Greetings visitors!!

If you have somehow mysteriously found this blog, welcome to the history of Wicked Stones!

Our Blog story here starts in 2004 - just five years after we first opened our doors for business in 1999.  

In this blog you will find numerous spelling mistakes, quite a few crazy adventures and many pieces of jewelry and crystals from decades gone past.  This is an archive blog of our story as we grew up.

We've grown a lot over the years and you can follow along with us on our new blog by clicking here

Hard to believe, but we've been around for over 20 years now :)

Cheers everyone!!!

Moving to Wordpress

Hi everyone...

I have been noticing that Google is still ranking some of these old blog posts of mine pretty high.. so if you should happen to stumble across something interesting and go "OO I want to read more.." and get sadly disappointing to find the post gone? I do apologize...

After more than a decade, I've decided to make some big changes to our site and blog postings..  So.. without further wait, here's the link to the NEW Wicked Stones Blog site over on wordpress....  Its going to be a while before I have it filled with good readable content as its May right now and I no longer have to be out in the SNOW (bad four letter words after 8 months of it! EW)...

I also am running a secondary blog on my website: here

Of course, you can also stalk our main website by clicking here.

Thanks everyone for all the years of you being on this journey here with us at Blogger.. I may still tinker with it in the future, but for now, pop over to wordpress and we'll save you a cup of java and a big seat to curl up on.

Cheers!

A little heads up

So what has been keeping me busy lately?

Well... last fall we bought a lot of goodies to use in our shop - some of them are not working yet as I'm still looking for a teacher to show me how to silversmith (in our area).. That should give you a hint of what we found last year..

Rob has been busy most of the winter putting together and gathering tools for his side of the business. He's the rock cutter, the polisher and the grinding man. He's been in and out most of the winter working on creating these fabulous Jade free form pieces.. as well as grinding away in our kitchen (can you say EAR PLUGS!?).. it's been a long winter, let me tell you.. but he's getting good at it.

So far, I've managed to keep him away from the pretty fire agates and other sparkling goodies that really need care and time to create something... Well, truth be told, I really want to start playing with those. I wonder if he would notice if I tucked them away and hid them until I was ready..

It seems that I'm always saying this

LOL.. every spring rolls around and every spring brings with it "Boy I have not spent a lot of time blogging!"

Again, another year has gone by.. but I'm hoping (here, I go, saying this again) to spend a bit of time here each week keeping you all up to date on how things are going. Who knows what kind of adventures we have in store for THIS year....

BLACK FRIDAY at Wicked Stones

BLACK FRIDAY at Wicked Stones.

Well, we're back again with our second Black Friday sale...

this year? We're giving you a weekend sale of 25% off everything.

The coupon code is blackfriday and all you have to do is type that into the shopping cart when you place your order (it's handy and tells you your discount right there so you can see it).

Enjoy!!
And yeah, I know.. not a very nice personal blog post... I should get back here more often and fill you all in on our adventures from this past summer..

Early Summer

Wow! It's been interesting weather around here!

Less than 2 weeks ago we had snow! It was crazy! We woke up to the sounds of *shish shish* against the open screens of the windows and this is what you could see out the window!


It's kind of odd because now? There is a drought in our area and it has not rained (or snowed - LOL) since this day.

Well, I'm going to try and be more active here on my Blogs this summer. I have to admit, I've been lured into Facebook FAR too much and it's been using up most of my free time. Time when I could have been writing here sharing adventures and keeping you all posted in the neat things going on around the shop.

With that said, Wicked Stones also has a Facebook page you can check out. You can use this link if you'd like to become a fan there. :)

Well it's time for me to get the early afternoon going. There is a box of really huge crystals sitting on the kitchen table that I've been itching to work with. I picked them up yesterday and WOW are they fabulous! There is a mix of Brazil and Arkansas clusters that are just oh, my amazing!!

I'm going to try and be a bit more diligent and get some pictures taken so you can see what's been keeping us busy here :)

Have a great day everyone!

