Sweet friends!
It has been a minute since I have had new pieces to share, huh? Large collection releases require an ever-surprising amount of time and energy, though I truly delight in them. To be able to wander around within a collection theme really flexes my creative mind, and I feel more agile and confident with every passing collection. However, my spring collection featured over 130 pieces, each one carefully designed and crafted: gemstones selected with a careful eye, edges smoothed, chain links counted, leaves delicately pressed into metal, and each piece worn for a moment or two to ensure comfort and proper proportions. It was like a flower bed into which I put every bit of my energy reserves.
And so when all the Mossflower pieces that were purchased (you generous souls have nearly purchased every one at the time of this writing!) were in the mail, I laid my head down and drank in sleep and quietude deeply. Then once rested, I began the good work of scrubbing all surfaces, throwing open windows, sweeping out every tucked away place, replenishing my flux, reordering precious metals, and of course, sketching.
Whenever I talk myself into a time of rest (though honestly, more often insisted upon by my fella), ideas that have been sitting patiently in the corners of my studios, in the form of gemstone piles or roughly drawn sketches, quickly find themselves on my bench or tucked in my sketchbook. Designs that have been floating in the ether of my mind find their way to the forefront and beg to be woven into metal and stone. The world outside spills inspiration into me: leaves tucked in pockets, wading into mountain rivers, watching my fella rescue a tired or drowning bee (he is a bee whisperer, I swear!), a beloved 7-year old reciting a poem recently composed, reading Tolkien beneath a particular giant oak tree (which I am sure is a tree ent), watching cumulus clouds through the eyes of a beloved 3-year old, colors seen only briefly each year bursting forth in the landscape all at once, and the passage of time marking every corner of my world. How can one keep hands still when ideas flow by so swiftly?!
I can feel myself beginning to crackle with potential energy again, about to tip over into another whirlwind of metal and stone.
And so over the past few weeks I have been storing up this energy for new designs while working on a tremendous bunch of made to order pieces (you lovely people keep me in coffee and silver between collections) and finishing up all the pre-ordered Yavanna earrings.
(I received so many messages and comments from people who had missed out on them, I decided to create a final batch before finally moving on from the Mossflower collection.)
And so while quiet on the internet, my studio has been abuzz with smithing.
I have been sketching out a biggish collection comprised of honeybees and citrine, but decided to let ideas come to me slowly. I have been allowing myself to push stones around in my sketchbook, asking politely what they would like to become. But never rushing them to tell me, sometimes stones think and speak slowly. And while I have been watching the bees buzz around the gobs of honey-colored citrine, I felt called to a different small collection.
For several years I have been hoarding these porcelain owl cabochons, like a dragon perched on precious pile of gold. These are incredibly hard to come by and are rather expensive, and so I have left them tucked away in my gemstone cabinet, too timid to use them up.
But recently I was sent a handful of cast sterling silver twigs. And as I turned them over in my hands, looking at the subtleties in the bark and leaf buds, I could hear the owls cooing in their dark drawer. It is as though they could remember how it felt to clutch an alder branch in their talons, and feel their feathers softly wrapped in moonlight and leaves.
And I couldn’t refuse them.
There will be rings and necklaces studded with the porcelain owls, onyx black as night, shimmering moonstone, twigs cast from real branches, silver pebbles, and swaths of leaves.
Stay tuned for a shop update announcement! It will be a quick one.
