Holidays, Here We Come...

Thanksgiving is only a few days away, and they're forecasting snow for Portland tomorrow, so I'm thinking about the holidays all of a sudden. If you are too, here's some information you'll want to have...

Holiday Specials

To kick off the holidays, I'll be running a few specials over in my etsy shop.

From November 26 through November 30, purchase $180 worth of jewelry or headbadges from my etsy shop, and receive a FREE pair of Seedlets earrings (your choice of seed). All orders will also ship with FREE SHIPPING.


Holiday Events

This year, I will only be participating in one Holiday Craft Show... BikeCraft. I'll be there with headbadges, the Bike Mustache, and some bike-touring-themed goodies. If you're in or near Portland, Oregon during the weekend of December 4 and 5, I invite you to stop by, say hi, and take home some handcrafted goodness. The show runs from 10am-6pm both days.


Holiday Order Deadlines

If you're ordering gift items from me, please take note of these deadlines. I need to have orders placed by these dates in order to be able to ensure they are delivered by Christmas day (and still be able to enjoy my own holidays).

December 9 - Last Day to place orders for Custom work (this includes headbadges)

December 18 - Last Day to place orders for items in stock (after this date, we'll have to look into expedited shipping options and I may not be able to guarantee a before-Christmas delivery)


Thanks everyone - and have a happy holiday season!

The Wander Series

I have always been fascinated by maps, and the way that looking at a map can call you to adventure. For the past 15 months of traveling, I have been using a wide variety of maps. Road maps, tourist maps, park maps. I marked them up with all manner of notes, and then I saved them, because they hold moments of our journey. But I didn't just save them to look back on them at some distant point in the future - I wanted to incorporate them into earrings and necklaces.


Now, the first pieces in this Wander Series are available in my etsy shop! Wear a pair of these earrings or one of these charm necklaces and let it whisper to you of far-off places and wonderful experiences waiting for you.

Last of the Desert Pieces...

Well, I haven't exactly held myself to my timeline. Oops. I'm just now finishing up the rest of my desert-inspired pendants and listing them in my etsy shop. I'm really happy with how they turned out, even though it took me a lot longer than I wanted to wrap them up.



We're in Nashville, Tennessee now for the next couple weeks, which means lots of time to finish up other pieces that are half-made and dive into lots of new designs. Stay tuned.

Hooray for Soldering!

We're in Fort Worth, Texas right now - staying with a great fellow jewelry maker, Ashley Akers. We've had a great time in town over the past few days - we gave a presentation about our trip to 100+ local folks, and we've explored some of the museums and shops and the Trinity Trails system.

It's also been really great to meet Ashley in person, after getting to "know" each other through etsymetal and the wonders of the internet. Staying with her and Frank has also meant that I've had access to a proper studio for the first time since I packed mine away.

Access to a proper studio means that I've been able to pick up a torch and solder a few pieces. I was a bit nervous, since I haven't soldered anything in months, so I wasn't sure I'd remember how. But, it's kind of like riding a bicycle, and Ashley's acetylene torch made soldering a breeze compared to my little propane torch that I had back in Long Beach.

I put together a small handful of my "Mini" pendants that have been so popular. I'm still working on finishing them all up, but I've been able to list the first two in my etsy shop. So, check them out!



Thanks Ashley!!

the Desert as Inspiration

New pieces now available in my etsy shop! Sterling silver, copper, and materials I've collected over the past few months of cycling through the desert.

Working on the road...

A few days ago, Russ and I celebrated eight months on the road. Wow... eight months of continuous travel! We made it through one of the coldest and wettest winters on record... and now it's spring here in Texas. Flowers are blooming, everything is bright green... it's an incredibly beautiful change from the months of cold, dry desert.


The more we travel, the more I think about how to work on the road. Like everything else, I have had to completely re-conceive of what it means to work on jewelry while we're traveling. Yet, unlike figuring out how to cook, navigate, set up camp, stay warm, etc., setting up my studio and creating new pieces has been a real challenge for me.

For so long, I've worked in sets... simultaneously creating several pieces at once. When you have a studio and can leave things spread out, it's a great way to work, because you can fit bits of work into random chunks of time, and you can knock out all the sanding (for example) at one time (not to mention, the more you stare at something, the more you can refine the design). As we travel, however, I don't have the freedom to just leave things laying around. And my brain, in all honesty, isn't adapting so well to this. Which is why I've been ever-so-slowly working on the same ten pieces for the past three months. Yes, three months.

Now, to be fair, I have worked on other projects during this time. For example, these custom head badges for a bicycle frame builder in the Sacramento area...


My goal is to finish up these ten pendants before we push out of Austin, and get them listed in my shop. These are all pieces that are inspired by our desert crossing... the brown hills, the skies full of stars, the bright red and orange desert plants. And now that we're not in the desert, I want to wrap them up and start looking at all the trees and fresh spring greens for new inspiration. I've made it my mission for the next few days, so I'm actually making a fair bit of progress. Take a look...


And, then, I'm making a radical change in how I work on jewelry. This sort of came to me the other night as I was going to sleep... and I think it'll help me focus better on each piece and not feel so overwhelmed. My plan is to work on and complete one piece, inspired by our travels, per month. If I get that one piece finished up before the end of the month and want to move on to a second piece, great! But, I'm going to finish that one piece first.

And I want to push myself to document the creation of these pieces... where I found the inspiration, what I'm incorporating, the various stages of making each piece, all the back-stories. I'm really excited about this new challenge, and I hope you'll follow along.

But, first, I gotta finish up these desert pieces...

Lookin' Good...

I'm giving these little pendants one more day for the shellac to dry fully, and then I'll start listing them in my etsy shop. I'm quite happy with how they've turned out!

(The one on the left has a single small flower bud and the one on the right has lots of little bits of leaves.)

Studio Weekend

Ahhh... how nice to spend some quality time with my studio and all my tools. Lately, I've been so busy with a gazillion other things that I haven't spent any time actually making anything. So, I spent the whole day yesterday and today creating a pile of charm-style pendants. My fingers hurt and my body is tired, but I'm so excited about these little guys.


It takes some time for the shellac to dry fully. But, I hope to have these new pieces finished up in the next day or two, so that I can start listing them.


And the aftermath at my workbench...