Etsy Love Stories: ArtWearbyCaron and MissMeander

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 20:57:00 -0000

We at The Storque have recently been canvassing the Etsy community for love stories, be it romantic accounts of meeting a significant other through Etsy, a friendly collaboration between Etsy members or the story of how that one Etsy item made a difference in your relationship with someone else. This is the story of ArtWearbyCaron and MissMeander and the wedding ring that brought their shops, and lives, together. So sweet! Complete with an "unboxing" video.

Caron: The story is really simple. I hadn't made a ring except while learning to be a metalsmith. I started off on Etsy only offering pendants. One day I got a convo from another Etsy shop owner, MissMeander. She asked if I made rings. I said that I would think about it. She nearly scared me off when she said that it would be her wedding ring - but I had NEVER made a ring!

She just kept sending me convos full of encouragement until I agreed to try. I started making rings and she kept sending me convos. After about four months of talking, I made her ring. I took pictures of the process and made her a small scrapbook as a surprise. She surprised me by making a YouTube video of herself opening the box when it came in the mail. What a special gift! When do we ever get to see our buyer open their package? We have kept in touch and I have gone on to make many more rings including two more wedding rings. She really changed my shop and my art. Thanks for the opportunity to tell my story.

Meander: I found Caron while searching for blue topaz items on Etsy. I've wanted a blue topaz wedding ring for so long and I'm always on the lookout for the perfect stone. I mean, I was anyway.

When I saw her pendants, I really fell in love. The settings seemed to float and were often in creative locations. The metal didn't serve as a bland frame for the gemstone, the freeform metalwork was just as important as the stone, and I really appreciated that. I figured if Caron could create those looks for pendants, it was worth asking about rings. So many people on Etsy are so approachable and interested in doing custom work and I've found that asking a person for custom work is often taken as a compliment to them in the first place, so why not give it a try?

Since times can be tough, my husband joined the military to help afford things like college and medical benefits, so because of that we've been moving a lot and he spends a lot of time out to sea. We never seemed to find the right moment or be in close proximity to family to have a ceremony. We had our second wedding anniversary before I finally found Caron's work and I figured since I wasn't seeing a ceremony any time soon in my future, I wanted to have my ideal ring to make up for those memories and wedding photos I didn't have and Caron's art hit the mark.

Caron was so great to work with and she put so much effort into the ring to make it just what I wanted, which was wonderful because a lot of the ring concept had a lot of different meanings to me. I wanted the ring to look free and whimsical and not something that could be forced from a mold. Not only does that have a sort of symbolic meaning, but I believe having another human create something by hand and fire brought so much to the table that couldn't be matched by browsing a glass case in a mall. It seemed so honest and raw and true to the way life should be. The swirls and turns of the silver she created also really call to my aesthetic. In my own art, I love working with spirals and curls to reflect nature. I'm always stunned that something so hard and rough as metal can be converted into something so elegant and fluid. She even put on the specific number of 'dots' I wanted to contain my most lucky number. I was pretty impressed at how lovely her execution of the request turned out.

And of course, you can't forget about the stone. Caron showed me a few topaz stones she'd obtained and they were all so stunning and richly colored. I could tell she wasn't the sort of artist who would skimp on murky stones and poor cuts. They just seemed to glow! I've known all this time that I wanted a trillion cut blue topaz with the point facing downwards as a symbol for water. I'm really emotional and a lot of times, all my husband and I have is phone conversations where we connect with our minds and hearts, rather than physically. That seemed a fitting element. Also, an aspect of water is that although it can come in many forms like rivers and puddles, ice and mist and can be soothing or hugely powerful, it's always still water. That really reminds me of love and marriage. Despite where my husband and I are or what stages of personal and spiritual development we're going through, we can always allow for that and accept one another because love is flowing and changing and developing, but is always still your love.

I'd like to think that one day we'll have a ceremony and I envision it barefoot in the grass surrounded with trees and our very closest associates, but in the mean time I can always look down at my hand and see the most ideal ring I could have imagined. I'm so grateful to Caron just for doing the custom work for me and, just like all the other Etsiers, just for being out there being artists and putting their love and passion into what they do. This is a great place and it's making art possible for, and accessible to, so many people.

Wow. Just...wow! Leave your comments below! Check out our previous Etsy Love Stories here.

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Etsy Love Stories: ArtWearbyCaron and MissMeander