A Wise Woman Once Said...

...treat yo'self. 

Putting aside the trendiness of the phrase, there really is a lesson to be learned about knowing when to gift yourself a little something special. And I don't mean in a spoiled millennial consumer-happy "I deserve it" spending spree kind of way. You know, just a little something every now and then---maybe once a year, maybe more, maybe less. 

--- A "me-day" where you only do what you want to do, even if that means doing NOTHING. 

--- A nice bar of that fair-trade dark chocolate from Askinosie that you love. 

--- A new shift dress to show off those humble legs you've been working on shaping up.

It can be anything, and it doesn't have to have dollar signs attached to it. Sometimes the smallest, cheapest gifts can be the most meaningful.

For several years now, I've had a little box of stones that I have set aside for "me" pieces. Things that I knew I wanted to make for myself, given the time. Occasionally I'll come across a new cabochon that speaks to me and I'll gently place it in this little box. Promising that I'll get around to making myself something "some day". 

The other week I was noticing that this little box was close to overflowing---both with stones and with the best of intentions. Realizing it had been a while since I deliberately treated myself, I vowed to focus. 

These two sagenite spray agates were destined to be paired together in earrings. Mismatched but complementary, I love the movement of the spray in each. They remind me of tufts of black fox fur---primitive, animalistic, and in the dark neutral color palette that I've been loving lately. I set them both simply in sterling silver and hung them from hand-cast sterling silver studs so they can be worn as post earrings. 

When they were finished I squealed, thanked myself, and all was well in the world <3 

Happy Wednesday!
Nikki
LoveRoot on Etsy

Waterways

It's been a disturbingly warm winter here in southern Ohio. I wouldn't be exaggerating if I said we've had MAYBE three inches of snow total. I have daffodils and iris that are blooming all over the place...in February. Last week it was 70F and sunny...we had the doors and windows open, for god's sake. It's nice to not be snowed under, but it's also a little disorienting. 

While we've had very little snow, one thing we have had quite a bit of is rain. Truly, I can't remember a more soggy, rainy winter. Local rivers, including the Little Miami and the Ohio, have been swollen and angry--churning and channeling the muddy water as soon as it falls from the sky. One of my primary bike trails happens to run parallel to both of these rivers. And since it's been warmer, I've had more opportunities to go for rides. 

 









The other week I was flying along the trail on my way to downtown Cincinnati, and I had to pull over just to gawk at the near-flooded Ohio River. If you've ever observed a waterfall, a dam, angry waves, or whitewater rapids, you'll know what I mean when I say that the power of water is absolute. The roaring white noise fills your head--making it hard to think about anything else. Work anxieties, family squabbles, packed schedules--they all seem to fade into the background in these moments. 

I stood next to my bike, allowing myself to feel small, to feel humbled. All these waterways, acting like arteries and veins, transporting the planet's lifeblood. Washing, removing, renewing. It was a cathartic moment. Then I mounted back up and kept pedaling along. 

This week's earrings immediately brought rivers to mind, as they feature natural Royston ribbon turquoise mined in Nevada. Named for the bands of turquoise running through a brown matrix, this stone is incredibly natural and rustic. I picked up quite a few sets last year at the Tucson gem and mineral show and have been waiting for just the right moment to showcase them as a series. 

I fabricated these out of solid sterling silver, framed each bezel with gnarled, twisted roots, and hung them from cratered hand-cast silver granule studs. This style of earring is great if you have lobes that are stretched or can't handle traditional ear hooks--you get to rock the dangly look with the security of posts/backs. 

Happy Wednesday!
Nikki 
LoveRoot on Etsy

Controlled Chaos

So much of what we do as artists boils down to this: controlling the chaos. 

Come on now, you know what I mean, I know you can relate. You have all these ideas and inspiration bubbling around in your hot little skull and they just won't give you a moment's peace:

• You caught Blade Runner on TV the other weekend and its gritty cyberpunk cityscape has been haunting you. 
• You were cleaning out the garden last spring and came across a fragile translucent snake skin snagged in some brush. 
• While you were driving to your parents' house in the country you passed this dilapidated barn half-covered with peeling crackled paint, half-covered with moss.
• After you finished reading Suttree, you couldn't stop visualizing that ragpicker passage over and over again. 
• That head of romanesco cauliflower you roasted for dinner yesterday--remember the fractal peaks and whorls that seemed otherworldly?
• That dream you had the other night...wow. 

