I live in a rural town in Slovenia. Slovenia is one of the most unspoiled and cleanest countries in the middle of Europe. More than 75% of Slovenia is covered by wood. As you can see it is almost natural that we are connected with wood from our early days. Not far from my house is one of the biggest forests of Europe, with ancient woodland, natural habitat of bear, wolf, lynx, deer ... Here flows river Kolpa, which is so clean that you can actually drink from it. Nature all around me inspire me in my work.
Being a child I remember my father torched posts which support vine in his vineyard. I understood the charred wood has longer life and becomes less susceptible to weather and soil influence thus longer lifespan and durability. But all of that was left in my childhood.
I'm married, mother of four, three girls and a boy. I'm devoted to my family and my passion to working with wood.
Simplicity is the right word that describes me. Books are my friends from early days of my childhood but I wish I would have more time for reading these days. I'm one of those who would vote for 36 hours day :) Music is important in my life, from classic to old rock. I have a small garden with plants of tomato, peppers, cabbage, onions... cooking Mediterranean dishes which I'm enjoying the most.
I like travel and collect pieces of wood and stones on my travels and use them in my work.
Woodworking is not my profession. I am a Geographer and used to teach in primary school. Working with woods came spontaneously few years ago when my husband built wooden play house for children. Suddenly I discovered a new world for me. I saw shapes and forms whispered a call to me to unveil them.
Nature of wood and my ability to create out of it any shape I wished attracted me.
My dialog with material developed in time. I listened to the wood's grains, rings and knots, the wood responded to my tools.
The real passion sprouted when I discovered torched spruce wood finishing technique. The wood irrevocably caught me. While similar to Shou-Sugi-Ban, I nevertheless developed my own technique.
This technique allows me to achieve golden sparkles, incredible shine, iridescence, similar to labradorescence, found in some gemstones. This effect makes wood even more suitable for accessories and jewelry. Under your fingertips you can actually feel the grains of the tree. Fire brings out texture of wood. Soft, gentle and warm feeling of surface invites caressing of wood.
My source of spruce come from local woods already cut for other purposes. It means no tree has been cut with a reason to serve my goals. I tend to use only natural and pure materials and finishes such as sheep wool, beeswax, ...I always check the material of findings (example: If states on the listing that there is 925 sterling silver it means that I test every lot before use it in final product).
Although using natural materials I am not shy in using high-tech solutions like NFC-chip or nano coating.
My future plans are to include variety of woods, combine them with each other and with stone.
That was a start
Some time ago me and my husband built a home, literally with our own hands. And when I had to clean all the mess of building material and leftovers of spruce wood I caught myself with dilemma because my heart just didn't let me throw all those parts of wood into the fire like it was garbage. I put all of that wood on the side as I thought it could be used someday somehow. And that day came. I started with some simple objects such as stands and holders and continued with bracelets, rings and lamps. Every day I was improving my skills, spreading imagination and listening to the grains of wood for a story to tell. Now I'm here to share all of those stories with you. first pieces of torched wood were shy-full moves of scorching just to get highlighted difference between grains, later I found out that those grains get harder structure with incredible tactile experience. I went on, differencing end grains and sidewall grains, soft rings and hard rings, their path when meeting Knots full of resin. Quick grow through summer gives soft rings and slow grow, during hard conditions, gives the hard rings. Although the spruce is light yellow, with lot of patience, treatment of each ring separately, sending and polishing it gives all specter of colors, from dark brown, burgundy red to bronze gold. All shine their special way depending where from the light comes.
My unique technique
I believe my technique is unique and only. It is not very difficult to bring up the beauty of different wood specimens especially from "royal" ones. with sanding, polishing and finishing one can get the perfect shine and color of the wood. I don't focus on those expensive woods like bubinga or ebony but I'm trying to expose the beauty, richness and colors stored inside the least appreciated - spruce. I believe the spruce deserves as much attention as any other wood if not even more. When touching the rings of the cross I make, one can get this extraordinary experience of endless path transfered to everlasting life after salvation. It's hard to explain and present to you this experience of rings through simple text here. But I'm sure if you have a chance to touch and feel my wood you will know what I'm talking about. It calms in many ways, especially to those who are visually impaired the touch of rings, grains can bring relief and calmness and special connection with precious symbols of life. This is brand new dimension of feeling the wood.
Handmade
All products are made by hand. What I want to say is that I don't have a laser to use it for laser cutting, so each piece is made only by using simple tools by hand.!!!!! This is probably the reason why my pieces follow natural shapes of wood, they are different sorts of wavy, curvy and roundly :) only when I want to highlight some characteristics of the wood itself I cut it with sharp lines.
When making a ring, bracelet or any other piece I carefully chose the raw piece of wood to get the best impression at the final stage of process. Torched wood is exposed to very high temperatures thus small cracks appear on the side of the end grains. This is the very own feature of the wood, result of high level of stress to which wood is exposed.
Since the spruce belongs to soft species of wood it is common that during the whole process the surface gets minor scratches. When and if it comes to that I'll honestly describe each piece carefully.
There is so much I want to share with you, my admiration of nature, so many stories that need to be told. I just hope you will stay with me during this journey to discover this world of wooden beauties and share my passion of presenting glow of the natural materials inside them.
Thank you for reading my story, lets journey begin :)
