ETSY workshop

Last week I attended a workshop called ETSY 101 in San Francisco.  It was held at a very cool artist's storefront called workshopsf.org.  The owners give all kinds of great classes from sewing, screen printing, plush toys and indie biz.


I have been trying to get an etsy site together for over a year.  Lauren Venell taught the class and she is one fabulous woman.  She really knew her stuff.  I learned some great tips and her exercise on branding your product was invaluable.  I changed my thinking about what I want to sell and how to promote my products.


Thanks workshopsf and Lauren!  I look forward to showing off my new store very soon.
Check them out-

XOXO  

Morning Girl

This morning I was up at 6 a.m. after a bad night.  The morning is always my favorite time of day. It's filled with newness and possibility.
Slipping out of bed I poured some coffee and sat on the love seat facing the fields that spread away from our home.  The eucalyptus and pines were dark, misty and silent.


I listened.


Although the light was dim, the birds were already at the day.  Hawks were calling back and forth in their plaintive screech that carries through our little town.  The Dark-Eyed Juncos announce from atop the rusty buoy in the field.  They are busy nest building.  Most years there is a nest over our front door.  This year it seems there were too many cobwebs and they have chosen a place I've yet to discover.  Then there is the trilling of birds I don't know the names of, but I know their song.


I'm feeling grateful for all my life has come to.  This huge open space is one of the things I am thankful for. My home, my husband, children and dog.  My friends, the sea I've lived near my whole life.  The deep blue sky.  


My life as a maker of things.


I'm never comfortable calling myself an artist.  I just need to make things.  I always have.  It's a way of making the world right.  Needlework, macrame, weaving, drawing, painting, stamping, cooking, bead stringing, wire wrapping, metal work.  Making something, just trying to get what my dreams look like into reality.  Something beautiful.  There are countless projects I have never finished, probably more that I never started!  But if all that noise in my head and hands is what makes me an artist then there is some truth in it.


Like the morning birds I'm up thinking about the new day.  A flutter of hands, a thought to my studio.  What will I make today?
XOXO

Show and Tell

I have been stealing time in my studio lately, firing PMC charms, soldering charms, putting together jewelry and even a little collage journaling. 

I have also been working on a self portrait challenge. I'm not much of a 'Wing girl" but these seemed to belong.  I'm working on a before and after.  My friends and family know why.  I am creating my after- NOW - as creative, happy and healthy.

XOXO

Happy Easter

This poem was published last year around this time in OPRAH magazine.

O, to take what we love inside,

to carry within us an orchard, to eat

not only the skin, but the shade,

not only the sugar, but the days, to hold

the fruit in our hands, adore it...

There are days we live...

from joy

to joy to joy, from wing to wing,

from blossom to blossom, to impossible blossom.

- Li-Young Lee

May the joys of each impossible blossom be carried in your heart.

XOXO