memorial day and some golden yellows.

we had a great weekend with some friends who drove out from seattle. took a necessary couple of days off from etsy - and decided now would be a good time for my first feature!

i love artists who find creative uses of paper, fabric, and yarn, especially in jewelry designs. so here are three of my recent beautiful etsy finds.

1. AnBlathPaipeir : yellow star flower earrings.

these gorgeous little posts are made from recycled paper, painted yellow and sealed with acrylic sealer. so intricate and tiny, i love the idea that they're made from paper you'd normally throw away.

2. LavenderField : sunny crochet earrings.

LavenderField has been one of my top favorite shops on etsy for a long time. little crocheted disk beads in beautiful colors paired with beads and chain for a completely unique piece of fiber art jewelry. i believe her shop has recently really taken off after being featured in a bunch of magazines (and rightly so!).

3. Suffix : goldenrod paper beads.

i love the neutral pattern of these glossy sealed paper beads. makes me think of early summer, like airy damask fabric curtains by an open window. according to their profile, this shop is apparently run out of a dorm room by two students at kent state in ohio - can you imagine not only fitting an etsy shop into a college schedule, but also into a tiny dorm room?

my newest product line!

i am so excited to introduce my new line of soldered quilt pendants. if you've visited my shop, you've seen my yarn pendants, which are glass slides with colorful strands of yarn arranged and captured underneath:

my new pieces are made from scraps of vintage fabrics, which i hand-pieced, stitched, and embroidered. each one is completely unique. tiny little art quilts to wear on your neck.

so far i've made four of them and soldered and photographed two. here are those first two, which will be for sale in my etsy shop this week:

quilt pendant #1.

quilt pendant #2.

i love the delicacy and intricacy of seeing the texture of the fabric and stitching close up, and the depth of the thicker glass that makes the piece seem like a little glass curio case. can't wait to make some more of these little pieces of art!

featurama.

dropping in to say that i'm featured on a gorgeous blog today, french revelation's featurama mondays. one of my yarn pendants is featured, along with my burgundy freshwater pearl coin necklace that i recently listed.

i love that i'm featured alongside another fiber/jewelry artist, melsartbuffet - somehow she incorporates these beautiful thread inlays into her clay pendants.



amazing, right? so much creativity out there - who knew?

trying to connect.

i've been considering blogging for a long time, and have had the average reservations about it (will anyone read it? will i know what to write about? will i end up doing nothing in my life but writing to the outside world?) and decided that, among other things, i need more productive me-time, and i think this blog will encourage me to schedule some of that for myself. i'm a preschool teacher and i have an etsy shop for my jewelry creations, both of which have eaten up so much of my brain for the last year that recently, when asked what i like to do i my spare time, i couldn't think of a thing. so here's the beginning: a documentation of what-i-do-in-my-spare-time and aiming to make time for wonderful things to fill it with.

for my inaugural blog post, i thought i'd show off today's project, the first thing i've made for myself in a while. i volunteered for the first time this morning with living art of montana in one of their 'creativity for life' workshops, a series of free craft workshops for people facing illness or loss. the workshop was run by a friend / mother of one of my students, and we made mobiles. here's mine, hung on my kitchen wall:



i'm quite in love with it. various found objects, beads, a stick found while walking by the clark fork river, some fishing line and yarn for hanging.




everyone's piece came out different and beautiful. i might do a series.