Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Rusty Autumn

Wednesday item of the week in my Etsy Shop!

~hand-forged brass necklace~

For this week I thought I'd pick an old piece, from my "summer sale" section. . . so not only are you getting a great price on this piece already, but I'll also be giving you an additional 30% off! This is the last one of this design as well.





Enter the code "tangleweeds blog" in the message section of your Etsy receipt to receive 30% off this rustic, hand-forged brass and semi-precious stones necklace. Discount applies to this item only, from now until October 5th, 2010.

A day in the Sun


The Rockridge Street Fair ended up being a huge success! Lots of friends stopped by and hung out for a while as well as customers from the local coffee shop I work at. It was great feeling supported and complimented in so many ways!

I spent a lot of time prepping for this fair. Usually I do shows where all I need to set up is one or two tables, but at this fair I was going to have a whole 10x10 foot booth. I wanted to create a certain feeling, I wanted people to feel like they were stepping into a little world full of delightful things to look at and buy. . .

One of my tables. Old frames, a small shelf that was a hideous shade of yellow that I repainted and a re-fashioned medicine cabinet (on the right).


Me!


The feather earrings on the far left and the necklace on the right both sold.



Here, I took old frames and removed the glass and cardboard. Then I stretched black fabric along the back and simply used push pins to secure it. These make a great display for my circle necklaces.



Another view of the medicine cabinet I re-purposed. For those of you who live in the San Francisco East Bay, I purchased this old medicine cabinet at Urban Ore, in Berkeley. It's a great place for finding old furniture, frames, electrical stuff, and so much more. It's a scavengers/foragers delight!



Taking pictures of my booth at the fair really helps me to look back and see how I might like to do things differently next time, small changes I want to make. Overall though, I'm very happy with how my booth came together!

Thanks to all who stopped by and showed their support for local, hand-crafted work. I hope to see many more at the next fair!

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Rockridge Street Fair

Is tomorrow! It's gonna be a super fun event. Come on out and say hi and maybe buy a little something special for yourslef or someone you care about. . . Noon to 6pm. Hope to see you there!

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Arlo and Otis

Meet the two new additions to our home: Arlo and Otis!

Jeff and I went to the Oakland SPCA last Wednesday figuring we'd probably leave with a cat that very day. Knowing me, I easily become attached to animals, cats especially, and didn't anticipate having a difficult time making up my mind. Which is exactly what happened. . .

When we showed up to the shelter on Wednesday, these two guys, (formerly named Pete and Mr.Spiffy) were out and about roaming in one of the cat rooms. They were the first two cats we saw. Our original intention was to get just one cat, but the more we looked the more that resolve started to crumble. It seemed that all the cats I wanted to take home came in pairs. . .


After talking it over we decided that coming home with two cats would be fine (the negotiations had mostly to do with the kids and the fact that they would only get to pick out one cat instead of two later, to add to the family). But still we couldn't decide. There was this cute cat named Nilla, she was five years old, all white, short-haired, and only had one eye. There was this cute duo of cats, one was all black and named Diesel, the other was a grey tortie named Petunia, but they were very shy and that concerned us with the kids.

So we went home and slept on it, so to speak. I found myself mostly thinking about Pete and Mr.Spiffy and by mid-morning the next day I had pretty much decided that I really wanted to adopt these two. Jeff and I talked about it and decided to go back to the shelter and bring them home the same day.



And so we did! These two are fantastic and have made themselves at home rather quickly. Arlo, the orange-ginger tabby, is by far the more outgoing one. And a big goof-ball! He's climbed in the fireplace, plays with cheerios, and just overall acts pretty goofy 90% of the time. Otis is more quiet and keeps to himself. He loves to lay on the bed with his brother or Jeff or me and "make muffins" while purring loudly. He's a bit more difficult to get pictures of, but I promise there will be more of him (and Arlo) soon!

Autumn is Here

Wednesday item of the week in my Etsy Shop!

~hand-forged brass necklace~

For this week I thought I'd pick a piece that really show-cases the colors of fall. I call this my "nest-building necklace." (pssst! there's matching earrings in my shop too.)




Enter the code "tangleweeds blog" in the message section of your Etsy receipt to receive 30% off this rustic, hand-forged brass and semi-precious stones necklace. Discount applies to this item only, from now until September 28th, 2010.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

My jewelry is off to Portland!


For all of you fine customers residing in the Portland area, you can now find my jewelry at Paseo Artisans in the Nob Hill neighborhood. Available are lots of turquoise and mixed metals: copper and brass and a few sterling silver pieces as well. The owner, Sarah Bistue, offers a lovely selection of handmade jewelry and textiles from both South America, and the states.

