Red-Tail Designs

Channel 69 Reporter Melanie Falcon shows off the horse hair bracelet she made with me on live TV this week.

As a journalism major, I dabbled in all areas of media to see what worked for me. One semester of Havenscope, our university TV show, made me realize broadcast journalism wasn’t for me. This week, I finally got to put to work those few skills I learned from Havenscope when I appeared on Channel 69′s Sunrise news show talking about my horse hair jewelry. I had a great time with reporter Melanie Falcon, as we did three live segments in which we demonstrate the steps to creating a singular piece of jewelry.

If you didn’t get to see the program you can check it out here.

Melanie was a whiz creating jewelry on the fly and she headed out of our TV segment with a horse hair bracelet with beads. I’m teaching that class this weekend, February 4, at the Museum of Indian Culture. Melanie and I had a fun time working together and the live TV aspect wasn’t as stressful as I imagined it would be.

Response due to the television exposure was so great that I scheduled a second horse hair jewelry class for tomorrow afternoon. The power of television is immense! I can’t believe how many folks saw the segments.

Hanging out at the Museum of Indian Culture with Melanie Falcon between TV segments. The war shirt in the background has horse hair locks hanging off the sleeves.

We’ll likely run the class again in April, so if you didn’t get to make it this time, you’ll have another chance. Email me to put you on the waiting list and I’ll let you know when the next class will run.

My kids got a kick out of watching me on TV. When I got home my son wanted to know if I was going to do this job every week. Sorry, buddy, my TV career isn’t happening anytime soon. I’m happy with my 15 minutes and leaving the rest to Melanie.

This Saturday, July 9, I will be teaching an Adjustable Horse Hair Bracelet class at The Bead Hive in Coopersburg, PA. Horse Hair will be provided at this class or you can bring your own hair. For more details, check out The Bead Hive. You can also register and pay online. See you Saturday!

Today I saw:
A fire breather.

A Renaissance band.

A cooper.

Irish dancers.

Belly dancers. Fencers. Sword swallowers. Lakota dancers. Ukrainian beaders. A flute maker…. the list goes on.

I ate samosa chaat and a kuhs lassi while me mom had a Native American Indian Taco.

And I got to give my favorite flintknapper and fly-rod-maker his new horse hair bracelet.

A medic ID bracelet with horse hair band.

It was all at Artifest, a cultural festival sponsored by the Museum of Indian Culture. You can experience it all again tomorrow (6/12)  at the festival, located at 2825 Fish Hatchery Road in Allentown.

Double wrap leather band watch, password journal and handmade card.

The package containing these gifts arrived in New Hampshire today. I sent them off to my sis-in-law Kris for her birthday, admittedly a little late, but I hope she thinks they’re worth the wait.

Kris commented on a similar watched she liked in a catalog a few months ago. Bingo! Perfect birthday gift! Bingo! Challenge for me to re-create it from scratch. I just love a challenge.

Sometimes my challenges are like a comedy of errors. I go out and buy the supplies I think I need only to get home and realize they’re too big, too small, not the right color. Such was this challenge.

I thought I was on it. I sprinted off to the leather store and found leather strap (already cut!), got a new leather punch (smaller holes!) and a buckle (perfect size for the leather!). Off to another store for the watch face. Not what I was planning exactly, but it looked good. Home to the studio, ready to work.

And I’m off…

Except the buckle is reversed so it curves in and would irritate the wearer’s wrist. I have not idea what this kind of buckle is used for, but I am now the proud owner of one. It will sit in my sewing draw until it finds its calling among my creations.

I didn’t want wait a few days and spend the $10 on shipping to get a $5 buckle. I also didn’t want to drive the 40 miles round trip back to the store to search through all the buckles again (that would cost me $10 in gas!). I refrained from cutting the buckles off my daughter’s perfectly good shoes, though I seriously, seriously considered it. Kris’s daughter would have suffered because she gets all her cousin’s hand-me-downs.

Instead I used my crafty prowess (which I should have consulted in the first place) and traveled the 1.3 miles to the crafter’s mecca of supplies: the thrift store. I bought an old pair of shoes and cut the buckles off to complete the watch.

Whew!

The present also included a card I made during a girls weekend excursion and one of my newer brainchilds (brainchildren?), a password journal (more on that in another post). Happy birthday, Kris!

Black and Silver on Mullein, a photo by Red Tail Designs on Flickr.

I’m so glad the leaf-out has arrived and flowers are blooming. Photography is not my forte and I have an especially difficult time selecting the right background for the item I’m capturing. But incorporate a natural background–a leaf, a flower, a colorful rock– and suddenly the whole picture comes together. Nature seems to give everything a little boost.

Not that this bracelet needed any improvement. It’s bumping along on a mail truck right now on its way to Texas. My customer there is married to her computer 9 to 10 hours a day and she was concerned that beads on the bracelet would bang on the keyboard. Still she wanted a little silver color peeking out. So I incorporated silver chain and it turned out gorgeous.

Just shipped out these and 4 other custom pieces to a family in Florida who wanted to honor their horse. I love the way these Leap Year-style bracelet turned out. The white is the horse’s mane hair and the brown is the tail hair.

