I have been listening to a little Tom Petty ever since I started stealing CD's from my dads collection when I was in middle school. "Full Moon Fever" is that one Tom Petty CD i could listen to any time, and just love it. The song "Into the Great Wide Open" has got a great line in it that reminds me kind of what I was thinking when I chose to stamp INTO THE BLUE on the back of this purdy little ring.

Into the great wide open

under them skies of blue

out in the great wide open

a rebel without a clue

This ring is all about the wide open, the opportunity that lies ahead, the future that is all yours.

THis ring, for me, is also all about patience, and man did i learn the hard way on this one!

(Just for the record, this ring gave me a real hard time....and I learned a LOT about building this type of ring in the studio...made a lot of stupid totally avoidable mistakes, stuff my professors at school would have shaken their heads at, and the sad thing is I really know better! I rushed through the finishing process, put a hole in the first bezel I made, then realized that the bezel was much too big to begin with, which i think is why i put the hole in it....arrrgh. Sooooo...the lesson here was DO NOT rush through anything...take your time and breathe...and also check and double check yourself...because it sucks to rip apart something you worked hard to make just to replace work that you could have kept if you just did it right the FIRST time)

If you look up a town in southeast Iowa, Muscatine, you might not really think much of it. Muscatine is a sleepy little river town stuck right up into rolling hills right off the Mississippi river, and is actually a very pretty part of the midwest. I remember visiting as a little kid all my extended family here, its where my parents grew up. I remember humidity like you wouldn't believe, cicadas the size of softballs singing into the night, and the blackest dirt I've ever seen. And in that melon-growing dirt you could find the coolest clamshell buttons, all broken up into fragmented white bits. If the sun was shining at just the right angle and if you were lucky, a whole button would surface its little self, all shiny like the inside of a clamshell, with two funny holes smack dab in the middle. Or even better, a whole clamshell with button holes stamped out of it. I can remember these little buttons everywhere down by the rivers, in flower pots, in backyards, in green jungle alleys behind my Aunt Pete's house, even in the cement downtown. Buttons Everywhere! Apparently, the Mississippi harbored enough fat little clamshells that the town of Muscatine became the pearl button capital of the midwest, coined the term "pearling the mississipi", and the commodity led a booming economy in the early 1900s.

This is a clamshell antique button that came with a thousand others, some resin, some colored shell, some clam, in an old barnum-and-baileys cookie tin i stole from my mom (which I am sure came from my grandma). I took these buttons a few years ago, thinking...well, I could someday make some jewelry out of them...not knowing then that I would actually know how to make them into jewelry. Funny how that all just plays itself out.

On the back of this piece is stamped " Life's Simple Pleasures". If there is anything simple and beautiful to me, it is definitely a pearl button from my grandma's collection.

Ditching the market....WORTH IT!

Sailing, Sailing, Sailing! Jesse talked me into missing my first farmers market thursday....I really didn't want to ditch my market day. I love it, but summer is short and my days off are few....so I said "Screw it, lets go ADVENTURE!" We took a 14' boat out onto Flathead lake and sailed our little hearts out. Neither of us are sail-savvy, but by the end of two days off, we had it pretty well figured out. We sailed out to Wild Horse Island, slept in the truck, soaked in some hot springs....

a good time and totally worth the "day off" from the C falls market. There was the Vintage Whites to look forward to anyway...which is always a good time.

The Vintage Whites Market!!

AUGUST 21st THIS SATURDAY! Somers 9-4

www.thevintagewhitesmarket.com

This is an awesome venue! grab a cupcake, some vintage goodies, and grab a peek at some of my newest pieces...

Much adieu to the vendors at this event....these girls down in Somers have got it going on! I had the pleasure of hanging out with these ladies in June as a vendor at their Vintage Whites Market. I have to say this was a huge impacting day, I saw two girls my age (wth great design eye, and obvious work ethic) doing this blog stuff, making an event, a website, and advertising glossy 4x6 cards that I happened to grab in kalispell one day poking around....and then VOILA! I was a vendor with a little table! (and this venue these girls have created is just soooo impressive and inspiring) Up until then I was just doing the farmers markets when I had time....It was the first time I really thought "Heck, I can DO THIS!" Such a cool experience, an eye-opener to say the least. I felt like I could take myself seriously, take my work seriously, Just like these ladies, and make this craft work for me!

Check out their site www.thevintagewhitesmarket.com and be impressed!

And the blogs, oh the blogs....I am learning so much in the past weeks....

and so now, I read twig! and i pick up little pictures with little codes and put them in little places. HAH! got it.

Rainy Day Farmers Market

Columbia Falls Farmers Market is my favorite...so casual, good company...

here's a shot of my set-up that would have been rained on if it weren't for some generous tarp-giving...I really think the only reason it rained is because I had no plan for if it rained..gotta work on that!

I also have been making a few new things...yay! The shell is my Maui treasure, I spent a good long summer in Maui about 7 years ago, living in a tent, working on a farm, such a good experience that I believe was a huge imprint on my journey in school, as a student, and as a young adult....we all have to find our own way, I spent a lot of time near the ocean figuring out who I wanted to be, how I wanted to live. The islands are a very creative and fruitful place to grow. And shell collecting is such a meditative activity, quiets the mind and lets you just BE.

This is such an exciting day! "BE THE CHANGE" is the first finished piece on my new workspace, my lovely FUNCTIONING workspace! I cant even explain how giddy I am to actually have a day off to play in metal, I have missed it so much...

This ring is my first attempt at signing my pieces in metal, see the little leaf with the heart...there's supposed to be a stamped "E" next to it, but it didn't turn out so hot. I think i may have buffed it right off...oops. learning curve.

THis cab is too cool, a fused glass piece in crazy sparkle and green. I stamped the inside with the phrase `BE THE CHANGE'....a perfect mantra for those, like me lately, who are feeling a little stuck. Its a great reminder that you are the change, if you want it, you can make it happen. I must say that this is a direct reflection of me and my life lately...I love how creating for me can be such an outlet, subconscious and conscious, for direct problems and hurdles in life. I am in a funny place lately, I have this amazing studio space, with all the tools and materials I need. I know what I need to do, sit down and take myself seriously in the studio, but my day job seems to eat up a lot of my energy. So if anything, this ring is a daily reminder to be what you want, be where you want to be, and mostly, if you don't like it, CHANGE IT!