I didn't get the job!

Most of you already know that I had applied for a job with Merit Medical and had a great interview, but I didn't get the job. I was really calm throughout the week waiting for some word of the outcome. Friday morning I got that word and I was ok with it, but deep down I was hurt. I've had a hard weekend, but Amy has been here with me and she is all that really matters. The love that she shows me can make all the difference. I know that there must be something out there for me and Merit must not have been it, so I'll still keep searching for what is waiting for me and fabricating granite which is what I love! I just wish I could be working more than 2 days a week!

What's been up!

So, some of you have asked me to post life in general, so here is the first and probably the last. I got this blog going to share my artistic talents in hopes to find some interest in it. I haven't found much and not many people really care at all, but such is life. So Amy and I moved to Draper Ut. back in April. We love it here in our nice little appartment! It's quiet and we have yet to meet any of our neighbors! We have however, met their smoke! Yuck!! What a discusting habit and we have to keep cleaning up after the butt-heads! ha.

We have had a hard year so far and work for me has been a bit depressing! Slow at best and getting paid was a whole different problem. I have been paid in full just last week, but it's taken 3 months to get it. We have been surely blessed and have continued to fight and have made it every month with lots of prayers and great family support, (You all know who you are and we love you so much, thank you!) I have been job hunting for months and last week was quite the test. On Thursday, our brand new car broke down and the dealer would not get us a temporary vehicle, but they managed to find a part somewhere in this vast country and had our car fixed by 1pm Friday. Monday afternoon I received a call from Merit Medical about a job in the shipping department and yesterday morning I had to go in for some tests. If I passed the test, then they would interview me. I was very nervous! I hadn't been in this situation since I had applied for Cabelas almost 5 years ago. I passed the first test with an average score and the 2nd test with a better than average score and then the 3rd test, which was a dexterity test. I aced that one and set a new record for them as well! I had an interview and now we are just waiting to hear. So basically if I get this job, it will become my primary job and I'll still work at the granite shop part time. I would like to stay in granite and I love what I do, but I think I'm going to have to love something else! Other than all of this extra stress, Amy and I absolutely love to go hiking, movies and one anothers company!

Jewelery Box

We found this marble box while we were helping my mother pack for her big move! I made this box when I worked for KMB Countertops about 6 years ago. As most of my friends and family know, KMB is now Utah Granite, but I made this box in my early learning days of fabricating stone. Fabian was from Argentina and the person who taught me to fabricate and he got me the marble for the lid of this box. The sides and bottom of this box are Travertine and basically this outside box holds an inside box that is made of Solid Surface, which at the time was my specialty. I found a music box and set in the inside box's lid and it's of one of my mothers favorite pieces of music called-Music Box Dancer. The total weight of this box is 17.4 lbs and a little too heavy for "the mom" to be moving around, so it sits on a shelf in her closet until she can find a permanent spot for it to be diplayed.

Mazes

Mazes. I started drawing and making mazes in Jr. High. I would watch my mother find her way through them pretty fast and would learn by watching her how to make them harder. I noticed that she would start at the finish and it was ten times easier to get through it by going backwards, so I started making it hard both from the finish and the start. She doesn't even think about going through them anymore. I made quite a few, but I haven't made any for several years, well at least since High School. Here are a few pictures of what I have and some of the ideas I had making them.

The crude maze above is one of my first. Once I got started drawing mazes, I used this thing called a ruler! ha

This one has my sister Sarelle's name in it. I got to where I put words and shapes and intigrated them into the maze itself.

This one is easy except for the three colors it is drawn with and it messes with your mind!


This one says start and finish as well as having a start and finish.

I used mostly diagonal lines in this one.

This one is a replicated design of itself all the way around the page.

This is the master copy of the maze on the right.

