Christi Johnstone ~ Sentimental Silver Personalized Jewelry

I often find that people aren’t sure which birthstones match up with which months of the year, so I thought I’d share a little of that information.

The stones that I use in necklaces match up with the following birthstones…

Sentimental Silver Birthstone Color Chart

Sentimental Silver uses Austrian made cubic zirconias, lab created gemstones and simulated gemstones (they vary based on color) in our pieces. Our stones range in size from 2.5mm-3mm and are available in all birthstone colors. We do not use natural gemstones stones, as most natural stones cannot hold up to the heat of the kiln firing, many will either discolor, crack or even disintegrate from the heat.

I embed each stone by hand directly into the silver while it is in a soft clay like state (which is later hardened through firing at high heat in our kilns).    When the pieces are kiln fired, the silver shrinks slightly, permanently holding the stones in place within the silver. I would never consider gluing a stone to a piece, as I have seen done by others.

I always tell customers that they are not limited to their specific birthstone color.  Feel free to use what YOU like!   I do many necklaces using light pink and light blue for girls and boys.    There are no rules – your piece is a custom one of a kind creation, so make it exactly what you want it to be!

Please keep in mind that stone color may vary based on individual computer monitors.

I hope that everyone had a great holiday and that the new year is off to a fabulous start.

After wrapping up all of the holiday orders, I immediately moved on to holiday baking – something I do a crazy amount of each year.    It’s pretty much a given that if I’m coming to your house for the holiday’s, that I’ll be bringing dessert.   I don’t keep track, but I usually make at least six or more types of cookies, a few types of bars and brownies, fudge, peppermint bark, white and dark chocolate covered pretzels (a ridiculous amount of those) white and dark chocolate covered peanut butter balls, chocolate haystacks, muffins, breads and a partridge in a pear tree.  Okay, maybe not the last one, but it certainly feels like it.

After that it was finally time to relax and enjoy Christmas.  We were able to spend a lot of quality time with family and friends, as well as just the three of us at home.   Rick usually has some unused vacation time, and he burns it up at the end of the year.   We had a great Christmas, and Bella loved her American Girl Doll and her Zhu Zhu Pets (though honestly, I think I spent more time finding those Zhu Zhu pets than she will spend playing with them – I’m just thankful I only paid retail and didn’t pay the Ebay rates!).

Christmas Morning

The Zhu Zhu Pets. And their ball which I thought Santa would never find...

The stocking is always a favorite.

Chrissa. We've entered the world of American Girl Dolls.

We also attended a really special dinner for my Grandparent’s 50th wedding anniversary, which was great – and allowed us to visit with more family that we simply do not manage to see enough of.

50th Anniversary Dinner

We even managed to get a few projects done around the house.   One of them was moving Bella into the slightly bigger bedroom in our house.   We’ve talked about doing it for years, but were never quite motivated enough to actually get started on it.   This Christmas, my Father gave Bella a beautiful antique four poster bed – gorgeous – and LARGE.   This pretty much gave us no choice but to make the move.   So over a few long days we took everything out of the extra bedroom (and that everything spent some quality time cluttering up my hallway, bedroom, living room, and any other spot we could find), primed it, painted it, moved all of Bella’s furniture, toys and in, decorated it, and moved everything from the extra bedroom into her old bedroom.   It was a lot of work, but we are SO thrilled with the result.   It’s amazing how much difference a few extra feet of floor space makes.

Painting her room

Yay! It's done. Bright, colorful and totally Bella.

The pink Christmas tree will stay put through Valentine's Day.

Look - room to play!

Super happy with her new room!

Because I’ve had a few friends ask – a number of the items in the room came from Target.   While my Dad gave her the beautiful bed, my mom gave her the gorgeous rainbow bedding that totally pulls together all the colors in the room.

The funky colored bright rugs are from Target (and quite soft)…

The cube organizer for her toys (and the colorful bins in it) are Target finds as well…

So happy it turned out well, and that she’s happy with it.  The bed, being an antique, is not a perfect full size.  I guess that’s pretty typical with antique beds.  And it’s HIGH off the ground.  So high I was able to put her former train table drawers under it for storage.   She has a stool to help her get up (though she prefers to leap of course) and she loves being up so high.  Makes mom a bit nervous, but as mom, everything makes me a bit nervous!

Now it’s time to get back to school and work.  I have lots of new things coming up at Sentimental Silver, some great ways to reward my wonderful customers as well as some cool new ideas and pieces.   Stay tuned, I hope to have them up and rolling very soon!