Spring! And the Celtic Show

Wow... I can barely believe my eyes right now! It's only the first few days of March and the snow is melting! I spent most of the day carrying displays back from the car into the shed and trodding through the mud (ew)...

I had such a great time yesterday meeting old friends at the Celtic Fair and getting to know new ones. My day was spent beside the creative jewelry designers of Fric and Frak and seeing their very pretty pieces in person. This is a young team of Entrepreneurs from Sudbury who create really amazing pieces. I fell in love with some of their amazing bracelets! Once their website opens up, I'll post a link here so you can learn more about them too.

It was also a lot of fun to meet up with some old Rock Friends who dropped in to say hello. THANKS! You made my day extra special :) I'm looking forward to next year :)

Goodnight everyone!

Celtic Irish Fair - Sudbury Ontario

Hey folks!
We're going to be at the Irish Celtic fair this year with our goodies.. why not drop in and check things out!

Date:	Saturday, March 6, 2010
Time:	12:00pm - 5:00pm
Location:	Navy League Hall - 19 Regent Street Sudbury Ontario

Annual Irish Celtic Fair Irish Dancers, Singers, Bands, Pipers, Food, Vendors, Bake Table & Children’s games with “Entertainer’s Caravan”

Admission – Adults $5.00
Students $1.00
Children under 12 – Free (must be supervised)

Hosted by: Sudbury Irish Arts Association

This is a great day for everyone to get together and enjoy traditional Celtic Irish music, food, dance and experiences.

While you are there you can shop for some amazing Celtic goodies as well as other crafters.

One World One Heart Giveway

CONGRATS to MandaPanda from Australia! She has won the Crystal Heart pendant... :)

WHOOT WHOOT!!!!

Now for prize number two.. that one is a secret!!!! I'm going to whisk that one off to E.J. Stevens. But I will post a photo once the giftie arrives at its new home.

Thank you everyone who left wonderful comments and kind words!!

***********************************************************
This is my first year with the One World One Heart Giveaway .. so I decided to search my studio to find something very special.

Nestled in a safe place.. this little gem has been tucked away for some time...

It's been winking at me and sparkling in the sunlight.. letting me know that its ready to begin a new journey and look for a special place to travel to.

Perhaps it will travel to your mail box? Or be a gift to someone that is close to "your" heart".

To enter and be eligible to win you must:

1) be a blogger
2) leave a comment - make sure I have a way to contact you if you win. If your blogging profile doesn't link back to your blog, then please leave an email address
3) make your entry on or before Feb. 14th

This wonderful event ends on Feb 15th and I will be contacting the lucky winner on that day!

Be sure to check out all the other blogs participating by clicking on the One World One Heart :)

Here's a wee PS! (I am SO delighted to see so many comments? That I'm going to add a SECRET second gift prize... Tee heee!)... What will it be? Something shiny, no doubt.... (if you could hear me right now through your speakers on your computer? You'd hear giggle giggle.. tee hee!) I will post a few hints as we get closer to the draw date...

Wicked Stones

Winter blahs

It's been pretty cold over the past month here in the North... not much snow though.

I do have to say that I've been enjoying not having to rush out and shovel the driveway every morning! LOL!

Anways.. I'm just hunkering down to get ready for our next upcoming show. I believe we'll be set up at a local Celtic Fair. I'm still in limbo on the decision as I have to find a helper to lift heavy things as Rob will be away that weekend.

Well, time for another coffee! I hope you are all enjoying your winter season!

Woah!!

Jeeeepers!
I went away and forgot to post to my blog for a few months and something crazy happened! Gosh I do apologize to you, our readers.. if you experienced some crazy Tweets on our blog!

It seems that I was getting random Tweets from others instead of from our twitter account and some of the messages were not exactly family friendly. That's not what I want to see on our blog. We want to keep this nice for everyone to read (and not scary!) Yikes!

