wear your story.

One of the most rewarding things about designing jewelry is hearing from a customer who identifies something I've made as their signature piece. Reaching for the same pair of earrings day after day because it makes her feel like herself. Wearing a particular necklace because she knows it will make her smile when she looks in the mirror. Putting on a custom bracelet as a reminder of her strengths before starting a difficult day.

Bracelets have always been my favorite pieces to design and make. To me, they're more narrative than any other form of adornment. ID bracelets, medic alerts, friendship bracelets, mourning armbands, cuffs - something about wearing that encircling form on our arms speaks to identity and sense of self in a very powerful way. They can be a mark of possession or self-possession, a talisman to the wearer - intimate, kinetic, sometimes hidden. You can't look at a whole bracelet at once when it's being worn - it's in constant motion, with different focal points as it moves. The story is in motion.

Here are some of the stories I've been working on recently for Leaves of Glass. This week I'm making handcuffs - but that's a story for later.

workingworking, plus color friends.

It's been an almost normal week of creative work, as I find my way back into doing my thing. Working with glass again has felt like coming home, and I got to make some pieces for the new collections that I've been thinking about for months. Shana and I put together several color pairs in the last few days. It's amazing how much easier that is when we're sitting right next to each other. No more late-night badly lit phone pictures to try to coordinate colors and lines. It's so much nicer when I can just poke her and say, "Is this awesome or horrible?" We did one this week that I think is my favorite colorfriends effort ever.

One of the collections I've had in mind is a series of jewelry designs inspired by fairy tales, and my contribution to this colorfriends is a pair of earrings in vintage glass and vintage metal. I used glass beads in black and wasabi green, and added vintage metal birdcage charms that I patinaed in a matte, aged white. They're odd and distinctive and lovely. Shana made a yoyo necklace in matching colors with cotton and silk, and in a truly inspired move, used a print with a text pattern that added a whole other layer to the fairy tale idea. Together, they're beautiful. We've called the pair Bird of Sorrow, after a Turkish fairy tale. You can read the full text here.

Shana's necklace is available in her shop, and my earrings are listed at Leaves of Glass.

You can read her post about our other colorfriends pairs on Shana's blog. Stay tuned for more new designs in both my shops, and more colorfriends.

shop NOTES.

Things are getting more than usually busy for me now that the end of the school year is approaching, so I'll be closing custom orders again for a while. I'll continue to accept custom work through April 30; please contact me if you have something you'd like to request. After April 30, I won't be able to take new custom requests for several months (for either Leaves of Glass or urban legend). Thank you for your patience, and I apologize in advance for any inconvenience.

promises, promises.

In which I swear to do real blogging soon. It's summer and I have things to talk about. This one, however, is a quickie. I finally listed some new designs at Leaves of Glass today - lots of light & dark contrast, with my trademark grit & sparkle. Here's a peek, and you can see all the new pieces in the shop:

shop update at big cartel

This week's shop update is entirely blizzard-inspired. During my snow days last week, I made two enormous and sparkly bracelets, and one dainty pair of golden teardrop earrings. The bracelets are both one of a kind and cannot be repeated.

a new leaf

It's been a very long time since I've posted anything here. During the silent months, I've enjoyed a hilarious and productive summer vacation, gotten rid of what feels like half my stuff, rearranged my apartment, started a regular workout routine, redyed my hair three times (it's blue right now), read many books, designed lots and lots of new work, and made a perfect mulligatawny soup. And three failed batches of caramel.

A lot of this has been chronicled on Twitter. I find it easier to keep up with that, for some reason, although it obviously doesn't have the scope for reflection that blogging does. If you do the Twitter thing, please follow me - I promise hilarity and frequent hair updates, as well as immediate notification when I post new things and the occasional random sale, based on whimsy. I have renewed intentions for good blogging, of course - when do I not? - and a head full of half-written blog posts on everything from concert reviews to dyeing Lucite beads, and I hope to actually be able to write about them soon.

Anyone who already follows me on Twitter will know that I've been working on setting up a new shop over at Big Cartel. As of this week, I'll start posting my new designs for Leaves of Glass in that shop rather than my Etsy shop for Tuesday updates. (For now, urban legend will remain on Etsy only). I'll continue to sell existing listings and several of my best sellers on Etsy, but will be working on promoting the new site as much as I can. There are a number of reasons for this, but I'll just touch on my top 2 here:

1. It's more cost effective for me, and therefore I can make my jewelry a bit more affordable for you. You'll notice that prices are a little lower there than in my Etsy shop.

2. DISCOUNT CODES! Big Cartel allows me to program discount codes into my shop so that you can take advantage of sales, coupons and special offers without waiting for a revised invoice or refund.

This is a huge deal for me, and I'm excited to try it out; so to celebrate point #2, I'll be launching this week's brand new Leaves of Glass shop update with a discount code. Enter code NEWLEAF when you checkout at www.leaves-of-glass.com for a 10% discount on your order. (Fine Print: This code will be good through Tuesday, October 5, and may not be combined with other discounts.)

I'll also be sending out an email reminder with the new shop information. In the meantime, here are a few sneak peeks of tomorrow's update to whet your appetite.

tease.

Lately I've been trying to do shop updates on Etsy all at once on Tuesday mornings, rather than listing one or two new things a day. It's been working out pretty well - I like having all the photo editing and description-writing done at once, and it means I don't have to worry about anything except relisting for the rest of the week. Which leaves me more time to actually make new things. (Imagine that!)

I thought it would be fun to start doing preview peeks of things that will be appearing in each week's shop updates - either by photographing a handful of beads that I've used in new items, or by showing little slivers of things in teaser photographs. I'm opting for Option B this week. Below are sneak peeks of 5 new things that I'll be listing tomorrow, both in urban legend and Leaves of Glass. Enjoy!

i'm bringing shiny back

After a week of rest, followed by several weeks of designing, making and (arduously, with great angst) photographing my new summer collection, I am very proud to introduce Dark Gardens. My new collection was inspired by poisonous and medicinal plants, with a touch of childrens' fantasy and fairytale lore thrown in for good measure. These designs feature some really lovely, very old glass beads in a cobalt-lime-violet colorway. The beads are mostly dark, so I've balanced them with quite a bit of sparkle and bright metals to try to convey a modern line that echoes Art Deco design and the formalizing of nature.

I've also restyled my photographs, so my shop looks quite a bit different than it did a month ago when I went on vacation. It always takes me a while to settle into a new approach, but overall I'm really pleased and proud of the way this collection works together. Please stop by Leaves of Glass and have a look, and thanks for all the good wishes and excitement that kept me going while I was putting Dark Gardens together!

everybody out!

I'm feeling the need for a clean sweep, and have started planning a new collection for Leaves of Glass (remember a couple of months ago when I promised her some refreshing love and attention?). It's nowhere near ready to debut yet, even as sneak peeks, but in the interests of cleaning house and clearing my mind for new material, I've put lots and lots of things in my shop on sale. Check out my sale section, and help Leaves of Glass get ready for some new looks!