This time of year always catches up with me.  I love my customers, I love making their special necklaces, I love my job, but in the last few days of the Christmas rush, I start to run out of steam a bit.   I’m in the home stretch now, and every last Christmas order in in some stage of production.  I have some pieces drying, some pieces firing in the kiln, some pieces in the tumbler and pieces ready to ship out.   Yay!

I do always find myself feeling guilty for not doing all the holiday things I’d like to do with my family because I’m holed up in my workshop working on the holiday rush.   My husband saves up his vacation time each year so that he can take some time off of work and play super Dad to Bella, which helps a ton, but even one day of not being the one picking her up from school, and I miss it.

Last year I made it up to them if you will with a trip to Disneyland.  There’s nothing better than Disneyland at Christmas time.  It was phenomenal.    On our Christmas trip last year we signed up for annual passes and made three more visits over the course of this year.  LOVE IT.  It’s the greatest family time, and the greatest memories.  Oh how I wish we could go right now!!!   I’m hoping to try and go for Bella’s birthday in February – but it was certainly easier to make those quickie trips when you have the annual passes – no factoring admission into the equation makes a HUGE difference!

So back to the workshop I go, pack up a few more orders and shut everything down for the night.  I hope everyone LOVES their gifts.   I had lots of fabulous husbands and dads order some special gifts.  I even had one email me and say he’s not sure he can wait to give his wife her gift!   That makes my day!   It totally makes the long hours (especially those spent wearing a respirator and sanding silver until my fingers are numb!) worth it.

Is there a special something from Sentimental Silver that you would love to receive as a gift this year?  We’d like to help you out in getting that perfect gift!   Send an email to gift@sentimentalsilver.com with the following information, and we’ll contact your gift giver and give them a little hint.

And… one lucky gift hint giver will even WIN their gift from Sentimental Silver!

Send us…

Your Name:
Gift Giver’s Name:
Gift Giver’s Email Address:
What would you like to receive:
Personalization Instructions:

Sentimental Silver Jewelry Gifts

Looking for some unique gifts this holiday?   Come out this Saturday to Shadow Rock Preschool’s Shop The Rock Shopping Extravaganza in Phoenix.

Shop The Rock at Shadow Rock Preschool

Looking for a great gift for that special mom, new mom, grandma, bride or little girl?  Don’t miss our Holiday Sale!   Sentimental Silver’s entire line of personalized jewelry, mommy jewelry and photo jewelry is 20% off with the discount code “HOLIDAY”.     Shop now, save, and get a gift she’ll LOVE!

Personalized Mommy Jewelry From Sentimental Silver

So clearly one of the hot gifts this year is the Zhu Zhu pets.  Both Bella and our good friend’s daughter want them for Christmas, and whenever I’m told there is a toy that’s “hard to find”, I  have flashbacks to the days of Cabbage Patch Dolls in the 80s, and than get determined to find that toy.   I read last night that people were finding them at CVS, so I figured I needed a few things anyway, I’ll go look.    I found nothing, but figured there’s another CVS two miles away, let’s check it.  Well, I found accessories, but not pets, but they had clearly been there.   Well three CVS stops later (though only about 8 miles total driving, there are a lot of CVS stores) and I found them!   They had just been put out.  So I picked one up for my friend’s daughter as well as one for Bella.    Woohoo!  Score!

Zhu Zhu Pets

What is sad though is reading all these people brag how they have snatched up 20, 30 or even more of them ONLY to sell them on Ebay.  One of the CVS cashiers even went on about how he called his “buddy and hooked him up with all of their inventory”.  No need for any for themselves or their kids, JUST to profit off of them.  It’s just ridiculous and sad.  At a time when so many parents have so little to spend, these little toys are actually affordable – $10 (or even less) and can allow a lot of parents to get their children the toy they really want, for not a lot of money – and frankly, we need things like that in times like this.   But it can’t happen when every place is sold out because of people wanting to Ebay them.  I could have bought the whole table worth last night (and I’m sure since that time, someone has).    I won’t continue to rant, but it’s sad.

But, I’m happy that Bella and one of our favorite little girls will be able to get them for Christmas (and that I didn’t have to pay someone on Ebay to get them).

Save 30% off your entire Sentimental Silver purchase with discount code TGIVING at checkout.

Sentimental Silver Black Friday Sale

HAPPY SHOPPING!!!!

Just a little peek at the studio, decorated for the holidays!   I do love me a pink Christmas tree!

Our puppy Jack.   Yeah.  He’s that cute.

Cute cute cute.  And ornery as the day is long!   But he is a puppy.  And very a cute one!