALL hand fabricated. The pendant, the bar chain, the extender, the clasp.  While there are some parts I would do much differently, I am now starting to fall in love with it again...

 Plus, I think I'm starting to get a handle on the finishing / polishing, so I can get the look(s) I want for the metal. You'd have to be a metalsmith to understand how important that is to us geeks...just trust me on this one. It's a happy, happy day in the studio. :)

Sneak Peek

My life is about to change...I have No. Firm. Deadlines. ...at least, for a while.

My last show of the year was December 15th. My last holiday order went out the door December 18th. And I don't have an art festival looming for three full months. Yay! and also...Yikes!

But more on that shortly. Today I want to show you a sneak peak of a VSP - Very Special Project. Someone in the Blue Piranha household *might* be getting a piece of custom, handmade jewelry...and since I'm not keeping secrets from myself, that leaves my husband.  :)  His birthday is tomorrow and I am just going to make it under the wire to get this done!

The good thing is that he doesn't read the blog, so I can share the details here:

Curious?

It's a fossil tooth from (what we believe to be) a Mako shark, found while beach combing on Sullivan's Island, S.C. Brett and I went on a vacation to Charleston in late September, and one of our outings was to Morris Island - which I highly recommend if you're the beach comber type and also like a little history. The captain of the boat / beach hunting tour is FANTASTIC. Lots of history of and around Charleston and the island(s), shared in a fun, completely un-dull manner. If you're interested, here's the link:

Adventure Harbor Tours

Anyhoo, we found some teeth during our hunt, and this was the largest / nicest of the bunch. Brett has been wanting a Blue Piranha necklace for some time now, so I thought I'd surprise him and set the tooth. It's also a learning experience for me, since everything I've set has been flat-backed and mostly symmetrical with soft corners...uneven height, asymmetrical shape, and sharp corners all make a bezel set more difficult. I did say that I wanted to push myself, so this will be interesting!

Here it is without the setting:

It's just about an inch and a quarter long. Pretty cool, huh? Okay...some of you might find it weird. But my husband is still a little boy at heart, and I'm the girl who wanted to grow up and be an archaeologist, so we're both fascinated by this kind of stuff.  :)

So far the bezel-making went well. It took quite a bit of sanding to get it to fit onto the back plate, but it soldered up nicely and now I'm ready to start getting creative with the mosaic pieces. I think I've done the easy parts so far...the actual stone setting will be a challenge.

Stay tuned...

A Backward Glance (and a New Idea)

Back in the summer of 2010, when I was really starting to use the torch on a semi-regular basis, I set myself a goal: learn to solder small jump rings. I had fount it relatively easy to solder larger pieces and thicker jump rings, but most of my "joining" rings were 18 gauge silver and I melted nearly as many as I soldered. Or I ended up with a big solder blob and would have to sand it off later (trust me, soldering blobs off of eentsy rings is not a fun job. There's no room to hold anything and you end up sanding your fingers half of the time).

For reference, 18 gauge is about 1mm thick. 1 MM, not 1 cm. It's pretty darned small. A stack of 18 gauge jump rings should give you a good visual:

So I started trying to solder them closed..I .must have soldered a hundred or so. And I still wasn't very consistent. So I decided to give myself a break and jump up to 16 gauge rings instead. 16 gauge is only one size larger but it makes a difference (or at least, it did for me). I had some scraps of wire lying around, and I laid them out with the jump rings in different patterns to see what would happen (at this point in my soldering skill set *I* was not in control of what would happen, so I spent a lot of time "winging it").

