Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Winds of Change

Man o man it's windy out there today- and hot. The wind is cool but you can't really have the window open too much because everything gets blown away. First world problems. Meanwhile here's some old-school Sparrow Salvage Victorian grunge, comin' at ya!

O Heaven - salvage button earrings - prairie romance - vintage tin - eco friendly


Lookit them ruined old buttons. That one on the left looks like it's about to fall to crumbs...I should mention on the listing that it's still strong, they're just surface cracks.


 

Little drops down the bottom are hammered buttons, then perfect pearls, then embossing resin. I really seriously properly loved making them, therapeutic with the hammering and relaxing with the melting plastic. I can see where badass teens get a kick out of that. 

 
Sagittarius - I think these are my favourite, they kinda look like ancient space shuttles. I have been watching a lot of Ancient Aliens lately.

Asleep - assembalge earrings - tribal sci fi - gold triangles - rose quartz - vintage beads

Asleep - Love the golden triangles on these- big old studs from the 70s. These have a sort of futuristic relic vibe about them as well, which is great because that is what I'm going for.

I have a new thing with earrings in the shop now- you can choose what kind of earring hooks you want! Just use the drop down, there's kidney wire, gold or silver plated french and the ones shown in the picture which are Bali sterling. I like those the best but some people have teeny holes and need the 22 guage of the silver/gold plated.

Friday, March 22, 2013

Adventure New


This is the view from the lounge room window of my new life. Chapter One in a new volume in the collected works of Me. Houses have always been important to me and mark the chapters both in my every day life and in my creative one. And I can already tell, this one's going to be a cracker.

Monday, March 18, 2013

wet the Fang ⁡matter

O Heaven - vintage tin earrings - hammered buttons - prairie gothic - rustic romance
O Heaven - vintage tin earrings - hammered buttons - prairie gothic - rustic romance

kinship - artisan salvage earrings - handcut tin - vintage glass beads
kinship - artisan salvage earrings - handcut tin - vintage glass beads

Things are much more calm here now. The sun has backed off an autumn is putting on her fancy skirts of firey fallen leaves. I'm working on projects that will (hopefully) form the foundations of many great things to come. 

Ocean Star - vintage shell assemblage necklace - mother of pearl - rose quartz - eco friendly
Ocean Star - vintage shell assemblage necklace - mother of pearl - rose quartz - eco friendly


Wheat - bohemian rustic earrings - hammered metal - crystal beads - modern gypsy
Wheat - bohemian rustic earrings - hammered metal - crystal beads - modern gypsy

This is all jewelry I've had laying around for a while and didn't feel the urge to list. But I've got to start cleaning up and moving some things on, get ready to put those plans in action.

Harvest - artisan assemblage necklace - pale charms - bone beads - gypsy bride
Harvest - artisan assemblage necklace - pale charms - bone beads - gypsy bride


Rapture - long feather earrings - artisan made - natural eco friendly jewelry
Rapture - long feather earrings - artisan made - natural eco friendly jewelry

There's those earrings I was going to list the other week before I went all Honey Badger on everything. I actually really like these, probably more than anything else in the shop right now. Those pale colours, tribal neolithic vibes and natural elements. All hints of things to come.

椼杭猠捲∽瑨灴㩳⼯浩㉧攮獴獹慴楴⹣潣⽭㄰⼲⼳㈶㤰㜷⼷汩㕟〷乸㐮㜳㠷㘹㘸㉟焱⹳灪≧眠摩桴∽㜵∰愠瑬∽湡楴畱⁥桰瑯杯慲桰愠扬浵瀠条獥ⴠ氠瑩潨牧灡⁨灳牡潲獷ⴠ朠汩⁴摥敧ⴠ愠敧⁤‭湡楴畱⁥慰数⁲畳灰祬ⴠ攠桰浥牥⁡‭灳楲杮戠物獤㸢

See all that crazy Chinese up there? That's what happens when you try to drag a photo from a Chrome browser into a Blogger post on Firefox. Madness! I ran it through Google translater and the English words were 'The personnel shall a dry confused sleep Mount rafter indignant bar window. number of  animal husbandry, pigwash confused indignant period stay the comfort gray wet the Fang matter Ton.

Couldn't have said it better myself.


  
Here's what I was trying to show you- awesome destash from Fagin's. I'm ruthlessly cleaning out my hoarde so I've got thinking space for new work, whatever whenever and however it comes. I have more coming soon including little 'matched bits' soups for making earrings and more long-awaited hand dyed textiles!! 



