The Why of It All

Ah, it has been ages since I popped on and blogged. Some of that was the insane business of preparing for the two big shows that went by – they were awesome by the way – and some of it was life stuff.

I went and signed up for Lori Anderson’s NEXT bead soup blog hop and she sent around a note to us about posting something. She even gave us a prompt: Why did we become jewellery designers?

So this actually ties back into my life stuff. At the end of April my Grandmother died and, really, she was a big part of the why and the how it all happened. My family is pretty supportive but most of them didn’t understand any of this want to be creative professionally thing. It wasn’t even a disapproval – they didn’t even understand the concept of finding a way to do work that was also creative, it seemed.

My Grandmother would be the last person to call herself an artist – and certainly not a jewellery wearer – but she was definitely a professional creative type. She made and sold her knits my whole childhood and early adulthood. When I wasn’t that old she started letting me go along to shows with her. And that’s where it began. She let me sell my little daisy chains and painted ornaments at her booth.

As time went on, I got a bit more ambitious, made my own beads and we did shows together, our tables side by side. I became more exclusively a bead maker and jewellery designer in order to streamline my offerings not because I had a particular interest in jewellery, to start with. Then the clay bug really bit and that was that. I made and used beads. Lots of ’em.

It’s been a few years since my Granny was healthy enough to do shows with me and I still miss it. Still, doing shows and making stuff has been such a reliably positive part of my whole life that the sadness doesn’t take away from it… just reinforces how important it is to fight for the parts of life that bring you joy and energy.