And after a lot of putting shapes together, taking them apart, and moving them around, I ended up with this:

and this:

 

They had this sort of watery, cascading effect, and in fact, that's what they ended up being called: the Cascade series. I went to my casting company and had the designs (nine in all) cast for me. And thus began a whole new problem...clean up. Cleaning up these castings was a long, tedious, drawn-out affair. And I was relatively new to cleaning up castings, so I didn't know what I was doing, so they were just a mess for me. They turned out all right, and sold moderately well, but I learned a big lesson from the experience. I haven't made anything like them since.  :)

But now it's late 2012!  I've been at the fabrication process pretty steadily for almost three years, instead of eight months, and I receive a request for a custom order: a big circular necklace based on one of the Cascade designs. I received the request around the 8th of December, and I hesitated. Busiest time of the year, and a custom order for something that had caused me a lot of grief in the past...I wasn't sure I wanted to tackle it. I well remembered the days (yes, days) spent moving little bits of sterling around to create a balanced design with the original pieces. I wasn't sure if I could actually make the piece work in the time allotted (holiday shipping and all). But I went ahead and accepted the offer. And you know what? It was...well, not easy...but much easier than the original pieces had been - both the design and the fabrication work. And the clean up was quicker! (though that might have been because I only cleaned up one piece this time...doing twenty in a row might have made me think it was just as bad as before). 

I really am thrilled at how the finished piece turned out, and it's given me a design idea as well (I'll share more about that later):

It's circular yet the inside is asymmetrical, and I feel like the dots add a bit more "oomph" to the overall design. There's no bail to connect it to a chain or anything, because the customer will supply her own, so I only had to make the pendant itself.  It's fabricated with thicker wire than my original designs because of the size, and I'm telling you - bigger is better. It's a bit under two inches across, has a nice heft to it.

And it's nice to see some real progression in my work - almost everything I'm doing right now is coming pretty easily to me, which tells me it's time to tackle some new projects, some more advanced techniques, and some more intricate designs. I'm ready for a whole new year to learn, grow, and improve my skills.  :)

Upward. Always.

A little over a year ago, I was at a small local show. I'd just finished setting up the booth, and was giving it a once-over. I wasn't very happy. I felt ashamed of my work. I know I go on all the time about, "Begin where you are" and I talk about the process, but I am an impatient soul. I wanted to BE there already. I felt like my current work didn't represent who I was, or who I was becoming. And I wasn't sure I'd GET to who I was wanting to become. What if I couldn't "do" it? Good design, sale-able design, is not easy. I always want my first design to be *brilliant*...and like most processes, it takes several iterations before any "brilliance" shows through.  :)

So there I was, feeling down on myself. Remember how I've talked and talked about the life of a creative? This was a trough. Eventually, I started chatting with the man in the booth across from me, who was also selling jewelry. Most of our discussion was casual, immemorable, but he said something that stuck with me. "Don't go backwards. Look up. Look forward. Always."

At the time, I felt frustrated by this advice. Looking forward was like staring into an abyss! Nothing was working. I wasn't creating what I wanted to create, and I was unsure that I could create anything worth the effort.

Well, eighteen months or so, lots of hair-pulling, teeth-gnashing, and sailor-like language later, and I might be getting there. I realized this week that my "cold work" table, where I do things like wrap beads, make wire shapes, and do other non-torch-related work, has been very neglected lately. Why? Because I am creating at the other table. The fabrication table. Where I do the metal work with the torch. And I've started to shift from colored stones being the focus of my designs, to being accents. Which means that the metal work is slowly coming to the forefront.

 turquoise

I've mentioned in an earlier post that when I went to Sedona for a festival a few weeks ago, I felt like  my work was too small. And I think that subconsciously, that's been an issue for me for some time now. I've always worn the largest-scaled of my own designs. And most other jewelry I own is not for the shy or subtle. So why haven't I pursued that in my own creations?

 green aventurine

Several factors, I guess, the biggest one being fear. Fear of putting too much materials cost and labor into something that might not sell. Fear of taking a big risk and losing. But you know...the way *I* shop is kind of pricey. I don't shop often, but when I do, I'm not a cheap date.  :)   I buy big, and big costs more. But I don't mind paying more because I like a statement bag. Shoe. Bracelet. You get the drift.

So I decided to take a design leap and create a design that is physically larger and more statement-y than my normal work. I started sketching a necklace which would be three pieces, separate to one another but related in their design elements. I went through my stone stash for the right sizes (note for next year's buying trip: more smaller stones!) and found three that would complement each other. And then I got to work with the torch.