Anyways, that aside.. it's a new year (2010 now) and we're glad to still be around. This will be our 11th year anniversary this fall! WOW! I'm still smiling knowing it's been over a decade that our business has been going strong. Thanks to EVERYONE who has been along for our journey and to all you new folks who have just joined in on our adventure!

Last year we didn't get a chance to visit a lot of rock hunting places as our time was pretty tight. We bought a new house a while back and we're still in the planning and building stages of what's going to eventually happen with the potential shop out back. Yikes.. it's taking longer than I expected it to! But we did spend a lot of time hunting in our own mini rock pile that was discovered last spring. I've got some pictures I'll be posting of some of the goodies that we pulled out of an old ice hut that came from a local private quarry (many many years ago).

Stay tuned! I plan on being more active this year!

Black Friday

We're offing 25% off all stock at Wicked Stones for Black Friday.

Pop on over and see if you can find something you like. You'll find some really pretty gemstone jewelry, wire wrapped crystals and healing stones... some stunning New Age Pewter and Sterling pendants... gemstones for your pet and sooo many other goodies.

My favorite Chakra pendant

This one is my favorite Chakra pendant...

It's the one that I'm wearing right now.. :-)

It's a Root Chakra.. (I've been needing a bit of grounding energy as I've been all over the board these days and getting run down).

New hand made Chakra Jewelry

I'm so happy! I've finally been able to upload the new hand made Chakra jewelry that I created this summer. I just love these pieces! I've added sterling silver Chakra charms to these amazing gems! I'm considering selling sets of them (7 per set) as I have a few that I wear myself and they really do feel just divine. I thought I'd share :-)

A way to stop Ants

Ak!

I may have written a while back about the ant problem we've been having in our new home. It's been a battle all summer long trying to get them away from the house. A few weeks ago when Rob was taking the concrete tiles from the front of the house (he's building a proper stone walkway) we found this HUGE nest right against the foundation.

Well! After a summer of lemon juice and cucumber peels on my counter (that actually worked by the way) I said ENOUGH and had him spray some serious poison into the nest.

The ants went away for a while (or so it seemed). Yesterday I was outside having an afternoon cup of Java on the front porch... and what did I see? Those pesky ants on my block foundation again! A few months ago it was suggested to me by one of my neighbors, that I try using Chalk. Apparently if you use chalk (just regular old sidewalk chalk), the ants wont cross the line. (I don't use poisons by the way and Rob is not available, so I thought I'd give it another whirl).

I was AMAZED! I ran a chalk line to test and the ants would not cross! Here's a photo just so you can really see it for yourself. The ants just walk around all confused and wont cross the chalk line!

Now they don't stop the ants from "eventually" getting to their nest but they do slow down the process quite a bit. There is no way that I can go all the way around my brick house every day putting hop scotch lines everywhere. There is, of course, the issue of the ants that are in the nest trying to get out.

For the moment, I feel vindicated just slowing the little buggers down.

I thought this might help someone else with an ant problem.

Blah! Blown up Rock Tumbler

ARGGGGGGGG......

I just checked one of our rock tumblers in the shop out back... arg arg arg... we've got an old Thumblers Tumbler that we usually use for tumbling rough rocks (when the other tumblers are full).. yesterday I noticed that it was leaking a bit from the sides where the rubber ring sits.. which at that point was nothing new.

But this morning?

The lid has this HUGE hold in the center with the edges torn open. Almost as if something blew up inside the tumbler barrel itself and left a huge 1 inch gap in the center of the lid. It's odd because there is nothing that this part of the tumbler touches.

Arg.. inside this tumbler was a wonderful batch of white Quartz (from our area - Nepewassi Lake). So it's going to be sitting and waiting for some time until the other tumblers are free.

On the good side of things? It looks as if my rain barrels are going to get filled as its starting to cloud over. Our gardens will like that.

Found a cave on our property.. neat rocks

Oh shoot! I forgot to mention this yesterday when I was writing.

