Garden Gala Bracelet with blue bead mix and lobster clasp.

This Garden Gala bracelet with blue beads is heading across the country to a customer in California. I love to mix different shades of the same color.  And blue pops on any color horse hair. You can get a bracelet like this made with any color beads.

Garden Gala Bracelet with lobster clasp

Staying on this side of the country, this Garden Gala bracelet is heading right over the border to New Jersey to a returning customer. The classic look of a Garden Gala-style bracelet looks great on men or women.

You can order either of these styles from this site.

Also new, you can follow me on Facebook and Twitter! Find out what I’m working on and new products and classes coming your way.

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.

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!

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!

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!

I’ve added some new items to my Etsy shop and not just any items, but my two favorite pieces I have in stock right now.

First up are these horse hair earrings above. I love the earrings. The hammered bead cone on top of the horse hair and garnet just makes these look so classy. Hopefully I can get some more of these bead cones and add them to most of my horse hair earrings.

Often I use a variety of bead to finish off the earrings, which give the earrings a rustic feel, like those at right. But these shiny hammer sterling tops really kick it up a notch, as Emeril would say, and give it the flash and sophistication needed for a more classic style.

The other reason I love these: the photo actually captures the color of the garnet drops. I really need to invest in an SLR camera and macro lens. Not in the budget today, so I need to figure out the intricacies of my current camera, and I’m not exactly an ace. I snap lots of photos and hope for the best. The stars aligned, or maybe the lighting was just right, when I took that picture.

Next up is this pair of quilled earrings.

I love these because they are my second “break out” piece (I’ll be posting my first break out piece later this week). By break out piece I mean I finally made the craft my own and did my own thing.

Porcupine quillwork is a very old art and much of what is know about it was collected by a Smithsonian scientist in the early 1900s.By the time he talked with quillworkers who’d learned their craft from generations of other quillworkers this technique was falling out of favor among most Native American Indians. There isn’t much information on quillwork, and it makes you wonder how much of craft was lost along the way.

I’m not of Native American descent (at least not that I know of) and had no one to teach me the techniques, so for years I’ve been teaching myself porcupine quillwork by reading books, looking a museum pieces and using classic trial and error. The designs and techniques I’ve done up until recently have been literally by the book, or the way people interpreted the creation of quillwork, so I could learn the techniques. With these earrings I decided to do a different shape with the quills and the leather. An artist was born.

This was reinforced yesterday while listening to a CraftCast podcast interviewing Thomas Mann. Imitation is how we learn, he said, and once you move beyond the imitation you can become your own artist. Mann goes on to explain how imitation as learning manifests itself at craft show where in a certain time period all the work looks similar. (An interesting note for you locals: Thomas Mann embarked on his art-laden path at 8 years old when he began attending the Baum School of Art in Allentown.) The podcast is worth a listen, as are most of Alison Lee’s CraftCast podcasts.

I’ll keep you updated as I add more pieces to my shop in the next few days.

In the meantime, I took a little fieldtrip into my beadbox to make a few gifts for Mother’s Day and birthdays. Here are the results:

Hematite and porcelain bead necklace with…

…matching earrings.

A pair of bead and pearl earrings.

My friend picked out the red porcelain beads and pink cylinders with black polka dots and I made them into earrings for her. Hope she likes them.