I hand fabricated even the chain - in fact, everything but the clasp - and made a custom tag for the back. I used over an ounce of sterling silver in the construction of this necklace and you can feel the weight.

Peruvian blue opal

The photo above shows how thick the sterling silver border is. It's hard to see in most of the photos (best seen in the first two shots) but I cut the insides out to leave some open space, and then added additional wire and sheet elements to frame the stones. 

Here's the whole piece:

The back plate is heavily oxidized for contrast against the shiny wire and sheet metal elements, and the stones really jump out, especially that gorgeous opal. The green aventurine has the softest color, so I added more silver around it to brighten things up.

It feels good. It looks good on. The day I test-wore it, it definitely got noticed. And I learned so much while making this piece. While not everything I design will be this substantial, I think I'm addicted to making some larger designs. I'm looking, and moving, and creating, forward. Upward. Always.  :)

They're Back! And They're Great!

My samples came back from the casting company this weekend. I was a little afraid to open the box because I was so worried that they didn't come out the way I wanted them to...but all is good. They look fabulous! Even the back textures came out really well. I'm so, so pleased.  :)

I'm shipping the additional pieces off today and hoping to have them back by early next week. My next festival is the first weekend of October and it would be great to have the new pieces on show there. I had showed a couple of the samples to customers at my most recent festival and they're excited to see the finished products. 

I'd also stopped designing the rest of the collection because I needed to know what, if anything, had to be tweaked when the samples came back. Fortunately so far, it looks like no real tweaks are necessary, so I can move ahead with the additional designs. The rest of this week I'm on vacation, but I'll be working on those extra designs next week.

In the meantime, here are the designs I've made:

I'm pressed for time today so I didn't edit these at all, but you can see the difference in this piece from my earlier I Am the Bomb post. This is now cleaned up and polished.


This design is both a pendant and (hopefully) a bracelet link. I'll cut off the extra jump ring to make it a pendant, and I'm estimating that it will take three of these (plus the in-between links) to make a bracelet.

And I showed you the oval earring earlier too. Here's the cleaned up version:

It's still hard to see the satin finish in these in the photos. Probably if I'd edited them...but this is a short work week for me so I'm being as efficient as possible.  :)

I still have to design an earring that will go with the rectangular necklace / bracelet piece - I tried once but it ended up in the scrap jar. And I want to make a nugget-y sort of piece that will serve as a single pendant or a multi-piece necklace. In the meantime, I'm sending these out today to have molds made:

Please note that this piece above and the three below were photographed when they were still unfinished (not cleaned up or polished) but you get the idea. I think this will serve nicely as a smaller pendant and earring (same piece for both).

I've also made a mate to the oval earring:

Which I'm quite excited about. I love that it's oval horizontally rather than vertically but it will still work with the earrings.  :)

And you saw this already:

But it has a mate as well:

Probably the matchiest set in the collection, but  the pendant came out so nicely (and is the most symmetrical piece I've made, which is unusual for me. So I convinced myself that it was okay to do something more matchy.

But these nearly killed me. It's really difficult to put these mosaic bits into a circular shape. And the earring piece was so unforgiving that I struggled with getting the pieces to fit - there was so little room within the circle to make them work! I almost re-thought these, because they definitely made for some frustrating moments. But now that they're done I really like the end result (and am glad I don't have to make them over and over again).   :)

Getting the collection to this point took longer than I'd have liked, and with having to allow for molding, casting, and cleanup time, I'm not sure they'll all be ready for early October. But it took time because I struggled at first with how to use the mosaic bits without a center stone as the focal point (story of my life! I love to design around gemstones; designing *just* in metal is harder for me). Though some pieces didn't work, some pieces that had to be remade (the oval pieces were trouble and both the earring *and* the necklace prototype had to be entirely re-done), I'm really excited about the end result so far.

I've also got some new stone pieces to share as well, but I don't think I'll get them posted before I head to South Carolina for a few days. Look for them early next week...

Have a wonderful week!

