LWM ~ Returns!

Oh me, oh my! I haven't posted a Listening-Wearing-Making post since March! And so much has shifted and changed since then. Here's my take on what to listen to, wear, and make RIGHT NOW as we move through our days.

Listening to. . . The Honeycutters. I'm thoroughly obsessed with this band right now. (If you follow me on Spotify you'll see that I listen to one of their albums almost daily.) This song is from their second most recent album, which is full of good 'ol honky-tonk infused good-ness. (Also, if you go to their webpage, they have a bunch of live videos for your viewing pleasure.)

Wearing. . . It's starting to feel like fall around here. There's a chill in the morning that's more pronounced. There's a faint bit of fog in the mornings in Vallejo. And Oakland's barely making it above the mid-60s lately. I've been wearing boots and leggings with my dresses some days now, for the first time in months. And I love this baby doll dress that I picked up at a little boutique in Turlock last year. 

Making. . . Well, I've been furiously working on my fall/winter collection, which is going to be small, since I just put out the Earth Relics collection over the summer. But those photos will have to wait until the collection is finalized. I've also been working steadily on the new copper pieces for Tangleweeds. They have been immensely popular! More popular than I anticipated in fact. I debuted them in person at the Gravenstein Apple Fair two weekends ago and I nearly sold out. For anyone who may be making it out to the SF Etsy event this weekend (I'll only be there on Sunday), I will have the copper back in stock if you want to see the pieces in person. 

Happy Thursday everyone! 

Gravenstein Apple Fair

Last weekend was one of my favorite events of the year: the Gravenstein Apple Fair. It was such a great time, that I actually had a bit of a come down on Monday when it was back to reality and back to the usual programming. I think I'm fantasizing a bit about moving to Sebastopol. Maybe one day, it's not such an outlandish dream. 

In all seriousness tho, this moving to Vallejo thing has been tough. Keeping my studio in Oakland has definitely been the right thing to do (at least for the time being, and most likely for the rest of this year), but the back and forth between the two cities is challenging. My weeks are feeling full before they've even begun lately, and I'm often feeling like I need to be in two places at once. 

I'm not gonna lie. I wish the rental market wasn't so astronomical in the bay area. I definitely would have stayed in Oakland if I could have afforded to, or moved even further away but the timing on that wasn't quite right just yet (that's a few years down the line "plan." I only put that in quotation marks because the older I get the more I laugh at the notion of "planning" in any traditional way for the future. Life often has it's own "plan" for you.) Writing that out really makes me see why things are feeling so wonky lately: I'm living in an "in between" place right now. In between some big life choices, in between two physical locations, in between what I desire and what I can afford.

I am grateful, oh-so-grateful, that I get to do what I love for a living. I just think I'm in a place where it's now time to start thinking about other areas of my life beyond Tangleweeds, and what I want it all to look like in the years to come. 

If you like, share you're own moments of difficult decision making in the comments below. I always love to hear from you guys, even about the heavier, real life stuff. (maybe especially that stuff!)

(p.s. the two photos above are from the Air BnB I stayed in during the fair in Sebastopol)

And the August Giveaway Winner Is. . .

Megan! Megan, you are the winner of the Pink Desert Sands necklace (thanks to a random number generator =)
Please send me an email with your shipping address to: tangleweedsjewelry@gmail.com. I will get your winnings shipped off to you just as soon as I am back in town from the Gravenstein Apple Fair.
A BIG THANKS to everyone who entered! I loved hearing all about how you guys tackle overwhelm and daily life stresses. 
I'm already scheming up a theme for my next giveaway. . . 

August Tangleweeds Giveaway. . .

I'm excited to announce that for the August Tangleweeds giveaway I've selected one of the pieces from the new collection. . . The Pink Desert Sands Necklace featuring a flower jasper stone and hand forged metal work finished off with my signature rustic texturing. 

I'm currently in crunch mode getting ready for the Gravenstein Apple Fair, so I thought I'd roll out this giveaway on a shorter time frame than usual. Simply leave a comment here on the blog about one of your favorite places to go when things get stressful or just overwhelming. It can be anywhere, from a bookstore to a hiking trail to the movie theatre, or anywhere else!

I love to go to bookstores to escape for a bit, when things get really stressful. I walk up and down the aisles and pull books off of shelves, flipping open to random pages and reading short excerpts. Sometimes I buy a book, sometimes I don't. But I always leave feeling a bit refreshed and inspired for what lies ahead in my day/week/month. 

Leave a comment on this post and I'll announce the winner next Wednesday. Good luck and have a great weekend!