This weekend I dropped off a bunch of new items at Out Of Our Hands in Emmaus, PA. The store sells a variety of handmade items, including my jewelry.

Check out the adjustable horse hair bracelets, perfect for a woman or man. I also created some colorful new porcupine quill earrings inspired by my friend Jessica.

While I was there I bought a few handmade items and crossed a few names off my Christmas list.

If you missed Small Business Saturday, it’s not too late! Stop by Out of Our Hands or any shop in your area and buy local, buy handmade for the holidays!

I just sent out four custom pieces, and a few of them were Christmas gifts.

Have you ordered your horse hair jewelry for Christmas or Hanukkah gifts?

Remember, only a few more days to get your horse hair to me to make custom jewelry for that horse lover in your life or even you (you deserve it, right?).

Sneak out to the field and snip a bunch of hair from the underside of the tail as big around as your pinkie, put a rubberband on it and mail it to me at:

Susan Newquist
Red-Tail Designs, LLC
813 Porter St.
Easton, PA 18042

Get it to me by December 1, and I’ll send back a unique holiday gift in time for Christmas.

Keep in mind that all pieces ordered after Nov. 24 will incur a $20 per item rush fee.

Can’t sneak out to the field in the time? Give a gift certificate for any denomination!

The fabric area of my studio complete with brand new bulletin boards. This Ikea shelving and orange boxes are perfect for this area.

My custom bulletin boards are finally hung!

I feel like my studio might almost be done. My husband and I started redecorating our third floor over a year ago with new paint, carpet, shelving…the works. It’s been a very slow process because we did most of it ourselves.

The bulletin boards are at the top of the stairs, so it's like an art gallery as you enter the room.

The chunk of it was done last spring but organization eluded me for a long time and it took a while to find the right shelving. Bulletin boards were my last big push and, of course, I couldn’t just buy cork from Staples. They had to be fancy-pants bulletin boards I made myself from stuff I found here and matching fabrics. I chose three Ikea fabrics and then made a mosaic using those fabrics and some Laura Gunn scraps that Kristen was so gracious to give to me.

And finally they are on the wall.

It’s sad that both my husband and I have grandfathers who were carpenters, yet neither of us can hang a coat rack without worrying it’ll fly off the way and whack us in the forehead.

Luck for us there are people like Chris Fairchild from In Order to Organize.

All my jewerly supplies in one area neatly labeled. I need one more piece of furniture to marry the beading area to the sewing area. Coming soon!

Chris owns a personal organization and personal training business right here in Easton. Not only can he put holes in my 100-year-old walls without worry, he can organize, build, plan and create. Chris organizes any aspect of your home, business or work flow.

In spring, Chris talked me through how I use each section of my studio and what would make the most sense in terms of storage and organization. He helped me decide on shelving, and I plan to have him make shelves for a closet and a wall shelf above my sewing machine.

That’s his other great talent. Chris can design and build custom pieces for your house.

He hung my bulletin boards for me and I am eternally grateful. I assisted him as he figured out the spacing (does holding a level count as assisting?). If I’d hung them they’d be crooked, and I’d have to lie that uneven spacing is art at its best.  Instead he measured and drilled and they look beautiful.

So is my studio finally done? I suppose as done as it’ll ever be. I have a few boxes to unpack and I still can’t find my rotary cutter, but that may just be a casualty of reorganizing.

The kids supplies and crafting area is on the left side of the table. It's not as tidy-looking as I'd like, but it's functional. Once everyone can read, I might transition to more orange storage boxes.

Did you see that word up there in the title?

Holiday.

Really? Already?

Personally I think all the holiday hoopla shouldn’t start until after Halloween. On Nov. 1 you can break out the Christmas carols and stores can heap upon us trees and sparkly ornaments and the like. But until Nov. 1, it’s still fall and pumpkins and trick or treat.

On the other hand, I think about holiday gift giving year-round. I’m always shopping for the perfect gift.

The perfect gift for the horse lover in your life is a custom horse hair bracelet! You send me the horse hair, I wash it and braid it, adding beads and sterling silver, even gold if you like. A piece of your favorite horse with you all the time.

Check the horse hair tab above to check out the different jewelry styles. If you’re not able to sneak into the field and clip a bit of horse tail, I offer gift certificates for purchase in any denomination. You can also order custom jewelry without sending me horse hair and I will use the tails I have in stock. Choose from white, black, brown or any combination of the three.

Creating this jewelry by hand takes time, so keep in mind these deadlines as you contemplate which horse hair jewelry piece to buy for a friend or put on your wish list.

• Horse hair must be in my hands for the order to be placed. Send your horse hair to me as soon as possible.
• I prefer to have horse hair before November 24 for custom pieces.
• Any horse hair arriving after November 24 will incur a $20 per piece rush fee for Christmas delivery.
• All horse hair must be to me by December 1 to be made into jewelry for Christmas delivery.
• Gift certificates are available any time and do not expire.

Please fill out the custom horse hair jewelry order form and mail it along with your check or money order to:

Susan Newquist

Red-Tail Designs, LLC
813 Porter St.
Easton, PA 18042

If you choose to pay with PayPal, I will invoice you when I receive your order.

Happy Halloween/Happy Thanksgiving/Merry Christmas!