I don’t know how everyone’s feeling about self isolation, but I’m making the best of it by working at home and enjoying every minute, including this glorious weather. I was looking through my jewelry books the other day, and I found a marketing card that I created for my design “Beads Around the World” about 28 years ago. I’m confident of that timeline because that’s when we moved to Hawaii. My husband, Bill Gwynn was invited by his childhood friend, Sandy Sims to build a Frank Lloyd Wright designed house on the Big Island of Hawaii. Our son, Henry was just born, and so I closed my antique business, packed a bag and left for Hawaii. I was dabbling in jewelry design before we left because I concentrated a large portion of my antique business with vintage, costume jewelry, i.e., repairing broken jewelry and remaking vintage jewelry to sell. Hawaii changed everything for me, I must say that’s an understatement. I started incorporating natural nuts and seeds into my work because there was an abundance of natural products, i.e, kuki nuts, wiliwili seeds, jobs tears, etc. on the islands. This is how “Beads Around the World” design was brought into existence. Using the natural products in Hawaii was a no brainer. But when we moved back to Tallahassee 3 years later, people didn’t appreciate the beauty of Hawaii’s seeds and nuts, so I tweeked the design to make it more marketable here in Tallahassee. I added many gemstones and pearls, but still included Hawaii’s beautiful seeds and nuts. Here’s a display of the “Beads Around the World” inventory. Let me know if there’s a piece that interest you, and I’ll send more information about it. I started the slideshow below with the original card, the “signature” piece or 4 strand, double strand that converts into a single strand, my galaxy design, and two single strands.

Continue to stay safe, and all the best throughout this tough time. Q.

P.S. All my emails are consolidated into one place now. So, If you’re getting this for the first time…you’re now on my list.