When Rob and I were clearing some of the yard? We found something really neat nestled in the side of a small hill on the eastern corner of the property. It was buried until a pile of busted wood, branches and piles and piles of old leaves.... but... after some careful removal? We found the opening of something really interesting!

A cave! Or at least something "like" a cave! There was snow in the hole around the opening just before Rob left to go back to work out of town, so I promised that I would not go poking around there without him home. We're not sure if there is a hole in front of the cave/hole opening or not since it's still all covered with "stuff".

But I did manage to get a few pictures! There are some really neat pink rocks that are filled with Garnets and Mica just outside of the hole that were buried under the grass. The rock in the photograph shows how weathered it is, but the pink is shining through. When I peeked inside of the tiny opening that is not covered with fallen stuff? I could see more pink rock with sparkling quartz and mica. It looks as if the hole might have been blocked off and it might not go any deeper into the side of the hill, but I wont know for another week (oh the waiting is awful!)..

I'll keep you posted with pictures once I get to investigate more.

Wicked Stones on Twitter - Something free maybe?

Good morning all!

I thought I'd post this link to our Wicked Stones Twitter Page. Recently I've started using Twitter and it's kind of fun to post quick updates on what's going on in our workshop, studio and even the occasional ramblings of a caffeine deprived woman (LOL!).

I think I might be posting something kind of cool there by the end of the week (May 1)... something... interesting... something that's simply MAD and crazy involving free things from our website...

Check it out if you'd like.

Inukshuk tuturial gone missing

For anyone who has been bouncing back to our Blog to view the free tutorial on how to make your own gemstone Inukshuk? I do apologize..

Rob (my partner) had a chat with me on his last trip home and asked me to remove the link to the page. He has some new ideas he wants to try out and wanted to use some of the stones that he'd previously used for the Inukshuks. It's been interesting, watching him boil the gemstones in a vat in the Rock Lab and turn these little statues into something else. (Yes, you read that right, he's boiling stones and not for "stone soup". :-)

E600 is a very strong glue and even with the boiling? It's still going to take some serious grinding to get some of the residue off the gemstones before he can move forward.

He's bought himself a grinder and he's been learning how to make some really pretty cabs and sculpted gemstone pieces.

So what's next?

I'm trying to twist his arm to let me pick out a rock saw and a few other tools.

I'm such a bad influence :-)

Sunshine! At last

Finally! We have sunshine and the snow around the studio is starting to melt away! I can hardly believe that it's almost the end of April and there are still soft blankets of white snow behind our sheds and in the forest out back. 

We started last week to muck the back of the yard out - for anyone wondering? The term "yard" is used loosely! *I'm laughing away here*.. A rake just does not do the trick and heavy equipment should be used in this case. 

There is an area several hundred feet square that we're cleaning right now and it's full of old branches, leaves, grass clippings and other "mysterious" items we keep finding in the pile. Our neighbor came over and told us about a huge fire that the second previous owner had in the pile.. so really, I'm not looking forward to what's at the bottom! 

But it's something we need to do as this area is simply beautiful! It's gorgeous sweeping rocks covered in green soft moss surrounded by pines, birches and cedars. It amazes me that no one (until now) has seen the potential beauty hiding just behind the sheds. 

Beyond that? Is a massive gravel pit that has been long since dug out and all that is left is huge massive boulders rising out of the trees.. We've been trying to get this done quickly as the black flies and mosquitoes are soon to be out.. plus all those other stinging bugs! 

I've been working hard to get things ready for this years outdoor festival that I just LOVE LOVE LOVE doing! Haweater is coming up in just a few short months and with that? Means a lot of new goodies. Down to business for a bit, I've added a link to one of the pages on our website that has some beautiful Celtic and Pagan gemstone and sterling silver jewelry. 

 I've finally found a pretty good source for the Sterling and am able to get some of the goodies done that I've been dreaming of making. Well, I guess I'm going to publish this and get back to work. It has simply been ages that I've been writing here and I miss doing it. Here's hoping that the new found sunshine and miles of forest don't keep me away for too long.