For those with artistic inclinations, it can sometimes be challenging to organize all these ideas into a coherent vision that translates into our medium of choice. I have days where I flit from one project to another like a hummingbird. It's thrilling to have ideas popping into your head rapid-fire, but it can also be exhausting. Learning to take a deep breath, focus, and hone in on one vision...well, it ain't easy. Sometimes we have to be willing to let some go in order to fully realize others.


This week's pair of earrings is a metaphor for that attempt to control--or better yet, to be at peace with--that chaos. Any metalsmith will tell you that reticulating silver is an exercise in...blind luck. I created each charm by carefully taking a piece of silver through the process of reticulation with repeated heating and quenching to obtain the crumpled topographic texture that you see. I quite literally had (almost) no control over what the melting metal was doing under the torch. Half the time when I reticulate silver I'm just hoping and praying that I get a piece that's interesting and usable. These two charms ended up being completely asymmetrical yet beautifully matched--a little miracle! 

 
I filed off the rough edges, oxidized to bring out the contrast in texture, sealed to protect the finish, and hung them from some of my long sterling silver ear wires. A much needed personal reminder that we must strive to both control and flow with the chaos. Too much of one and not the other, and we get lost down the wormhole.

Happy Wednesday,
Nikki
LoveRoot on Etsy

Pobrecitos

I was chatting with buddy Kim of NuminosityBeads the other day and she called something or someone a "pobrecito". Being from the Midwest, Spanish isn't as prevalent in my lexicon as I'd like it be. Since I'm a word hound and love to pepper my conversations with obscure underused linguistic gems, I immediately googled this funny little term. Turns out a "pobrecito" is more or less a "poor little guy". What a perfect expression!

 You stubbed your pinkie toe--it's a pobrecito.

Your basset hound puppy trips over his big floppy ears--he's a pobrecito.

You always got picked last for the kickball team in gym class--you're a pobrecito (or pobrecita).

As I was in the midst of creating a silverworked agate drusy earring series several weeks ago, I found myself cooing over this wee lilac purple pair. So tiny, so easy to overlook, so easy to underappreciate next to their bigger, swankier mates. The earlier conversation with Kim was fresh in my mind, and voila, a star was born. 

To create these teeny post earrings I cut, soldered, filed, and sanded sterling silver sheet and bezel wire plus trios of my hand-cast cratered granules. Such a soft spring hue to usher in all the budding flowers, bulbs, and blooming trees. Squeal-worthy little babies.

So now you have a new word for the day--use it with abandon!

Happy Wednesday,
Nikki
LoveRoot on Etsy

Look Who's Coming to Dinner...

...it's Leland!

I know I've posted about this crazy cool material before, but I just finished up a series of silversmithed pieces that all feature it, so I figured it would be worth revisiting.

Leland Blue slag glass is nearly 150 years old. It was a byproduct of the iron smelting industry that took place in the mid-late 1800s in the town of Leland on Lake Michigan. Iron ore was heated to extremely hot temperatures in order to separate the metal from the non-usable impurities. Those impurities, when cooled, formed a blue-tinted slag glass---waste, trash, junk. 
Or so they thought at the time. 

In an effort to be rid of the useless material, it was dumped into the waters of Lake Michigan. Over the past century, the waves and sand have tumbled these chunks of slag, breaking them down into smaller nuggets and gently polishing them to varying degrees. To this day, if one goes for a leisurely stroll along the beaches in Leland, you may get lucky enough to find a piece of the beloved local treasure. 

 

This past summer while I was visiting fellow EE blogger and good friend Kimberly Rogers in Michigan, we made a special trip to the beaches of Leland to try and find some of this cool material. We had a blast, got wave-kissed and sunburned, and came away with small bags full of blue-tinted treasures.

For the time being, I'm a little too attached to my self-collected nuggets to let them go in pieces of jewelry. But flash forward to this year's Tucson gem and mineral shows, and I scored a nice little clutch of Leland blue cabs. So allow me to show off these new little post earrings featuring bullet-shaped pieces. 

