against the grain.

When I look back at how I begun, where I was in my life when I started this journey, back at everything I've worked for... 
This journey has not been easy.
This journey has tested me, has pulled me to the end of my soul strings.
This journey has tumbled and polished me to what I'm starting to believe is a shine.
I'm coming to the place I've been searching for.
I'm arriving at my destination.
Not so say that I am anywhere close to where my heart tells me I'm going, but I'm finding the answers.
I'm making my way.

As I've noted in my past few posts.
I'm finding that voice in my work.
I'm feeling incredibly inspired.
And I know that this journey is my journey.
The one I was meant to take.

There have been times where I have felt incredibly lonely, I lack the amount of artist/artistic friends that I wish I had.
Sometimes it's hard to feel like I have anyone to express my nerdy art feelings to.
That's probably half the reason this blog exists... if not more.

Being an artist in today's world is (I have to think) incredibly different than what it may have been years ago.
Today we have facebook, flcikr, twitter, tumblr, instagram...
It's a crazy world of social media and marketing and uploading and status updating and hashtagging.
It's become quite a job in itself, but it's amazing because you're constantly meeting, finding, and talking to others who, with out the internet, would never exist (to you).

This past month I came into contact with Elisa from Committed Jewelry.
It's been like finding a best friend.
The beauty of it?
I've never met her.. but social media and smart phones and all that other stuff that gets in the way of most of our everyday lives has brought us together, to texting, talking, sharing business ideas, inspiring one another, and sharing our everyday lives.
We are two apples, we just fell from different trees.

So, we decided we needed to do something fun with it.
With a friendship that continues to grow even though one of us is in Arizona and the other in Florida.
I suggested we start a bracelet.
Make one charm- send it off- wear it- add a charm- send it back, repeat.
(Elisa is calling it sisterhood of the traveling bracelet).
By the end, it will be a perfect, charm-filled collaboration, bracelet of our friendship, of the growth of our businesses- filled with inspiration.
And then we will fight to the death for who gets to keep it.
Good thing I've been working out.

I agreed to start the bracelet.

Marked with the start date, resin filled with our favorite colors, our initials on the front.
I think it's a perfect start.
Even though the design changed six times and it's not quite what I had in mind- it's filled with heart. This is going to be a project that I will remember forever.

I am so excited.