Busy Busy and Contest Winners! (Updated)

Things have been much busier than a usual January, mostly because of shop orders, 5 this month! I've also been spending time sketching out new ideas, can't wait to do more of that in a few weeks. I'm very excited to finally pull together an idea I've been waiting to try... charm bangle bracelets! Many of my smaller pendants are a perfect size to adorn simple forged bangles. I made some in brass with a sterling rivet and some in sterling with a brass rivet. I love the way these came out and they'll soon be in my Etsy shop and available for stores to buy. The Chakra Bangle is in my shop now on brass or silver.

Restocked Trinket with this large order. They will be all set for Valentine's day!

Just finished this order for The Shoe Horn, love the mix of shapes and colors!

Got this sweet, small order together for Common Deer.

I sent out an earring order to Pure.Original last week, love how they're displaying them. 

I've had 17 lovely entries for my Instagram contest! (Blog post has been updated) The 3 winners each won $75 credit for my Etsy shop. Winner of most Instagram likes from Lyn: 

It was tough for me to pick my two favorite entries. So many kind words! Ultimately I decided that if the image was of someone wearing my work, I wanted to be able to see the jewelry. I chose Lea's, I really loved the Bohemian vibe of this one too.

If the photo was an image of just jewelry, I wanted it to be a strong photo of the jewelry. Also from a graphic design standpoint, I wanted to be able to read the words. So in thinking of those criteria and also the words used, I chose Sara's. Thanks so much to all who participated! The rest of the entries follow below.

New Shops!

So excited! I now have a "Stockists" page on my website with 6 shops my jewelry is currently in and 2 that I'm about to be in! 

Last week I dropped off Common Deer's first order. This cute shop is located right in Shelburne and they have a great mix of new and vintage.
Can't wait to see it on display and on their website. I love that you can shop right from their site.

I also sent a batch to The Gallery in the Woods  in Brattleboro. I've loved that gallery for so long. They have have such a great selection of Art Jewelry and I'm so thrilled to have my work there among such amazing artists.

I just got into my first NYC shop (Yay!) located on the Upper West Side. Thanks so much to Montana at Trinket for suggesting they carry my work.

The Shoe Horn in Montpelier sold half of the earrings I sent in the first week they were there! So I just sent them their 2nd order. Happy to see they made it their cover photo on Facebook.

In other news, the Commune Contest is getting intense! Only a few days left of the FEED NEED NOT GREED competition and the VOTE COUNTER IS NOW LIVE. Over 700 votes have been cast so far, which means Commune will donate $700 to projects that help alleviate hunger among tobacco growing communities in Malawi, Africa.

For more details and to VOTE click here: http://bit.ly/Commune-Feed-Need-Not-Greed You can VOTE once per day. Voting ends May 5th. Thanks for all who have voted for me! I so appreciate it!

Vermonting

Realizing I hadn't been outside of Burlington for almost a month I was really looking forward to a day trip that Nicole and I have been planning for a while now. Yesterday we did a little tour of VT, down route 7. It was super sunny and a balmy 25º, a good day to be out and about. We were kinda scoping out potential places to sell our wares but mostly just happy to be out enjoying the countryside, yummy food and cute shops.

Our first stop was Common Deer in Shelburne. They opened at the end of last year. This place had a great rustic feel. Lots of lovely wooden antiques mixed with home decor and gifts. I'm very tempted to go back for a beautiful old wood blanket box.

Then we ventured on to Bristol. This was my first time to this cute little village. It reminded me of an old Western town.

Birds and deer.

The pulsing heart of Bristol seems to be the vibrant Emeralrose Gifts. Totally my kind of shop, full of exotic treasures, tribal jewelry and global gifts. The owner, Jen, is such a delight and we got to hear about her exciting travel plans. She started carrying some of my work last November and I'm hoping to get more over there in the spring.

Fun to see my Chakra wraps as soon as we walked in. We also stopped by the Bristol Bakery, what a sweet little place.

Next stop was Middlebury. Hadn't been there for years and years. The waterfalls made some beautiful ice patterns.

Love how the ice resembles the dilapidated building. We had  lunch at the Two Brother's Tavern and walked around the town. We checked out a really cute shop called Clementine, full of baby items, kitchen goods and cards.

Nicole's been doing a lot of birding out in Addison so we made our way over there to see if we could spot a Snowy Owl. After looking through the fields and trees we finally found this one perched far away on an owl house (made for a different kind of owl but she didn't seem to care). I was so excited to get some great shots with my new camera, amazing how far away we were but I was able to zoom in and see this beautiful creature.

We timed it well because we were also able to get some great sunset photos and I love me some sunset photos.

We headed to Vergennes to warm up with some hot cocoa and treats at Vergennes Laundry and then visited Rebecca at Heartfire Henna. What a fun day! It all worked out so well and I still can't believe I got to see the magical Snowy Owl. Feeling inspired by all of the beauty.