when are dogs toddlers?

Wiggle. Wriggle. BARK!

Furry frenzy: four months old. 

Just a rolling blur.

four month old Sasza with Nannie Niki

awesome show this weekend!

NikCo will be there both days!

bullet point bulletin

• Despite the rumors that you may have heard, i am not laying comatose in a lab at a secret military installation immersed in a brain wave study to discover a renewable energy source that will have the power to save the Earth and mankind: boon to civilization that will inevitably be weaponized and show harmful side effects after 30-50 years. 

• I could not tell you if i was involved in said completely hypothetical situation

• My winter visit to Ohio was extra long and i got to spend lots of time with my mom, go shopping with my sister, meet my nephew's girlfriend over Christmas dinner (which i got to cook - yay to my mom having a better kitchen than me!) and visit Rea's farm. 

• I did however learn that cows are quicker than you think.  When i pulled up in my car there was only one cow near the fence; by the time i got out of the car, there were four!  How did an 800 pound creature just appear like that?

• The fabled studio redo is almost done, finally.    It has been a long time coming, but Rea and I set-up an 8 week challenge through December and January to get things organized, purged and rearranged in our respective houses with a scrapbooking retreat together as a reward at the end so I was really motivated.    I have seriously sorted and purged things, getting rid of supplies or pieces of half-done ideas that have been cluttering up my studio and my mind for far too long. There are 7-9 more boxes/bags to be sorted, but i have all of the new shelving and storage in place so it is only a matter of deciding what to keep and putting the other things into the correct space.

• Tonight is the greatest night of the entire project: Labeling Night! Suzanne is coming over after work and we are going to label every box, bin, case, drawer and shelf in the studio, including relabeling anything already labeled so that all of the labels match.   MATCHING LABELS, PEOPLE! Clear, concise organization really makes my skirt fly up.

• The newest addition to Nannie Niki's menagerie is an 11 week old terrier mix named Sasza (pronounced like Sasha) and she is a cutie-patootie, reminding me of my beloved Chang.

• New Year's cards are done production and i am working on addressing and getting them in the mail. Watch your box.

• Though winter is mostly a fallow festival season, don't forget the Annual Jewlery Show at Objects Found over Super Bowl weekend. More info about the event will be posted here and on the NikCo FB page, which you should go Like right now, in case you haven't already.

• It has now been half of a year since my dad died and we have made it through the major holidays (except my and my brother's bbdays in May) without him for the first time. In no way i am through grieving, but i can feel some of the depression clouds parting.

• I continue along with the 101 Goals in 1001 Days, doing very well on some and miserably on others. Once we return from our retreat at the end of the month i have plan in the works to invest time in a few of the languishing ones, including getting back to writing on a regular basis

fresh start

Today is my favorite non-holiday day of the year.

January 1st.

01/01/

1-1-

The beginning. The start. Fresh. New. Clean.

To the jaded naysayers who insist it is just a random day, artificial and meaningless, I say.

Well, DUH!

ALL dates are artificial, the concept of marking time, naming it, is a human construct and you could make the argument that all dates are meaningless - the Earth is gonna keep spinning whether we keep track of it or not.

We imbue days with meaning for ourselves.

I happily choose to consider today another chance to re-concentrate my efforts at self-improvement 

Technically, every morning is a new start, but it is easy to be so swept up in that day's events that I forget to be mindful of that. 

Plus, it is so very easy to be critical of yesterday's mistakes (or every mistake of your life, like the time I lied to my first grade teacher - yes, that still pops into my head every once in a while) that I forget to forgive my own frailties, my human-ness, to start over each day.

New Year's Day is an opportunity to truthfully evaluate where I am and where I want to be and then mindfully make a strategy of how to make that happen.

This year's resolution is to actively work on my 101 Goals in 1001 Days. 

What are yours?

Good luck on getting there, friends.

Work hard, but be gentle with yourself when things don't quite follow the plan.

