front page!!

Yay!
The front page is up from the "voter favorites"! I love being on the front page. For etsy, that's about the best free advertising you can get!

I'm a Winner!

Yayy!!
Thank you so much for the support in the Voter. I'm super excited and really appreciate each of my votes :) Thank you thank you!!

Tea Tab Quote of the Day

Be Happy so long as breath is within you.

Its funny, a random lady at the post office said almost this exact same thing to me the other day. We were headed out the door at the same time and I guess she'd been talking to someone at the counter about why she was happy. And she said to me, "Any day is a good day I'm breathing". I told her that was a great attitude!

Recycle Your Packing/Packaging Material

So often I hear people say they buy their packing material. I've never had the need to, I recycle! I order so many of my supplies and most boxes come with their own stuffing. Some have styrofoam or the eco-friendly dissolving peanuts, the little inflatable air packets, others just use paper or my favorite, bubble wrap! Though I know its fun to simply pop it, save it instead and reuse it!

I have a large bag I use to collect the variety of materials I receive and then I simply pluck something out when I am mailing my own package. If I happen to be using a flat rate envelope instead of a box, old bubble mailers are great for an additional inside cushioning.

Plastic bags are great to reuse as are old newspaper, magazines or even shredded bits from your paper shredder (just make sure they are thoroughly mixed up!)

Bottom line - recycling your incoming packing material is not only good for the environment, its great on your wallet!

Tea Tab Quote of the Day

May your inner self be secure and happy.

... and allergy free!
Not as "pretty" of a photo as I usually post, but goodness, check out that pollen. Yesterday the pollen count was around 1900 and today it is a bit over 2900! in a day it jumped that much! It is definitely the time of year that the neti pot comes in handy. I'm hoping that this year I will consistently stay with using it and not have my one week of allergies. Many people I know feel terrible during this time of year. I only have a tiny dose of one particular plant in my yard that seems to affect me. I'm not sure what it is, but it's usually later in the season a bit and I think is something I've never been around before b/c it never happened until I lived at this house. Though I'm hoping this year it just won't happen! I'm planning on keeping my immune system boosted and "cleaned" out. Spring time already makes me feel like a super hero, so I'm hoping I'll just plow right through with no problem!

Voter Update!

I'm currently in the lead!! Yayy!!! if you haven't voted yet, but would like to, I would really appreciate it! Every little vote counts and that saying about "it ain't over til its over" is totally true! Even if I don't win, I'm hoping to just stay near the top!! :)


the tea tab quote for this morning: By listening, you comfort another person.

hope you all have a wonderful weekend!!

Please Vote for Me!

My rings made it in Etsy's Wedding voter!
Please vote for me! (its the rings above) and here's the link.


How wonderfully exciting!!!

Tea Tab Quote of the Day

Delight the world with your compassion, kindness and grace.

My sweet little Japanese maple is so lovely right now and looks better than it ever has before!

Blog Carnival: The Creative Process: How do you plan and organize for design?

So EtsyMetal's Blog Carnival this month is: The Creative Process: How do you plan and organize for design? and we're supposed to take a photo of our workbench. Which is pretty funny. I promise I did not clean it up at all (uh, of course I didn't, drawers open, tools ALL over the place) - I'm wondering how many of us will??

As far as answering the question - thats an easy one - I don't plan or organize!

Well, that isn't entirely true, but the vast majority of the time I don't. I'm much more of a process oriented creator. When I'm working on new designs, its very much material based in terms of deciding what direction to go in. My themes are all kind of connected - in my head anyway. Mostly nature and plant based - though I go through periods of liking bugs and being inspired by them. I really like earth sciences, rocks, trees, oceans, bugs, animals, etc. If I am interested in doing something new, I think about all these things and what I'm most interested in on that day.

If I have a stone I want to work with, I look at it, and see what it reminds me of and then base the design and texture off of something in the natural world that goes with that stone.

If I'm working in wax, I just like to play with it and see what it reminds me of and then build off of that.

If I'm working with metal, pretty much the same thing. I like to "see" what might want to appear.

The idea of a sketchbook is nice, but I hardly ever keep one. There IS a new project I have rolling around in my head that I think I might need to use a sketchbook as it is a bit more complicated than I usually work. It involves non-existent insects, or hybrid bugs. Even if I do a sketch though, I know the final product won't look quite like the sketch, so that is why I rarely do them!

Most of my creative process is looking and thinking and then doing.

Checkout the other participants from this month's carnival!

Victoria Takahashi/Experimetal
Thomasin Durgin/metalriot
Su Trindle/QuercusSilver
Inbar Bareket
Stacey Hansen
Nina Gibson
Danielle Miller
Corliss & John Rose/2Roses
Maria Whetman

Tea Tab Quote of the Day

Appreciate yourself and honor your soul.

Thats a good one if I do say so myself :)