Hill Tribe Silver

Hill Tribe Silver is made by the Karen Tribe in northern Thailand. This fine silver is 97.5-99% genuine, which is a higher silver content than sterling silver (92.5%). It’s therefore easy to bend and shape into forms. Oxidation, hammer marks, and slight design variances are part of the allure of these distinctive pieces. They can be worn often and will not tarnish as quickly as sterling.

There are six principal tribes in Thailand and they are the best known of the Hill Tribes. While the street life of Bangkok has changed and grown to include expensive cars, department stores and condominiums, life in the more remote hill tribe villages hasn’t changed for centuries.

The geographic area lies between the upper reaches of The Yangtze, Mekong and Salween Rivers. This is known as the Golden Triangle. The hill country reaches to and around the borders of Burma, China, Laos and Thailand. Roads are in poor condition and the main form of travel is by trail. The Karen Tribe arrived from the west, across the lower Salween River in Burma.

Until recently, Thailand was the only country in which it was possible for travelers to visit hill tribe villages, and is still the only country without travel restrictions.

Most Karen Hill Tribe Silver goes through an oxidation process. This causes the silver items to turn black. The silver is then polished leaving the black coloring only in the grooves. This allows tiny details and patterns to stand out. White Karen Hill Tribe Silver is a silver item that has not gone through the oxidation process before final polishing. As silver is the whitest of all metals, the item appears to be pure white.

Dream Life Designs’ Fine Silver Line includes Hill Tribe Silver pendants and toggle clasps, and incorporates, sterling, copper, Swarovski crystals, gemstones and Swarovski crystals. Each piece is one-of-a-kind. Check them out at http://www.sandypointproshop.com. They are available now with FREE SHIPPING through the holidays.

The Beyotch at Sandy Point Resort

What a nightmare. I have been the crabbiest beyotch on the planet for the past six weeks due to the Internet project put before me at a time of year when I hardly have time to go to the bathroom without interruption.

The problem: Our original webmaster, who could never get the shopping cart to function on our online store, gave up. Yes, he threw up his hands, pushed aside the keyboard and said, "I quit." He doesn't feel good about it and has offered to make some kind of restitution; however, this cost us A LOT of money and even more time photographing and uploading products to said site. 

So, we hired a new guy, who promised us a working site in 12 days. He agreed to match the cost of the original but failed to mention we'd have to duplicate the number of hours (and we're talking hundreds of hours) to upload the some 200 products we had in the store.

After 12 days, we weren't even close to having a working site. Every day there was a new glitch, snafu or problem. The misspellings and grammar errors alone made the editor in me ROAR (and I've never been much of a copy editor). I lost count after day 45 of correspondence that usually began with a morning email from me asking: "When is our site going live?"

That was at least a week ago.

Well, it looks like we finally have an operating online store. I can't be sure because we haven't had any REAL customers yet, and I suppose that means I'm going to be spending whatever minutes of time I can find during the remainder of the season to promote this thing . . . hence this blog.

The Shop at Sandy Point Resort