FAQs

It can be purchased via my online shop.  My friend Christy at singhatco.com carries some of my work in her hat shop in Jackson, WY.  I try to do one in-person show a year at a festival or as a pop-up shop at a friend’s place of business here in the Intermountain West.

My studio is located in the tiny town of Hagerman, ID, and I love it when people stop in to visit and peruse my jewelry inventory.

I am currently unable to offer custom jewelry work. My apologies! I am maxed out with my farm, my toddler, living rurally without much convenience, and my regular studio workload. When life begins to shift around for me a bit, I hope to offer custom work again.  

I find it difficult to do custom work over a distance, as well, and part of moving my studio off my farm was the hope it would allow me to do more custom work for people because they could stop in and select stones in person and be sized in person for rings, but I’m just not quite there yet!

Please contact me about sold-out listings. If it’s one-of-a-kind, the answer is no. If it’s one of my some-of-a-kind pieces, I often make those pieces in small batches, and there’s a good chance there is more of the design on the way. I do retire designs, and I try to give people a heads up if I am retiring something so they can claim it before it is gone. Once it is gone, it is gone.

Please email me as soon as possible. Once sold, I ship orders quickly, so your speedy communication is essential.

I accept returns within 7 days of delivery. After that, it’s yours for keeps.

I accept returns within 7 days of delivery. After that, it’s yours for keeps.

Please email me.

Please email me with the details you need amended ASAP. I ship orders out fast, but if you send me an email as soon as you can, I can usually catch the error. 

I try to ship within 24 hours of an order being placed. Fast shipping is good customer service. Now that my studio is in town, it sometimes takes me a couple of days to get to work and take care of shipping. I do not lallygag. I get orders in the mail ASAP.

Yes, I can and I do ship packages around the world every week.

I employ USPS, UPS, and can accommodate FedEx requests, though it sometimes takes me a day or two to get to the city for UPS or FedEx courier because I live rurally.

Shipping costs are calculated at checkout and depend on your location within the USA and worldwide, as well as the weight of the package and the value of your order.  I offer USPS, UPS, and I can accommodate requests for FedEx.

Depending on which shipping option you select, yes.

I always do right by my customers and replace lost orders or refund when it applies to the situation at hand.

I tend to refund immediately after contacting my local post master to investigate the situation. My postmaster can look deeper at tracking information and GPS information for delivered packages and missing packages. I usually confer with her and communicate information to my customers regarding lost or delayed deliveries.

I always suggest customers go to their local USPS office with their tracking number to inquire about the package. 99% of the time, the package is located and delivered successfully.

I can resize some rings and link bracelets. Cuffs cannot be resized – they are the size they are!

If a ring has a stone set in it, I usually recommend that people take the ring to a local goldsmith for resizing, where the jeweler can employ a laser welder and resize the piece without overheating it.

I offer repairs. Please email me if there is an issue with the jewelry you purchased. We can discuss options at that time: repair, return, or exchange.

To clean your jewelry, a standard silver polishing cloth won't work because I don't give my pieces a bright finish. What I usually do to clean my jewelry is this:

1. If it's just a light tarnish, I pull a cotton t-shirt out of my laundry hamper, rub the piece down with it, and the tarnish comes right off. Rubbing pieces on whatever jeans you are wearing works great, too. A little grime will come off, so if you don't want that to show, use a dark t-shirt or dark jeans.

2. If it's a heavier tarnish, I take a soft-bristle toothbrush and some toothpaste and gently brush the piece until the tarnish & grime let go.

3. If the tarnish is still hanging in there, I use steel wool to re-finish the piece. You can find steel wool at your local hardware store. Use 00 or 0 gauge and avoid rubbing the face of the stone, as it may damage the stone's finish. Do not wash or rinse the piece with water after you clean it with steel wool, as tiny fragments of steel might be stuck in the nooks or crannies, and adding water to the piece will cause these tiny bits to rust. Wear it, and the little steel bits will fall off over time.

4. It's best to store jewelry in a jewelry box or even in the bags I ship the jewelry in, as it will slow down oxidation.

The very best way to avoid tarnishing is to wear your jewelry as often as possible.

Wearing your jewelry allows the tarnish to naturally wear off as the jewelry rubs against your clothing and skin. Jewelry is the last thing I put on every morning and the first thing I take off at night – I take all of it off to let it rest and to allow my body to rest from wearing it. Removing it at night also decreases premature wear and tear on clasps and chains.

I once read an answer a Navajo woman gave to the question of keeping jewelry free of tarnish. She laughed out loud and replied, "If you wear your jewelry, it will not build up tarnish. Just wear it!" And I think that's the truth.

I am a University dropout by way of 3 different schools. While I did take an introductory silversmithing college class while I lived in Arizona, most of the techniques I employ in my work, both past and present, are techniques I have taught myself or stumbled into by simply experimenting with the medium.

My approach to silversmithing (and all creative work, for that matter) is almost entirely intuitive. I'm not sure how to teach that. So I do not offer classes. My apologies.

I like fabricating jewelry. I've done enameling work in the past and some sand casting, but what I really love is to take sheet metal and wire and carefully cut out tiny things that build a bigger piece and tell a little story. This is what I have always loved to make. This is what I focus on.

The tools I have and use in my studio reflect this: a torch, a bench pin, hammer forming stakes and hammers, a rolling mill, wooden and metal daps, a disc cutter, mandrels, and a flex-shaft.

