Humble Beginings

Let me start by introducing myself: my name is Cara Rae and I love creating beautiful things. I have always loved art and have been making art my whole life. I love the process of creating it feeds my soul. I feel so lucky to have stumbled upon the world of metalsmithing and Art Jewelry which is where I have fallen in love with jewelry. Actually not all jewelry but art jewelry specifically. I mean I have always liked jewelry and have my fair share of it, but art jewelry is something different it's a piece of jewelry that an artist creates with their heart and soul giving it that something special and when you put it on you feel the difference. I took a metalsmithing class about 4 years ago by mistake as I thought it was something else until the class started then I thought wow this is not what I signed up for but there were so many neat tools around that I thought it reminded me of my Papa's wood workshop, and I thought I would hang around a few classes then drop it. Well, I did hang around for two semesters and loved every minute of it in fact I became the crazy tool lady now owning many of the tools that I saw here on that day. I love working with metal because of its many personalities. It can be soldered, pounded (my favorite) forged, patina'd, folded, etched sawed and cut and I'm sure I am leaving out a few others but you get the idea, it's never ending and there is a whole world of exploring to do out there on it. It's techniques date back to the beginning of time and have continued to grow over the centuries. I love working with such a wonderful material. Sterling Silver is my favorite but I also love copper and it's warmth. Then there's brass Red brass is my preference due to it's lovely gold color that I love to mix in with the others. Mixing metals of what a lovely way to create. So here I want to share my journey with you and discover wonderful world of metal. But please feel free to jump in alo g the way as the journey is only as good as the people you meet along the way!