This is my big maze. It has 2 pages and I called it a story maze because it has 2 stories. This page is the start page and the one below has the finish. Each shape that is a different color links each page together. My assitants finger points out the elevator to the next page. This maze is very hard and you have to flip the page 17 times to get to the finish, that's if you go the right way

Where it all began

It all started when I was young, as early as I remember. I loved rocks and started collecting them. It quickly turned into a hobbie and was impressed in all natural beauty and the wonders of the earth, I was especially intrigued with rocks and how they form with the colors and crystals. Utah is where I live and grew up. We have some great mountains and really cool places to collect rocks. I received a rock polisher for a Birthday present when I was about 10 and started polishing some of the rocks I collected just to see what they looked like inside and learned about what I could polish and what would turn to dust in the tumbler. I was brought a cool little rock from my Grandmother that she had found from Deer Creek Reservoir about 10 miles east of where I live. I polished that rock and still have it today (see below).

Here are just a few polished rocks from my collection and its amazing to see all of the different colors that you find inside a dirty old rock off the ground!. I see this everyday in working with Granite. I'm always amazed and it's beautiful!

This is called Mica and it came out of a granite slab of a recent job I fabricated. It peels of really thin and you can see through it. Pretty cool for a rock, but hard to work with. It has a tendency to pull out in chunks when working with it, just like these chunks!

The carved elephant is one of my favorite rocks called "Malachite", I know it can be found in Utah, but I have no idea where to look. The rainbow looking thing is called "Bismuth" and is in the periodic table of elements, but this crystal is artificial. The small one in the lower left corner is a "Ruby" and it's from Brazil. A very good friend of mine (who is a Geologist), gave this to me when I lived in the south of Orem, Ut.

These are "Sun Stones" at the top of the picture and "Topaz" in the lower part. I love going out to Topaz Mountain and in recent years seeing lots of Antelope besides finding Topaz. All of the Topaz in this photo have been bleached by the sun and there is tons of it all over and the Sun Stones are poor, but I didn't have a lot of time there.

This is "Copper" in it's natural form. Not very big, but it has some weight to it!

This one is called "Fluorite" and it glows under a black light.

The green one I'm not sure about, the red is "Silver Ore", the Gold is "Pyrite" and the white one is "Calcite" that I got out of the Calcite Mine on the west side of Utah Lake, long story, but that is a big mine and deep and really cool riding through it on a motorcycle!

I have lots of "Obsidian" and "Flint" both used to make arrowheads out of by Native Americans.

The last 2 pictures are of "Beryllium" and Utah Beryllium is red and purple. These two are really good examples and I used to have more, but gave some of them away. It is very pretty, but it can be dangerous. Beryllium dusts can damage lungs, so I keep these away from everyone! No breaking or cutting these! They're also hard to get, but worth their weight in gold!!

I have arrowheads, some pottery, fossils and geodes. It's nice to go out in Utah and find these little treasures and it's fun. Next summer I'd like to go get some Trilobites and go back to visit Paul Bunyans Log Pile (cool place) and eventually to Arkansas to dig up a Diamond or two!

Is it worth a thumb?

I made this table and finished it in November of 2008. I started it in October and cut off part of my thumb! But let's not get ahead of ourselves, I would like to start at the beginning....

My Hobbie

I have been working with granite for over 3 years and in the counter top business for over 13 years. I started making small pieces of furniture from the beginning out of scrap. My first table consisted of two different colors of granite glued together, with a piece of cherry tree as the leg. The base is made of solid surface.

This table did sell, but I decided not to sell it at the time. Now I have decided the time is right to share my talents, and start selling my work to those who appreciate one of a kind items.

These are all original designs that I have created from my own thoughts. They are unique, creative, and each one has special meaning to me as well as to others that see them.

Thirteen years ago I started in the soild surface countertop business. I quickly became an expert in the production of soild surface material. I would experiment with the material to see what I could and could not do with it. I would expose it to different chemicals for different effects. Once I let a piece sit in Acetone for a week, and after a week it had etched it in such a way that is sparked my curiousty. From an idea of a good friend of mine (Carl Williams), I started to make clocks. In a matter of 3 years I made over a hundred different clocks. I sold a few of them for a descent profit, but ended up giving most of them away. I still have a few left.