There are many different ways to make jewelry, and these ways employ very different tools. Take an introductory silversmithing class or two or ten, and find out what tools you like to use and what kind of jewelry you like to make. Then, outfit your studio from there. Art is about what YOU like! Make your studio about what YOU like!

I have a Canon 6D, a Canon 5D Mark III, and a Fuji X100 T. I prefer the 50mm lens and the 24-70mm lens. I also began shooting film again in the winter of 2015/2016 and am using a good old Pentax 1000, just like I did in high school.

It was somewhat unintentional. I usually tell people I have been practicing the craft of photography since grade 7. Still, the other day, I realized it has been longer than that since my Baba (Ukrainian for "grandmother") gave me my first camera (a little pink and black point and shoot) when I was in grade 2 or maybe even grade 1! So I've been using a camera for a very long time.

I've never put a lot of thought into how I use a camera. I've always simply photographed the world around me and the details in it that I find beautiful. I've documented my life with a camera for so many years that I guess I have a genuine and unique enough voice with this medium that my work got noticed, and companies began to offer me paid work.

I work primarily on spec and continue to shoot for companies that match my lifestyle so that I don't have to set up fake shoots or pretend shots of gear in action in the field. I am simply doing what I have always done, except now I get paid to do it, sometimes.

Well, I don't really know because my approach to this work is a bit unorthodox. I would tell you that whatever you do in life, you should do it because you love it. If you love to fish and you are a photographer, you should photograph fishing! If you love to backcountry ski and you are a photographer, you should photograph skiing! If you love to bake and you are a photographer, you should photograph baking! I have seen people take up hobbies to be able to photograph that hobby, and it makes for flat, meaningless photography.

Furthermore, the individual quits the hobby 90% of the time. It's wasteful. Figure out what you love and photograph that. You may not ever get paid for your pictures, but your pictures will be honest and beautiful, and they'll probably have a unique look if you shoot according to your aesthetic. Best of all, your images will hold meaning for YOU. Do what you love. Shoot what you love.

I specialize in self-portraiture. I have been a self-portraitist since grade seven. If someone else ever takes a photo of me, I try to remember to give that individual credit for the image if I use it in any of my spaces. If you see me in a picture that I have taken, you may assume that that is a photo I took of myself 99.999999999% of the time.

I don't think so. If I were making these pictures because I thought I was the most beautiful woman on the planet, then yes, I might be a narcissist. I actually think I am quite weird-looking. My nose is crooked. I have wrinkles. I rarely show my actual face in my pictures because I am pretty shy about how I look. 

That said, the real reason I make self-portraits is that I usually venture out solo when I am outside. I could focus on landscape photography, but I think adding a human form to a landscape gives a wild space a sense of scope, meaning, and context — and those are my words, no one has ever told me to think this or to say this about photography. Self-portraiture is also a bit like keeping a written journal — it's a way, outside of words, to capture the feel and emotion of a time and place and person.

My tastes are eclectic. I maintain that if you want your clothing to be interesting, get it from all kinds of places! I shop at thrift stores, antique stores, consignment stores, import stores, this weird spot in Twin Falls that has an Anthropologie and Freepeople clearance section, Gap, Nordstrom, tiny privately owned boutiques in mountain towns…I have a little taste of everything in my wardrobe, and my style changes day by day, week by week.

A down jacket, knife, lighter, journal, pen, and a headlamp.

My husband and I hunt most of our meat ourselves instead of buying it from a grocery store or local butcher. We need animal protein in our diet, so this is our way of getting it for ourselves. I photograph our hunting escapades because I believe it's a beautiful, meaningful way to provide for our family. It's also a genuine part of our life, so it ends up being documented because I photograph most everything about our lives. I also photograph my garden and the veggies I grow for the same reason. 

I am not a sadist. I take hunting very seriously. I take all my food seriously. If you cannot understand the way we choose to eat, or if you find you are still offended by the guns and harvested animals in my photographs, I would suggest that you no longer follow my online spaces. I wouldn't want to put you off your feed.

I am from Canada. I grew up in the four western provinces, but most of my family is in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and that's the place I ultimately call home.

I met Robert when I was 18 and living in New Zealand. We eloped in Reno, Nevada, three years later. I came to the USA and acquired my green card. I am not a citizen of the USA. I am a citizen of Canada and a green card holder and permanent resident of the USA.

I've been in the USA for over 10 years. Robert and I have lived in Alaska, Northern California, Arizona, Idaho, and Washington. In March of 2016, Robert was offered a position at the McCall Idaho smokejumper base, and now we are living in Idaho, full-time, and working hard on setting down some big fat roots in the state we call home. This is it. We have arrived.

It's a big, wild state. This is a very general question. Make a list of the kind of things you like to do, and then figure out where you want to go from there. This state has a wealth of natural hot springs, excellent fly fishing and rafting rivers, backpacking opportunities, lakes (Redfish, Coeur d'Alene, Payette), big mountains for peak bagging, snobby mountain towns (Sun Valley), one big city (Boise) for lots of live music and brewery options, massive wintering grounds for shed hunting….etc. There's also a lot of vast open space in this state if you simply like to drive and then hop out of your rig and explore the National Forest or BLM land. The options are endless! Come to Idaho and do what you love to do.