Farewell to Mr. R, (Jeff Redden) Naramata`s beloved Elementary School Principal is heading across the lake to Trout Creek School in Summerland. These wine glasses were custom ordered for him as a parting gift. They have 4 Naramata Scenes, Naramata Elementary School, Maypole dancers at Manitou Park, the Little Tunnel looking down on Naramata and a Vineyard/Orchard scene typical of our beautiful surroundings. The scenes fit into the top part of the R on each glass. I love to engrave these special gifts as they are so meaningful to the person who receives them as well as the people who give them. Cheers and all the best Mr. R.!

This is another little perfume bottle. It is faceted and has beautiful colors enveloping it when the light catches it. It is engraved with a lotus, coyfish and little dragonflys all around. The images reflect all around it. It was a craft faire item. I love little perfume bottles, they are very collectible and you can put whatever scent you like in them. I like to use essential oils mixed with a little distilled water for my scents.

This is a faceted paperweight I call "Wise Woman", it also multiplies the image and reflect and refracts the light beautifully. Paperweights are very collectible items as well and this was also a craft faire item. I sold almost all of my inventory and hope to have even more next year if all goes well.

Happy New Year!!! I hope everyone has a healthy, happy, prosperous and interesting New Year this 2012. This is a paperweight which I love because I love bees and what they do. They are so important in my big herb and vegetable gardens, without bees we wouldn`t live very long on this planet. I make a herbal healing skin salve which is a very powerful natural anti-inflammatory, antiseptic,anti-fungal and anti-bacterial. It immediately takes the anger, itch and swelling from wounds. It is for itches,scratches, bites and rashes, burns, cuts and bruising. The bees are important to all the herbs grown for the salve and also there is beeswax in it which contains propolis which is a natural antiseptic and is very healing in itself. I`ve been making this salve for over 20 years and all who use it always come for more. I make bigger and bigger batches every year. It is so rewarding to grow herbs myself and make this good for everything salve. It has helped many people with stubborn rashes and angry wounds and impossible bites and even eczema problems. It will take the anger right out of a wound and ease the pain and itch immediately whilst it safely heals. We must all stop using pesticides as they are killing these beautiful and very important creatures and ruining the very balance of nature.

This is a very delicate blown glass perfume bottle. I lightly engraved with a stone wheel a sprig of cherry blossoms onto it. The bottle itself is very beautiful so I kept the engraving very simple. It was a craft faire item also.

Grape Illusions is what I call these crystal candlesticks that I engraved for the craft fair, they sold quite fast. I only engraved one bunch of grapes on the bottom of each candlestick and the reflections repeated all over the candle sticks creating an illusion that the grapes were engraved all around them. It was a neat effect that I really loved. And so did my customer. The image would appear and disappear as you moved around the candlesticks. I did get a good idea of what people really liked at this years craft faire and I will engrave accordingly for the next one.

Annelise Simonsen is the artist who did the drawing for this custom glass panel. Her Mother Cindy Simonsen brought the outline of the turtles and coral to me to bring to life as an engraved glass panel. She felt the turtles represented her children moving away from home and moving forward in their lives. The turtles and background were brought to life using stone and diamond wheels and burrs. It gives the work a 3 dimensional look. The little fishes and bubbles were added to give the work some movement and bring it to life. Personally this panel also represented me moving forward with my engraving. At the time I received the commission I was very busy with a full time job and really didn`t think I would have the time. My engraving at the time was sitting on the back burner of my life. Cindy`s patience allowed me to finish it in my own time and it was very rewarding when it was finally done because she loved the final result. It then gave me the spark again to get back to my engraving even though I was busy with a full time job. I then moved forward to get my craft-membership at the Guild. This piece I have up on the guild site www.gge.org.uk (gallery of members) as my personal symbol of moving forward and is a very special one to me. I ran into Cindy at the recent craft fair and it reminded me to bring this up on the blog and talk about the special work that it is. Thank-you Annelise and Cindy for helping me to move forward in my engraving life. This is the reward of these special works. Out with the old.... I will be adding in the next while some of my older works and talk about them a little. I had an older website which was really a gallery of my older works. I started the blog so I could keep things current and work it myself. When someone else does a website for you it is not useful unless you can update it often, which wasn`t the case for me. It was a good one though, but just stayed dormant for too long. We must always move forward for success in our lives.

The Craft Faire was a wild success! Many people attended on a beautiful day! There was a great deal of interest in glass engraving, many people have never seen it in this part of the world. I believe my success was also due to the fact that I have had a lot of recent exposure on the www.mynaramata.com website which I advertise on. The Editor Craig O. Henderson has also written a fabulous new book on Naramata which has recently been published, called Naramata Chronicles. He wrote a 4 page feature on my work. If you`d like to know more about the book: www.NaramataBound.com