Full Circle ~ The Little Things Make the Big Thing Happen

Mmmmmm, breakfast. I pretty much must have breakfast in order to start my day. It's a 100% necessity for me. And when things get super busy, even then, I still make time for it. I think we all have those things in our life that are non-negotiable, even when life is busy and you don't have enough time in the day for everything that MUST get done, let along slowing down to nourish yourself. While I might fall off of my meditation, or stretching, and god knows I haven't truly exercised in what feels like ages, I'll always make time for breakfast. 

The last two months, I've been working on setting up my wesbshop here on the Tangleweeds website. I knew it was going to be a huge undertaking, and I think it's something I'd been "meaning" to do for probably the last three years. I'm so so happy I finally took the time to do it, as I know in the long run it's really going to pay off. (I'm still keeping my Etsy shop open, so those of you who prefer to shop on that platform still have the opportunity to.)

One of the tricky things about running a small handmade business is that once you're up and running and taking in orders and things are busy, sometimes just maintaining everything feels like all you possibly have time for. Making time to do things that actually grow your business can feel extremely daunting. Because of this, I knew that I needed to do two things if I wanted the opening of the webshop to happen, sooner than a decade from now -

1. I had to set a deadline and stick to it. Now, this wasn't meant to be justification for working through the night, or having no life outside of work until it launched, rather it was a way of allowing myself to cut myself some slack. As long as the "bones" of the shop were good, and everything was set up and functioning in-as-much as was needed to allow folks to make purchases, then it was "good enough." If I didn't set a launch date and stick with it I could have fallen down the rabbit hole of perfecting, perfecting, perfecting. (Another good rule in small business, as it relates to pretty much anything: start with "good enough" and then shoot to make it even better.)

2. The Little Things Make the Big Thing Happen. Or, the title of this blog post =). Seriously tho, I knew that if I only had one hour on a particular day to work on the webshop, well, then, I better use that one hour! Before I even started on the shop I laid out a plan week by week, broken down into day by day, of manageable tasks. As the weeks went by I adjusted expectations accordingly. Breaking BIG goals down into the day-to-day of making it happen often times makes a BIG goal look a lot less scary. (And one of those little things that made the big thing happen was making sure I had breakfast everyday!)

That's it for now folks! I hope everyone has a fabulous weekend. I'm looking forward to spending time with a dear friend on Saturday, and then on Sunday, some time with my older nephew and my sister here in Vallejo. They'll be visiting for the first time since I moved here and I'm pretty darn excited to have them over. 

Earth Relics Collection - You Must Go There

This year has been so much about embracing the unknown, walking into situations I'm unsure of what the outcome may be. And yet being sure that I must go there. This collection echoes that sentiment. It's a branching out, a treading into new waters, unsure of what the reaction will be but knowing that I must go there. 

New pieces will continue to roll out as part of this collection over the next couple of months. I intend for this collection to be an on-going collaboration with my muse and the beauty that the earth provides through unique and carefully sourced stones. 

Each piece tells a story, a story about age and time and the beauty that unfolds as we give ourselves over to what we know in our bones. A story that I hope everyone interprets in their own unique way, shaped and molded by their own experiences: their moments of grace, their moments of pain, their moments of just being. Echoing the way the ocean gently exposes a cliffside over many centuries, or the sun slowly fades the side of an old barn. Age, ancientness, and newness all co-mingling in every moment of our lives.  

Along with the new collection, I'm also launching my own webshop here at the Tangleweeds website. Much work and love has been put into the shop, and I hope you enjoy perusing and shopping the new and the classic work. The shop will go live at 7am tomorrow morning. As an exclusive for my blog followers and newsletter subscribers, I'm offering 25% off all orders through Friday with the coupon code "newsletter."

Where will you go with your Tangleweeds?
Something to think about, both for me and for you.

Tangleweeds Giveaway Winner!

And we have a randomly selected winner for the River Rock Lariat giveaway! Drumroll please. . . Erica, you are the winner!!! Please email me directly at Tangleweedsjewelry@gmail.com with your preferred shipping address. And for those of you who didn't win, stay tuned for my next giveaway which will be in August and feature something BRAND NEW!

The Tangleweeds Giveaway Returns!

Good Tuesday morning to all of you lovely Tangleweeds readers! I actually got excited picking out the piece for this next giveaway. The timing dovetails nicely with the changes I am implementing with my business, and I immediately thought that I would like to offer a piece that is a classic that I've had much success with, but will ultimately be discontinuing by the end of July. 

I decided on my River Rock Lariat design. This piece is the perfect balance of subtle and elegant, perfect for everyday, mixed with an edginess and uniqueness that really makes the piece stand out. 

