Moving Shook The Cobwebs Off This Idea
I am a born and raised East Coast girl. A Southern Bell born on the South Carolina coast, turned Beach babe when we moved to Florida's Atlantic and Gulf coasts, to Georgia Peach when we then moved to Atlanta and the South Georgia Coast - my home has always been on the actual East Coast.
Until last year, November 2021. As a family, my husband, two kids, two dogs, a cat, and I decided to thoroughly shake things up and move back to my hubby's birth state of Colorado. This move has turned everything in our life upside down and given us the opportunity to uncover things we had long since forgotten. Things like a long-lost favorite Nerf gun, an impressive amount of single socks, and a few hopes and dreams that just never made their way to the surface before.
One such dream is this very shop. I have been making jewelry of all kinds most of my life. I have made and sold beaded bracelets, been a glass artist for a world-renowned glass bead company, and made many wire-wrapped pieces for friends, family, and myself. In the last few years, I have fallen in love with hand stamping. I love the hand-crafted look and style.
I have also been diving into my yoga practice more seriously over the past few years and recently deepened my yoga practice by becoming certified to teach. Simultaneously, the move to Colorado has our family on outdoor adventures ALL THE TIME! Between all the time on my mat and in nature, I decided to finally pursue the idea to make and sell jewelry that could be worn no matter the activity. An idea that had been brewing on the back burner for several years.
This idea originally began when we lived back on the East Coast. My kids were in Cub Scouts and we were using recycled t-shirt yarn for a craft activity. I quickly adapted a length for myself, turning it into a wrap bracelet and sprucing it up with a little Buddha charm that I already had at home. Voila! A quick, DIY bracelet for yoga, tennis, paddling, or climbing (my main sports at the time). Fast forward a year or so and I purchased my first metal stamping letting set. I began stamping EVERYTHING! Forks, the metal roof of our tool shed, scrap metal blanks from old jewelry-making kits, leather belts (they work on leather too)... everything! Until I finally forked out some money for some really metal stamping blanks to make a legit piece of jewelry. I still have that piece and actually still wear it.
But, the cost of those blanks is rather high.
My hubby is a custom home builder and had this funny little hand-crank machine in his workshop that never got used. Once I found out it was used to flatten metal to various gauges, I knew I could use it to make my own metal blanks for a lot less. While I still attempt to use all sorts of metal, I found that I prefer to use coins in the rolling mill (that's the name of that funny hand-crank machine I found). I will use old arcade coins, foreign coins, subway coins, and even unidentifiable coins found on the ground (these usually turn out to be pennies once I have used the Dremel on them to buff them up after pressing them).