     

when a bead is more than a bead

When i launched the ReWearables line in 2012 my main motivation was to have a creative outlet that rescued broken and discarded beads, gave them new life.
It wasn't a business yet; it was actually just an item on a ToDo list.
A lot (i mean A LOT) has changed in the past 3.75 years, but i continue to relish saving pretty things from being discarded.
However, yesterday i had an experience that brought into focus for me that the work i do to pay the bills can also be the work i do in an effort to positively impact the world around me.
Whenever someone gives me jewelry or items to use in my studio i offer to make a custom piece -or they can choose something from my stock- as payment.
Viva the barter system!
Kalisha offered me a basket full of  jewelry and she asked me to make a pair of bracelets for her mom's best friends.
Her mom, Stella, passed away last year; in fact, her one year angelversary is rapidly approaching and Kalisha wanted to share something special with these two women.
She supplied one of her mom's favorite necklaces and some pieces for me to use.

If you are looking at that badly lit picture and thinking,
Wow. That is a motley mish-mash of things,
then you are right where i was last Friday. They are nice pieces, but i could not get any sort of vision of how i was going to get them to work together in not one, but two bracelets.
Saturday i cut everything apart and sorted the beads and bobs so that i could get a fresh perspective. In doing so, i noticed that the focal necklace i was using had several pairs of beads, not singles, not groups, but pairs. Just like i was making a pair of bracelets.
A-HA! (that makes me think of the music group; here is one of my favorite a-ha songs)
The two bracelets would feature the same three beads in the center, one bead for each of the friends.

The round lavender beads were the only ones that color on the whole necklace, so they were Stella.
Similar in size and importance, but different in shape and color a pair of puple beads and a pair of pink ones became her two friends.


After a quick consult with Kalsiha i decided to make the bracelets matching, but different: one would be a sleek linear design and the other a chain of dangles. Some matching beads were included on both, but there were also different beads on each because i figured the three friends would have shared experiences, but the details of the each of the ladies' relationship with Stella would be unique.

The only thing i added (besides the hardware of course) was a tiny pair of angel wings as the matching dangle detail on both bracelets to symbolize that one of the friends had moved on, but was still a beautiful part of the remaining whole.



If you are wondering why the pictures are sub-par, it is because both pieces were completed to my satisfaction less than 2 hours before i was schedule to give them to Kalisha so i had to shoot them at my desk as it was rainy and grey yesterday.
She seemed to like them and i told her that i was going put their pictures on the NikCo FB page as an example of my custom work, but that i would wait a few days so that she would have a chance to present them to her mom's friends.
That was at 3:45pm.
At 5:20pm i received this text

If you'd like (to) share as early as tomorrow I was in here crying like a baby so we met up shortly after you left. Both ladies loved there (sic) gifts and said they felt my moms spirit with them "Stella is looking down on us" is what Liz said!

You just know that brought a tear to my eye.
Some days, especially lately as i meander through my own grief, i feel like how i spend my time has no real meaning, no impact on anyone around me (i am sure we all feel like that sometimes) so it was a welcome surprise to realize that i can use my creations to help people and touch their hearts.

a new addition on my drive

I, of course, mean the scarves.

Cyber Monday 2015

IT IS CYBER MONDAY!

Time for online deals, people.

Everything in the NikCo Etsy store is 20% off when you use the code:

CyberMon15

But it is only good until midnight tonight.

Quirkees were updated, card sets were shuffled and new ReWearables were added.

Go. Enjoy. Spend.

Straight out of Camera

Do you ever see a picture and just know that it has to have been edited because there is NO WAY reality could look that amazing?
Happens all of the time.
Sometimes i feel like we are all so used to the hyper-reality offered to us digitally that it is easy to be jaded about everything we see:
Is that really real? 
That is so photoshopped?
What app/filter/setting did you use to get that effect?
But do you ever see something in reality that is so striking that you don't believe it is real, even though you are looking at it in real time with your own eyes?
This was the sky one day last week around 6:30am.
My jaw dropped when i walked outside.
Mostly still asleep (6:30 is a terrible time; i can't believe that i left for work then every day - BLECH) I thought i might be dreaming, but no, i wasn't.
It only lasted for five minutes, but WOW, what a breathtaking five minutes that was.

the most Baltimore wedding card ever

I was asked to create a wedding card for two local sports fans:

Yes, it IS an oriole marrying a raven, wearing matching silver glitter accessories.

note: more pictures on the NikCo FB page 

image credits: oriole-Terry Sohl; raven-unknown; sentiments-Stampin' Up!

i know i'm short, but THIS is ridiculous

Gleaming gold. Shiny Chrome.

First time seeing nephew's rig.

Goodness, that is tall.