Charoite Revisited

I previously posted about some of my charoite cabs, here. I recently set one of them, and wanted to show you the result, and share the process that led to this design:

Hard-angled stones tend to pose a bigger design challenge for me than rounder ones, so I sat with this one for a while before the idea took hold. I originally was going to set it vertically, with the point facing down (sound familiar?):

and:

but that's sort of my "go to" for teardrop stones, so I wanted this to be a little different. Also the charoite triangle is a scalene (each side is a different length) rather than an isosceles, where two of the three sides are the same length, so it wouldn't really have looked right (at least not to my eye) if I'd set it vertically. 

Charoite comes from Siberia, Russia, and that made me think of rugged mountain country. So I made a mountain-ish backing for the stone. And the stone itself, set sideways, has a slope kind of like a mountain. I didn't want the mountain to be too rugged, since the stone's finish is a soft satiny look, so I added just a few sawn cutouts on the sides:

I gave the overall piece a soft satin finish to complement the stone. The back is softly textured as well:

I like for my jewelry designs to have some meaning, because jewelry is the most personal form of adornment. And I really enjoy writing the descriptions for the stone items. In this case it wasn't just the stone itself but it's host location that influenced the design. Also, charoite is considered quite ugly in its natural state. It's not until it's cut and polished that it becomes this fantastic creation. And that made me think about personal growth, how we go through changes and constant learning in life. So here's the description:

"Through life we all climb our personal mountains. The work of growing emotionally and intellectually is never done; not if we want to keep reaching and striving for our own personal goals. Sometimes it is raw strength that pushes us through and sometimes it's learning to be gentle and receptive. The journey ends when we do; before that it's about moving forward and experiencing everything that life offers us."

Sometimes I think I'm a big cheese-head, but this does reflect how I try to live my own life and so I guess if it's cheesy, I'm okay with that. There are worse things.  :)

So that's the story of this particular design journey. I'll try to post some more in the upcoming weeks as time permits. I can't wait to see where the next design will lead me!

An Evolution

I've posted before about my jewelry fabrication journey, especially as it relates to stone setting. While recently I haven't had as much time as I'd like to hone my skills, I did create a few more pieces and I can see a design evolution.

I posted here about one of my first pendants and the issues I had with creating it. Where at first I found that just cutting out the backplate and getting the bezel solidly soldered down to it was problematic, now both of those steps come much more easily to me. And I've started to add embellishments to my fabrication work:

This is a gorgeous piece of lapis I've had for some time. I like setting teardrop stones "upside down" as my husband says...I don't know why but I like the points downward. Here's another example:

The above photo was a quickie while my girlfriend was wearing her necklace...I had photos of it at home but unfortunately they were lost, so this is all I have.

Next up is a Peruvian opal:

I love the colors in the opal! I have a few more like this and can't wait to play with them. I only added a few extras around the bezel as the stone has a lot going on. And the turquoise briolette picks up the colors perfectly.  :)

One more - which I almost didn't put up for sale. I SO love how this pendant turned out! But I can't possibly keep them all:

Sorry for the crooked shot, but it's the best one for showing the stone face. A phenomenal ocean jasper! Ocean jasper is found only in Madagascar, and can only be accessed at low tide, so I wanted to play with that. I made an asymmetrical back plate and then added only dot embellishments, randomly, to echo the orbs in the stone itself. The back is textured to look like the ocean has tossed it around for eons.

Now that I'm more comfortable adding embellishments, I feel like I'm ready to start adding more! I don't know what that will do to my stone choices - I tend to buy "busy" stones, and I'm not sure a "busy" background will really work with those - but I'm eager to see how the ideas and stones come together.  :)

Waiting on the Work Table

Heading to Arizona tomorrw, but here's a quick glimpse of what's currently on the work table...waiting for settings.

 Sorry again for the quick snap - but left to right: dendrite opal, boulder turquoise (you may remember it from this post, and a lovely piece of larimar.  :)

Bezels and Bezels and...

...more bezels.