Below is an excerpt taken from the Paseo Artisans website. I thought it pretty eloquently told the story of the beginnings of Sarah's shop:

"Paseo is the product of a chance meeting and a trip to South America. In 2004, Sarah, the owner of Paseo, met her husband, Germán, who is originally from Argentina. After getting to know his family and learning about his culture, they made a trip to Argentina. After meeting his extended family and friends, being embraced by the warm and welcoming Argentine culture and discovering a bounty of beautiful, artisan-made crafts, Sarah set out to bring a bit of that magic to the residents of her hometown of Portland, Oregon.

. . . Paseo offers handmade, natural-fiber, artisan-crafted clothing, jewelry, art and textiles from South America. We work both directly with artisans and with organizations whose mission it is to assist artisans in the growth of their businesses. From soft, warm, hypoallergenic alpaca fiber clothing to jewelry crafted with copper, stone and silver, Paseo offers a variety of goods that are all at once chic, unique, comfortable and supporting individual artisans."

Lastly, I've included a few of the lovely items you can find in her shop or on her shop's website.

Pine Needle Basket from Nicaragua

Hand-Embroidered Cotton Blouse from Mexico

Basket Weave Sterling Cuff


Thanks for taking an interest in my work, Sarah!

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Giving Back

Because I had to do something. . .

The oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has shaken me to the core, and in response I have decided to donate a portion of my sales to three different charities. I started collecting for doantions on July 1st and will continue to until the end of this year. Six percent of all of my Etsy sales will go to the following charities:

~2% to The American Bird Conservancy
~2% to The Nature Conservancy
~2% to Oceana

A big heartfelt thanks to all of my Etsy customers!

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

A Return

After a much-too-long hiatus, I'm back with my Wednesday Item of the Week.

I thought I'd feature one of my hand-cut animal pendants, this particular one being a bunny rabbit silhouette in hand-textured brass. Comes on a 16 inch length of antique style brass chain, available in my Etsy Shop now!


inspiration: my pet rabbits over the years, wild ones spotted on camping trips and hikes through hills

As usual, enter the code "tangleweeds blog" in the message section of your Etsy receipt to receive 30% off this adorable, hand-forged brass pendant. Discount applies to this item only, from now until September 14th, 2010.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

My life has been moving

My life has literally been all about moving for the last month. First there was packing up my place and finding a roommate to replace me and then actually moving all of my things to Jeff's and my new place. And then, two weeks later, there was the packing and moving of Jeff's place to our new place. There have been endless hauls of heavy furniture and boxes up steep steps and through narrow hallways, the sorting and putting away of things in the new place, paint shopping, more sorting and organizing. . . and so on and so forth. I feel extraordinarily lucky to be in this new place, starting this new way of creating a family. But through all the stress of moving it's too easy to loose sight of the little pleasures in life.

When times get like this I have a tendency to find myself writing more and not less (granted, the writing has not been done around these parts, I've been pretty absent from my little blog, granted). I found myself making a list of highlights from my week, last week and thought I might share them here. This might even become a regular "installment" 'round here if I can pull my blogging butt together. It speaks to me in a certain way - I like the ritual of taking the time on a regular basis to sit back and reflect on recent days, the good the bad, the sordid. . . but I think I'll just share the good here and save the bad for the pages of my journal.

For now, this post will have to be sans pictures, but hopefully the next one will be a bit more colorful.
~Highlights from last week~
~ Going for a walk in our new neighborhood with Jeff and Sean. Meeting the neighborhood cats and walking the steep pedestrian walkways.
~ Dancing to the "Hey Mikey You're So Fine" song with Jeff at a friend's going away party
~ Sitting on the couch in our living room in your new place, at night, simply listening to the crickets and frogs outside. (There's A LOT of them because we live very close to a small creek.)
~ Planting nasturtium seedlings in our side yard, getting my fingers in the dirt.

As life slowly comes back to a more centered place and more and more pieces of my life come back out of boxes I'm hoping to find the time to post here regularly again. . .

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Indie Mart

Between moving and working and all the rest of life, I almost forgot to post about my next show coming up! I'll be selling at the next Indie Mart in San Francisco on September 19th (Sunday). It's from noon to 6pm and is at 17th and Wisconsin Streets, outside from Thee Parkside. It's a super fun event with lots of hands-on arts and crafts and great food!
Hope to see you there!