Squeal with me over how wee they are!
Lookit the bubbly air pockets!
Doesn't that gemmy teal blue make you wanna go barefoot on the beach?

I know, I know, you're rolling your eyes at my enthusiasm. It's ok, I'm used to it. But seriously, even though Leland Blue isn't a naturally occurring material, it's still pretty damn cool :) 

Happy Wednesday!
Nikki 
LoveRoot on Etsy

Nautical, Dude

If my feet were put to the fire and you forced me to choose the most popular colors when it comes to my jewelry, I'd have to say blues and greens. Perhaps I'm biased (ok, I am) - I tend to design more with these colors, so I suppose it's natural that they sell more. But in general, the cool organic lushness of these hues tends to attract very devoted followers. 

A couple weeks ago I was scrolling through my shop and realized it was really starting to lack in the blue/green department. Blasphemy! I started to paw through my (ever growing) stone cabochon hoard, looking for inspiration. I tend to design in series, and this was the perfect opportunity to do an earrings series featuring blue/green stones set in sterling silver. 

Originally I was planning on creating three pairs...that soon grew to five...and ultimately ballooned to a total of eight pairs (clockwise from top left): blue opal, Sonora sunrise, chrysocolla, Royston ribbon turquoise, natural turquoise, chrysoprase, imperial jasper, and plasma agate. I mean, how can you stop yourself when you're surrounded by such pretty rocks?! 

One of my favorites of the series is a pair of minty green chrysocolla stones, nestled in a symmetrical setting that reminds me of a compass or some type of nautical instrument. The dark negative "splatter" space at the center of each stone really sets them off, while thin webby veins of blue azurite add extra visual appeal.

 
So now that I've exhausted my supply of blue green stones, that can only mean one thing: it's time to go rock shopping. Eh? EH???!!

Happy Wednesday!
 
Nikki
LoveRoot on Etsy

More Precious Than Gold

Think, for a moment, about how many beads, stones, and findings there are out there. Go ahead, I can wait...







...








OK, since this could take a spell, let's just summarize by saying that there are a TON of beads, stones, and findings out there. If you've ever been to any kind of bead show, you'll know what I mean. Now take those hundreds of tables filled with strands and baskets and multiply that by hundreds of thousands. Similarly, one of the beauties of the internet is that each of us in our own little corners of the world can shop for beads and stones from all over the globe. Our taste for supplies is limited only by the girth of our wallet.

All this to say: it can get overwhelming. So many good beads, cool beads, rare beads, stimulating exciting never-before-been-seen beads - how to focus?!

I experienced this shellshocked feeling the first time I went to the Tucson Gem & Mineral show with my dear friend Kimberly Rogers of NuminosityBeads fame. The sheer quantity of product, the teeming masses of people, the sky-high tents, the dollars changing hands hot and fast. Mercy.

That was two years ago. This year I didn't get quite so overwhelmed. I was a highly attuned hunter, knowing the type of thing I wanted and drilling down on it. I purchased with abandon, letting my creative "what if" juices flow. I walked up to booths and already had finished pieces designed in my head before even paying the vendor. 

The very best example of this involves a treasure trove of petrified wood slabs that I found. They were matched pairs, about 1" across, had a polished face yet a natural grained edge, and came in all the earth-toned colors of the rainbow: rust, salmon, fawn, cocoa, sable, charcoal, dove, ivory, and cream. I saw them and immediately melted. The crunchy semi-feral wicked earth goddess in me envisioned an edgy metalworked bracelet featuring a handful of these slabs. I knew in my head that it would be a lot of work. But if executed right, it would be worth it. So I bought 15 or so pairs.

Flash forward about four months and the idea had finally marinated enough - it was time for fruition. I sat down a couple weeks ago and created a whole line of petrified wood pieces, all set in gnarly sterling silver pronged open-back bezels. That includes this pair of earrings. Deceptively simple, humble, yet soulful. These slices use to be alive - think about that! I've been smitten and fighting the urge to jealously hoard the rest of them to myself.

So, all of this extended rambling to say, every now and then while swimming through the vast sea of components out there, you will find a special something that speaks volumes. It may only speak to you; it may speak to many. But when you find those special somethings, they can be more precious than gold. 

Happy Wednesday!
Nikki
LoveRoot on Etsy