They smelled of moss in your hand...

 

 

I'm working--I promise! And I also promise that there *will* be a shop update soonish (I know I keep saying that--it'll happen, guys!). I somehow got slammed these past two weeks with midterms, lab practicals, presentations, and deadlines for research symposium applications. But there's definitely a light at the end of the tunnel, and I can see it. Whew! School and sciencey stuff aside, I really just have to do the nitty gritty scanning and photo session and then I can finally list the goods in the shop. That's always my least favorite thing to do.

I thought I'd share some more pages from my small art journal with you. These were done towards the end of last year (kinda behind in posting them on the bloggity blog). From top to bottom: a brief review of a book I read at the time on the geoduck poaching trade (Shell Games: Rogues, Smugglers, and the Hunt for Nature's Bounty), plans for my contribution to a handmade ornament swap (I made peanut shell gnomes with spun cotton mushrooms), and a couple quotes that really stuck with me from another book (The Road, by Cormac McCarthy--I can't believe I waited so long to read it--so good!).

"The soft black talc blew through the streets like squid ink uncoiling along a sea floor and the cold crept down and the dark came early and the scavengers passing down the steep canyons with their torches trod silky holes in the drifted ash that closed behind them as silently as eyes."

"Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains...They smelled of moss in your hand...In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery."

Very Tiny Fishes

 

 

If you've stumbled across my Facebook page in the past couple of weeks, then you've already seen these, but I want to make sure and elaborate about them here on the blog as well. I painted some very small fishes (the size of a quarter) and after long hours with a needle and thread, fashioned them into bracelets with quite the bohemian edge! I'm mad about them and can't wait to put them up for sale so they can happily adorn bare wrists everywhere.

I've made rings and necklaces using my art, but never bracelets. And never bracelets showcasing one-of-a-kind original paintings. They were incredibly time consuming (and at times, frustrating) to make, but I think it was worth it in the end. I've even gone to the trouble of making fold-over envelope packing to house them in.

There are a few "larger" pieces I need to finish up (the minis always distract me!) and then I think I'll have a large enough pile of goods to upload into the shop, at long last.