Story Behind the Design/Item of the Week

Morning friendly blog readers and Tangleweeds friends! Going along with the general nature of things over here at Tangleweeds headquarters this year I'm shifting things a bit with my Item of the Week series to something that feels a bit more comfortable for the tone, vibe and frequency of my posting here. I'm still going to spotlight various designs this year, along with offering a special discount on the specific piece, but I'm going to shift these posts to less often, maybe once or twice a month. I recently started the Creative Tenacity series and that is keeping my typing fingers busy too! 

Enter the Story Behind the Design series. For this first one, I've selected the Wander style necklace. I LOVE this design and wear mine quite often. I make no two of these identically the same and hand texture and sand them as well. 

I was inspired to create this design by my trips to the Eel and Yuba rivers in California, over the last few years. The areas where the river was dried out during the summers (and especially during the drought years) was cracked in such an organic array of lines that seemed almost puzzle like to me. The idea of a river flowing, and movement over this dry area got me thinking about the shapes as "stepping stones". I liked the idea of the dried out parts of the river being metaphoric stepping stones when the water wasn't there. Still a form of movement, just not the rushing of water going by. 

After I decided that I wanted to represent the shapes of the dried out river bed with my own freeform, handcut brass components, I just had to name the piece. I named the necklace "Wander" because it's a word that implies movement but in a slightly freeform way. I thought it echoed my sentiments about the origins of this design, and also the freeform nature of it. 

For the rest of this month I'll be offering all three of the iterations on this design at $20 off. Choose from the Curvy, Slim, or Classic design and simply use the code wander to receive your discount. 

I hope everyone is enjoying these little forays into the inner workings of my design brain =) I'm enjoying sharing these tidbits and stories with you!

Item of The Week ~ Effortless and Elegant Petal Earrings

It's been fun featuring a new weekly item these last few weeks! There's always so much that goes into each design, from mining my life for inspiration, to figuring out how to streamline the production, to creating a prototype and giving it a test-run (which basically means I wear the piece for a few days to see how it wears, then I make any necessary tweaks to the design), to photographing each piece for listing on my web-shops.

PetalEar.jpg

This week I'm featuring my Petal Earrings. These are such a great classic staple for any wardrobe! I was inspired by flower petals (specifically lotus flower petals) in creating this design, hence the name. With their monochromatic coloring and small, delicate nature you can throw these on and just about forget you're wearing any earrings at all. 

As my offer to you this week, these earrings will be available at 1/2 off in my shop through next Monday when I'll have a new item-of-the-week for your enjoyment! That makes them only $16.50 per pair (plus shipping and any applicable taxes of course.) Simply use the discount code petal and you're on your way to your new favorite pair of everyday earrings. 

Thanks for reading! 

Item of the Week ~ A classic: Swoops Earrings

This week I chose to feature a classic Tangleweeds design: the Swoops Earrings. I love this design. It's one that I am especially proud of and that my customers seem to love (thank you!) Last year I rolled it out in even more stone options, like the moonstone pictured below.

I remember when this design came to life. I was still working in my garage studio (which was also my living space - yes, folks, for the first year and a half running Tangleweeds I rented a garage bedroom that doubled as my studio!) It was a rare afternoon where I had some time to mess around with creating metal components. I had made a bunch of these curved metal bars and simply decided to turn them vertical instead of horizontal. 

The nice effect of this design is the way they swing and dance as the wearer moves about. They're also very lightweight - one of my Tangleweeds signatures. 

My *special offer* on this design is 35% off with code swoops through next Monday. Click here to shop the Swoops, or click on either of the images above. 

And, P.S., these make for a great Valentine's Day gift for any gal that likes long earrings!

New Series * Item of the Week Feature

Eons ago, back when I didn't have a website and I still blogged over at Blogspot/Blogger, I used to run a special "item of the week" feature. I've decided to bring this feature back because I love how it allows me to really put the spotlight on one particular piece - to give more detail behind the design and why I love it! I'll also be offering the special item at a discount for the week it is featured. 

For the first item of the week I chose the Desert Fan Earrings, a personal favorite of mine from the Earth Relics collection that I put out last year. Last year I was really finding myself drawn to larger, more organically shaped stones and wanted to find a way to showcase some of these stones in earrings. That alone is a challenge as larger stones have a quite a bit of weight to them. I prefer to design earrings that are lightweight and easy to wear. These particular rutilated quartz stones I used were the perfect size: large enough to showcase the natural beauty of the stone, but small enough to not be too heavy for earrings. 

I also knew I wanted to incorporate elements of beadwork into the design with some hand-forged metal components. The soft palette of these reminds me of a sunrise over the Arizona desert, and an overall softness and softening of my approach towards life that needed to happen at the time.  

If you love these and want to get a pair before they sell out (there are 3 pairs left, all of the Earth Relics pieces are very limited editions), then head on over to my shop and use the code "desertfan" for 40% off now through next Monday, when I'll release a new item of the week!

And happy Monday to all!