Full Circle ~ New Designs and Aries Birthday Parties

Spring time, a time of newness, a time of great energy and swift change, sometimes overwhelmingly so. I'm an Aries/springtime baby, so by nature I love this time of the year. I love the revved up energy of it, the funneling of so much passion into new ideas and new goals. It's all too easy for me to get going in so many different directions that I exhaust myself tho. In a way, having just been very sick for a while, it's offering me up the perfect balance of easing into this time of the year. 

Below, a snapshot of my studio (tidied up of course), some workbench ephemera, my home office buddy Otis, and one of my new Woodland Featherlight necklaces now available in the Etsy shop!

This past weekend I had the pleasure of going to not one but two kid-birthday parties. On Saturday my friend Katrina's little one, Keira, turned one. Katrina and I have known each other for about 13 years. Seeing her as a mom is amazing and Keira is the sweetest!

Then, on Sunday, my nephew, Noah, turned 7. Since it was also Easter, there was an easter egg hunt in the morning followed by birthday celebrations in the afternoon at my sister's home in Modesto. I love that action shot I got of him (second photo from the bottom)!

For those of you anxious to know when more of the new designs will be listed in my Etsy shop, fear not! I'll be posting more new listings later this week. I'm spreading out the new pieces over the next month or so, allowing me to catch up on a bunch of things while still making the new designs available to all of my lovely Tangleweeds collectors!

Happy Monday everyone!

Re-purposing, Easter Colors, and An Old Favorite

It's my goal to post my Listening-Wearing-Making posts every Thursday. But that did not happen this week, simply because I needed an "away from the internet (mostly)" day. You guys probably all know what I mean: when you have too many disjointed days in a row of constant email interruptions, FB wall scans, Instagram "check-ins." I for one will sometimes just find myself in this cycle of work, check (as in check in with any one of a number of internet distractions), work a few minutes, check, work a few (less) minutes, check. I needed to break the cycle so I took a day away. 

Anyways, on to the important stuff! This week I went back and listened to A LOT of Patty Griffin. She gets lumped in the country-americana category a lot, but her music pulls from rock just as much as it does country, so even if country isn't exactly your thing you might still like some of her albums. Her most recent, American Kid, is fantastic. 

Wearing. . . The other day I realized I had worn outfits that were predominantly grey for the last four days in a row. . . I have a sincere fondness for neutrals and less-satuarated colors, but I was surprised by my wardrobe color choice so many days in a row. Then, the next day (and rather unintentionally), the skirt I picked out to wear was a decidedly-easter-egg hue choice. I thought that would be more "apropos" given the time of year than a series of grey outfits. . . 

Making. . .  I mentioned that yesterday I took the day away from the internet. Well, I used it for a jewelry "play" day as I like to call it. I call it that because I take it as free and open time to experiment and create whatever is speaking to me at the moment. A lot of good stuff comes out of this time, even if it's not literally a "productive" day in the studio it is "productive" in the sense of filling my creativity and inspiration cups back up. Which is oh-so-important when you're making a business of selling designs you create (be it jewelry, paintings, sculptures, etc, etc.) A lot of my play time yesterday was spent cutting apart old tins and experimenting with different color and metal combos. 

Well, it's Friday now isn't it? I hope everyone's got a great weekend ahead of them! Jeff and I are going to be headed to my sister's for a BBQ and general fun with the kids. I'm going to dye some eggs today using this technique found on the Posie Gets Cozy blog. I'll share some photos of the results next week. Happy Friday everyone!