Here in Nashville, we just wrapped up our first week back to school and my head is spinning! I always feel like I didn’t provide my boys with a memorable summer, mostly because school is back in session and we have yet to take a vacation. I’m always so indecisive over where to go and limited on travel time since my youngest is 3.5 and still has trouble with long car rides. I really do think both of my boys would LOVE to go on an airplane for the first time – so I’m hoping that we get to do that sometime soon because I know they’re ready. As a mom, do you ever feel like summer just flies by and you hardly got to plan anything?! And if you have any vacation suggestions, I’d love to hear.
With fall approaching, I wanted to sit down and reflect on my summer favorites from 2026. If I could give it a common theme it would definitely be COLOR – after getting color analysis done finally after years of learning about it and wanting to do it, I found out I am a Bright Spring and I’ve been embracing all the colors (even if I was hesitant at first by the tropical boldness of the specific season). It broke me to find out that the color black was not in my color palette at all, but I kind of had a feeling. I’ve been adding my complementary colors to my jewelry, which has been fun. Things like bright turquoise, coral – both angel skin and red coral, and gemstones that have similar saturations to a box of crayons. Colors that are muted by grey, like a dusty rose quartz, salt and pepper stones, pastels – those colors do not enhance my features and crazy enough, I don’t own too many!
It has been so fun to connect with a glass artisan and work with her on some glass beads. Of course, colors are important for this project, but also we got very specific with size and dimensions. I personally couldn’t find any glass beads that had an opening that was large enough to fit on most of my gold chains. So I not only solved that problem, but found so much creativity along the way. It is also fun to sell something that costs $25 since I’m so used to selling expensive items.
Just adding one colorful glass bead adds such a pop of color and character to a necklace stack! Again, I’m playing with colors I wouldn’t typically wear and it has been so fun. Bright orange is a color I simply would never wear before getting my color analysis done, but this shirt has been one of my favorites to wear lately.
Speaking of glass, I’ve collected glass animals since I was little and finding glass artisans who create these little works of art has been a highlight of my summer! I now offer two different sized glass animals – the small size are created by a workshop in Pennsylvania and then the medium size are made by a woman in the Ukraine. They’re both so cute and I’ve been so thankful for the positive response from so many of you. Happy there are new and old collectors of glass animals out there and I’ve enjoyed seeing the photos you send to me of your collection. I need to photograph my personal collection sometime soon.
I added these gold wafers to our website and I think they’re so fun! They have an organic feel to them and I love how no two are alike – each one is handmade by my jeweler and is perfectly imperfect. You can add them to your charm jumble or bead collection as they should fit most chains.
I feel like I haven’t added too many new pieces to my collection over the summer besides the diamond and emerald navette ring (pictured at the very top of this post) and a few keys from the collaborations I’ve been doing. I always keep one for my own collection before releasing them and it has truly been such an honor to work with so many designers I admire. The newest key features gemstones of the same species but with different saturations, which I find so cool! It is our “In the Light of Day Jewelry” key and we currently still have the emerald version available.
And speaking of keys, we brought back a favorite that we had launched back in May of 2024 – the “Danielle Seashell Key” in collaboration with Sister Sister Jewelry. We started with the all-gold, no gemstone ones and now we launched those again, along with a gemstone seashell key. Although I already own one (it is soldered to my key charm necklace) I kind of want a gemstone one now too (insert dizzy eye emoji lol).
A not-so-fun project we did over the summer was cleaning out our attic. In Tennessee, the temperatures get scorching hot and our attic becomes the depths of hell temperature-wise. Of course it was the perfect time to clean it out. I was realizing that all my childhood treasures were roasting away in plastic containers up there, so we reorganized our new built-in cupboards in the playroom and made magic happen. It was fun seeing all my childhood stuff and my boys had fun playing with some things too. This little sand-filled baby doll was one of my most favorite things. And I noticed her COLORS – similar to some of my favorite gemstones and also perfectly matched my Bright Spring color palette.
Lastly, I wanted to talk about ombre colored brown diamonds, because I easily fell in love with them over the summer and these pendants are one of my favorite things recently added to shopGemGossip.com and YES, that is a brown diamond set off center in the marquise-shaped option. Hope you love them too 🙂