As always, the way to enter is to leave a comment on this post. (You don't have to sign in to Squarespace to do so. You can leave the comment anonymously, just make sure to say who you are in your comment in case you get picked!) This time around I'd like to know what sorts of day trips everyone has planned for the summer (if any.) As a busy jewelry artist I usually can't go on a long vacation more than once a year. But day trips can be a a great way to re-charge and open my eyes to new places. I'd like to know where you like to go on your summer day trips! (And if you don't have any planned, a simply comment about what you're excited about for the summer is perfect =)

I'll select a winner on July 19th and post the results here and on Instagram. Good luck!

Changes Ahead for Tangleweeds

This year has been full of shake ups for me, and by extension, for Tangleweeds. There have been the obvious changes, like moving and the always evolving process and journey around getting older, but there have been more subtle shifts for me as well. About a year and a half ago (I think) I started up a small handmade business support group along with another talented lady (Kyla of Impressed By Nature.) This group has been such a morale boost for me, as well as a kick in the pants in realizing my goals. In part because of this group, I'm committing myself to making some big changes within Tangleweeds in the next year. 

One of the first steps on this leg of the Tangleweeds journey is going to be to commit myself/Tangleweeds to less in-person selling events, be they craft fairs, art and wine strolls, First Friday in Oakland, or other trunk shows and pop-up events. I need to free up my time more to allow the better development of the online and wholesale sides of my business, which have suffered under the heavy and constant demands of events nearly every weekend from April to December for the last fours years. 

I still plan to do events, I'm simply going to be choosier about how I decide which events to do. One to two events (maybe three if it's around the holidays or another really busy time) per month will be my max. This will mean mostly good things for you Tangleweeds collectors out there. I plan to start releasing more limited edition and one-of-a-kind (OOAK) pieces, and I plan to release new work online on a much more regular basis. 

As Tangleweeds has evolved over the years I feel like I've gotten a bit off track from what my original vision was for my business. I still am incredibly proud of everything I've put out to date and absolutely stand behind my designs and work. As I begin to pivot with Tangleweeds though, I will be discontinuing many of my current designs to make room for the new work to come. This will be a slowish process, so don't panic if there's a classic Tangleweeds piece that you've had your eye on for months (or years!) that you want to grab while you can. You'll still have plenty of time for that! 

Editing down my classics (or the "core" Tangleweeds pieces) will allow me to more readily release new, more limited collections on a regular basis. This part I am quite excited about, as you can imagine, and is a big part of how I hope to steer things in the coming year and on. 

Tomorrow I will launch a big sale in my Etsy shop for those of you looking to pick up one of my older designs. I will have a new section in my shop titled "oldies but goodies." This is the section you'll want to check for the designs that will be discontinued the soonest. I can't say exactly how soon all of these designs will be discontinued as it will entirely depend on my stock level for each piece. Most likely I will post again, here on the blog and on other social media, as the cut date for these designs draws near. 

At the heart of things, Tangleweeds will remain the jewelry business you've come to love: great jewelry for everyday wear with an earthy/rustic quality. Pieces that are unique and hand-crafted by me and my assistant. That will never change. 

To everyone out there who has supported me and Tangleweeds on this handmade jewelry journey thus far, a sincere thank you from the bottom of my heart. I hope you choose to accompany me on this next part of the journey as well!

Moving Hiatus

Morning my friendly blog-followers! I'm dropping in today just to say that this week is MOVING WEEK! I'm hoping to get everything 100% moved over to my new spot by the end of the week, but we all know how those things can go. Things are going to be a bit quiet around the blog while I get moved and re-settled, while still keeping up with the demands of my late spring/early summer craft fair schedule. By late June/early July I hope to be back with semi-regular posts, and my first giveaway of 2016, so you'll definitely want to pop back over when you can! And you can always check in with this Tangleweed on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest when you're looking for cat-sillyness, wardrobe inspiration, bits of life ephemera, and of course, new jewelry designs and behind-the-scenes Tangleweeds fun.

A quick run down for those of you I haven't told about my move: I'm moving to Vallejo. Why Vallejo? Because it's one of the few affordable hold-outs in the bay area. My rent is going to be much lower and I'm going to have a space much more suited to where I am at in my life right now (i.e. more space mainly.) Initially I am going to keep my studio in Oakland and most likely work 3 longer days so I'm not having to drive to work 5 days a week. I'm going to see how this goes though, over the next few months, and if I find that I would rather move my work space home, I may consider that, as I have the room for it. I am mot definitely apprehensive about this next chapter, as I'm going to be juggling many different facets of my life. I feel confident that I can do it. . . And I think part of the key to making it work is going to be learning to be flexible about things, and remembering to be present here and now. 

Here's to a new adventure!

(The photo above is from Mission San Francisco Solano in Sonoma. Those poppies were just gorgeous! Jeff and I took a day trip out to Sonoma on Saturday, a rare treat for the two of us to have the same weekend day off.)