Note: I *don't like* to make bezels. It's one of my least favorite parts of the fabrication process. I find the fine silver to be too flimsy, floppy, and delicate-feeling for my hands (and yet also stubbornly resistant to being formed into a bezel at times. Odd, that). Last year I paid someone to make bezels for me, because I figured if I wasn't going to get them made, I'd never get the rest of the process going.

So I got my bezels, and set some cabochons. It was a start! But though this woman has made excellent bezel-making skills, her costs added to the price of my finished work. And she could only deliver every two weeks - totally understandable, but what if I needed some pieces for a show and couldn't coordinate with her? And really, if I can't at least comfortably know how to do the work myself, I'm not truly owning that part of my business, am I?

So this year, while taking a fabrication course at the Spruill Center, I made bezels my focus. For the first four weeks of January, every Thursday morning for three hours, I made bezels. The first Thursday I only made 4 bezels. Can we say, "rusty skill set?" Yikes. But the second Thursday I made 10 bezels. Then I made several small bezels (it's trickier to work small). Then I tried some bezels with corners. Ugh! So, so much more difficult. But they took, in the end.  :)

Below is just a sampling:

And all in all, I made 48 bezels between January and early March. Whew! I can safely say that my skill set is far less rusty. And I've learned so much (for example, stay the hell away from sharp / pointy - cornered stones. There are a few left in my stash that I will be farming out to the lovely bezel-maker extraordinaire, but otherwise it's rounded- / curved-cornered stones for me).

Due to travels this first quarter of the year, I missed several classes, so I only have one left. And it's going to be used for setting stones (I have already set a few, the ones I posted about here) so I can get that skill set up to par a little more as well.  Then I'm taking a quarter off from jewelry classes, both because of time constraints and because I need some practice doing the things I've learned in my own studio for a while. Hopefully I'll rejoin the jewelry school world around June or so.

But for now, as time permits, I'll be bezel-ing and stone-setting away!  Let the fun begin!

Finally, I'm Official

In late February, I went to Arizona for the Fountain Hills Great Fair. And I had a moment that really made me stop and appreciate where I am and what I'm doing. I've had many moments to cherish in my chosen profession, though in recent years it definitely feels like swimming upstream (luxury product in a recessionary climate, anyone?). But I love what I do...so I still get up every day and do it. There are worse things!

But at the Fountain Hills festival, I sold my first stone-set piece of jewelry. And I know that stone setting isn't the holy grail...there are so many more things for me to learn (tube setting, hinges, etc) but....for me, being able to set a stone in metal is pretty much the mountaintop of jewelry making. For so many years I was a "beader", then a "wire worker", and I always felt like that was never  quite good enough for me. I wanted to be a "real" jewelry designer, and by that I mean designing from scratch...jewelry fabrication.

I've been collecting cabs since long before I knew what to do with them, and I just started learning to set them in late 2010. The first few were gifts (or trades - my hairstylist and my massage girl are always happy to trade!), and I started displaying my stone set work in November 2011. So I showed those pieces at two festivals last year, and then at my first festival this year...I sold one. It went home with a fabulous woman who, I believe, will cherish it for years. And as happy as it made her...it made me a million times happier. I climbed the mountain and finally reached the top - and someone stepped up and said, "Yes! I love it!".

So much of our own selves is tied to what we create...it's hard not to take the bad (show rejections, the mistakes, the slow sales days) personally. And I do take them *all* personally, despite my best efforts not to. But I have also learned to savor the good. And this was one of those really, really good moments.

Here's my first stone-set piece that sold:

I couldn't be happier.  :)

What's Been Goin' On

...to paraphrase Marvin Gaye...a lot's been goin' on. I wish I could be more on top of the blog, but it seems that life never gets back to a slow speed anymore. My father has been ill and I've been spending a lot of time traveling to Arizona to visit. It's the kind of illness you typically don't recover from - Stage IV prostate cancer. So I was in AZ (for both work and to visit my folks) for 20 days out of the 29 days we had in February. That doesn't allow much time for blog updates or anything else!