Cause I know you love 'em.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Scumbug Sunshine


Here's some earrings I made. You might like them, I hope you do. They're not up in the shop yet because I don't care. That's right- I have none of the cares. Call me honey badger. I'm a honey badger for jewelry, for running a shop, for anything that involves leaving my room.

 

Y'see, I get like this every year around this time; I despise the heat with a loathing only comparable to Voldemort's opinion of Muggles.  I do have a genuine heat and light intolerance as well as anxiety and this whole post-traumatic business, so it's not just pathetic whining. But when it gets to the end of summer as it is now and the weather is near to 30 (that's Celsius) for 10 days in a row, I am so utterly sick of it that I resort to hermit-like behaviour. Any self-empowering responsibilities and tasks go right out the window to die a shriveled death in the baking sun. Which is really saying something, because I am (as my last therapist put it) hyper-responsible. I feel responsible for everything, even things that are other people's responsibility. You put me in a house, even if I'm just visiting for tea, I feel responsible for it. I feel like someone's going to burst through the door and point at me screaming 'look at this mess/wall colour/furniture orientation/choice of TV show!!!!!! IT'S DISGRACEFUL AND I HOLD YOU PERSONALLY TO BLAME. That's my brain all the time. It likes to yell at me.

It yells at me (usually around 4am) that I'm wasting my life, that I'm not happy, that I should be doing more with myself. I should be out there! Famous! Productive!! I try to counter with 'well I have this shop thing' and I'm over-run with THAT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH NO ONE CARES. It yells at me for doing things wrong, or inefficiently, or taking to long, or not doing it to a high enough level. When I give up and don't do it at all, it yells at me for giving up. If I decide to get sad about it, I get yelled at. I try justifying myself to myself, I just get things like 'why are you so special? Plenty of people have it worse off than you. They have to go off to work all day, they have jobs they hate. There are people in this world who make a living catching rats in garbage dumps, do you think they lay around being pathetic?! My brain doesn't understand that all suffering is relative. It think there's a universally regulated scale and the lower you are on it the more grateful you should be. At least you're not on drugs.


So while this happens through the whole year, it's more than I can deal with in the heat. I'm going on holiday again- well shutting down the shops. It's funny though, while I look upon 'holiday mode' in Sparrow Salvage as some kind of permission to party, when I close fagin's daughter I somehow feel like I'm removing an element of joy from my life. I like having that shop- I like all the beautiful little things, I like the age and the history, I like taking their photos, I LOVE shopping to find them and I love passing them on to people who love them even more. And I love that I can potentially make a living that way.

But I don't love jewelry, and I haven't done for a really really long time. I've slowly slid down the scale from 'maybe you're just burnt out' to 'well it's a living' to 'come on it's not that bad and everyone likes it' to the current location of 'why must I persist with this horror'. I know there's often a great hue and cry when I announce I'm giving up jewelry so I'm not doing that just yet. I know there's also usually a great frenzy of crafting on my part barely 24 hours after the announcement, as if giving it up is some kind of defiance to myself- giving it up hey? good luck with that! *sudden passion for earrings*

I don't think that's going to happen this time though. I have drifted around apathy for some time. I make because that's what I've been doing for 5 years, but it doesn't make me happy. I want to do large textile pieces, and ceramics, and maybe some kind of felting or eco-dying. But at this time of year, I don't care. Of course I don't have this problem in the colder weather, I'm happy to work, make things, go to the post office. Going to the PO is a big one- in this heat it's something akin to medieval torture. But in the colder months, I love it- fresh breezes, photo taking, thrifting. Not so in the heat. It seem a natural conclusion to me to move to a colder region, and I do very very very much want to do that. But how do you do that? I want to move to the UK, but I don't want to spend any time wandering around looking for the best town. I know I love the west country, and that my home is somewhere in the borders of Dorset/Somerset and Cornwall.

image source unknown

But I really hate travelling. I like to feel 'at home', especially after having spent the last 12 months temporarily housed with family and friends, I've lost that comfort I need to know a place is where I can settle, where I can stay. I had that before the accident and I want it back again - I'm a domestic bird, wandering is not my thing. So I convince myself I should get a house (with a 5 star air conditioner) for a year or so, settle down a bit and enjoy that domestic contentment, all while planning out what makes me happy and researching how one goes about moving half way around the world with as little money/effort as possible. 

For this week though, I'm going to hole up in front of the fan and watching a lot of anything set in the English countryside. Maybe some documentaries about snow.