Season's Greetings!

Best wishes for a warm & wonderful holiday season.....

& a happy & creative new year :  )

Holiday Sale!

Stop by my Etsy shop  
& use coupon code: HolidaySale2011 
to Save 20% thru Friday 12/2!

These simple, yet unique "Buoy Bracelets" make great affordable gifts. They come attractively wrapped, ready to slip into a card, stocking or your pocket for easy transport to your dinner hostess or office gift exchange.

The Shack also offers a selection of Fine Art Prints & Archival Quality Coastal Photographs, perfect gifts for your ocean loving friends & family.

Wishing you all a relaxing & enjoyable holiday season!  

Woo hoo!

The new & improved website

is up & running!

Summer gardens.....

Spicy new ring colors for fall!

"Salsa"

"Chili"






















"Cilantro"

They're comfy, colorful, handmade from recycled telephone wire & available here. 

Did I mention that 10% of profits will be donated to the Surfrider Foundation to protect our oceans & beaches!?

Skim & Boogie

In the Zone

I just like the way that folks get into their zone 
at the beach. 
Scenes from summer holiday weekend on Cali's
central coast.

Summer's Here!

Happy first day of Summer!
Enjoy.

Yep, that’s me & my dad!

He’s the guy who told me I could be anything that I wanted to be, got me my first camera, showed me how to use it, & let me play in his darkroom when I was little.

Besides the darkroom, he had a real old-time printing press, (making me the only kid in school with personalized pink pads of paper!), beautifully restored a classic MG TF (with a rumble seat!), hand drafted his letters with perfect serifs, made me a stained glass window with a surf scene from a Surfer Magazine cover, had an encyclopedic knowledge of old movie trivia, diligently wrote to his congressmen back in the typewriter age, built a beautiful mother of pearl inlaid mandolin, surprised us all by writing his first novel a few years ago & sent me to art school.

Quite an inspiring guy. Thanks dad!

Happy Fathers Day, all!

Tree Down

I had a great big tree outside my apartment. 

It was huge, & old & wise,

& provided a home for many birds. It was beautiful. I enjoyed listening to it's leaves rustling in the wind, & I'd wake to singing birds in the mornings.

It was deciduous, providing sunlight in the winter, & much needed shade in the summertime.

I enjoyed the play of light it's leaves & branches created on my walls

& windows,
& looked up to it from my second story kitchen window while doing the dishes & cooking.

I woke up to chainsaws & chipper shreders instead of birdsong this morning.
It took several men about five hours to remove my friend the tree. 
I wonder how long it took for it to grow that big, & I'll miss it more than I can say.
Thanks for all the comfort & pleasure you provided, my friend the tree.

Little Cactus

Big flower.

Huge fragrance.
It's spring!

Several years ago I worked in a nursery with a super enthusiastic eighteen year old who possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of esoteric botanical information. He used to bounce up & present me with his "useless fact for the day".

We shared a passion for fragrant plants, happily wandering around tending to plants with pollen on on the tips of our noses. 

One day he brought me a little three inch lump of a cactus pup & told me, "Full sun. You're gonna have a six inch flower that you can smell from ten feet away!"  I was skeptical, but as usual he was right. As long as this little guy is in the sun he happily heralds in spring each year.

Fresh goods: Pacific Eco Rings!

When we were kids on the way home from school we would find bits of telephone wire left behind by electricians working on the phone lines. 

It was like finding treasure. 





The scraps were brightly colored, & we would twist the wires & make things out of them, though I can't recall what we made.

I recently came across a bunch of recycled telephone wire, & found that I am still charmed by it's soft flexibility & wide array of stripey colors.  

I've designed a series of rings that I'm pretty excited about.



The soft matte finish of the coated wire has a comfy look & feel reminiscent of a sweater, & the stripes even fade with wear like a well loved garment.

Some rings are completely matte, while others feature a shiny bit of glass, stone, or shell.

Either way, they offer a soft, casual alternative to super shiny bling. 

Think jeans, sweaters, flannel.....
comfort.

I had a great time pairing the many(!) wire colors with accents to create a wide assortment of looks from

earthy & natural,

to soft retro color,

to bright jewel tones.
 




Did I mention that they combine & stack well!? 



Or that you can feel good about wearing them because they are handmade (by me!) in California from recycled telephone wire, 

& 10% of profits will be donated to the Surfrider Foundation!




The only problem I'm having is narrowing my choices, so I'm asking for your input. 

Swing by my website to check out the full collection, pick a few of your favorites, & post them in a comment at the bottom of this post.

(I did warn you that there are a lot of choices, right?) 

At the end of May I'll draw a name from the comments & send the lucky winner a single ring of their choice.

I'll even start! My favorite is Agave Nectar

.....but I keep stacking the others in so many combinations 

(ooooh, like Indian Summer with Green Hornet) that I think I need them all.....  

Enjoy, & thanks for your feedback!

A bit of botany

 

Archival quality prints available here