However, I'm home now and have a brief bit of time before I leave again (unbelievably, my March schedule is even crazier than February's was), and I'm so excited about some new work that I wanted to share it with you. Most of my work days (if I'm not at a festival) are spent cleaning up castings and for the *next* festival, but I am pushing myself to still work on creating new stone designs. So here's what's currently on the work table (forgive the down-n-dirty shots):

It's tough to see but this is a lapis lazuli cabochon and the setting I've created for it. The stone isn't set yet because I have to patina the metal and then set the stone (same is true for all the shots here) but I'm almost there. Hopefully this and the others in this post will be done by the end of this week!

Next up, a beautiful ocean jasper:

I promise to post a better photo when this is all done. The setting nearly broke me and you can't really see the beauty of the stone here, but I promise it will all come together.   :)

And finally, a Peruvian opal I picked up on this year's Tucson trip:

I found several of these opals and can't wait to set this and make metal homes for the rest of them. I think they're going to be very well received.  :)

More details hopefully this weekend! Stay tuned...

 

Welcome 2012!

A little eye candy to get you started this year. This is a beautiful piece of mookaite (for more info, go here) that I set recently. Setting stones, for me, is proving as difficult as I expected...maybe it's difficult *because* I expected it to be...but either way it's still a struggle. However I have signed up for another 10-week course at the Spruill Center - starting next week - and I am determined to get better!   :)

I don't think I've ever been so happy to see the back end of any year, as I was to say goodbye to 2011. What a crazy year...and yet it's still with me. I'm behind on everything. That's what happens when you have two surgeries, a slow recovery period, a sick father...among other things. But I'm looking ahead and wanting to make 2012 the best year yet. Here's how:

1. Spend more time / quality time with the people I love. Last year felt so fractured, and  I felt isolated and lonely in many ways. And this year there's a strong possibility I will lose my father. So one of my goals is to figure out how to schedule in more time with the people who are important to me. I started today by meeting two friends for lunch. :)  And I'm taking extra time on all three work trips to Arizona in the next few months, to get in some quality time with Dad.

Here's Dad and me back in November when we visited.  :)

2. Spend my money more consciously. Times are tight, and seem to be continuing that way in the forseeable future. I made cuts last year and the prior year, but this year I need to make even more. And I really need to be on top of my labor and materials costs. I learned so much last year as my skills grew, and now I have to put that knowledge to even better use.

I am changing up the way I spend in my personal life too, looking for more quality over quantity, and (yes, really) buying more practical shoes. I need some work shoes. I tend to get sidetracked by all the fun, pretty footwear I see, and then of course I'm without appropriate footwear for work. I know it sounds like a silly goal but I think it's necessary so I don't get off track. (You can see the shoe evidence here)

3. In tandem with number 2 - grow the business to $XXX. (my secret number). I've got a few ideas in place and honestly I think my secret number is not quite attainable this year...but I figure if I try to set a goal for what's attainable, I'll never exceed it. So I'm going for the unattainable. Wish me luck.  :)

4. Lose 15 pounds by the end of the year. Between my own discipline and the surgery last year, I lost almost 20 pounds. Which leaves 15 more to go. And I figure that the end of the year is a totally reasonable date to achieve it. Hopefully it will be a good bit sooner than that, but just in case...portion control, more exercise, and watching the random snacking should all help get me there. And to those of you who find that number offensive...thank you for telling me so...but I promise you, I'll still be at a very healthy weight with 15 more pounds gone.

5. Have the braces off by the end of the year. I was hoping for March, but a few months ago my orthodontist said "maybe" summer. And now with the surgical complications, I haven't been wearing the rubber bands (I can't get them in). Every day of not wearing them is pushing back when the braces will come off. And I have to do physical therapy on the jaw this year...so I am giving myself a big ol' long window with the braces. And if they AREN'T off by next year, then I guess I'll be all grumpy and depressed THEN. But for now...positivity.  :)

And of course number 6 is to yet *again* try to keep up with the blog.  One of these years it will all come together!

Best wishes for a very happy, prosperous, and safe 2012!