Liberated Lines

WINNER: Alicia!!!!!! Please email me at sunnyrisingleather@yahoo.com and I will point you toward your true north :) xoxoxoxo


Are you feeling lucky?

I am about to ensure that you do!

I feel blessed to know the wonderful woman I am introducing you to:

Her name is Robin E. Sandomirsky and she is awesome.

Fierce. Gentle. Healer extraordinaire.

Bridge builder to some of my greatest self-understanding.

I am hosting a gift-away here for her Instagram-based prose and poetry course,

Liberated Lines.

Just simply leave a comment 

on this post and you'll be entered in to be gifted a spot in this course.

It's really important work that Robin does in this world,

and I am so proud to call her dear to me.

I am so excited to experience this luscious course

and treat myself to something loving and magical through its process.

I hope that even if you do not have your name drawn on Friday (Yes that means you have two days to enter!) you'll join me in experiencing Robin's guidance and beauty.

xoxox,

Sunny

Gentle Manifesto

When I was thinking about changing my name to Anthony's some time before our wedding I was visited by a ghost of self long past.

I saw

little me, backlit by the sunset

joyfully out of breath running toward my childhood home.

Big me is walking downhill on Academy Avenue in jeans.

I am five and I am thirty.

We meet on the sidewalk on the left of my father's carefully tended hedges.

Little me is wearing a dress from last year's wedding

in which I am the flowergirl.

 I (we) am (are) happy in the summer evening.

There are lightning bugs starting to flash in the side yard,

darting their light between the lilac trees and the grape vine.

The yellow chiffon dress has faded to something much more dingy and there

are so many rips and tears from the rough play of a

tom-girl

but with the setting Western Pennsylvania sun behind my

sweet little head it looks like spun gold.

Like a cocoon.

A short and kinetic ball of sunshine.

Little me runs up to my grown self and waves goodbye,

smiling with a few lost baby teeth

before turning back to the sun,

racing bedtime to win.

It was after this vision that I decided to keep my given name.

I could not leave her behind.

That sweet girl I was, that is Sunny Rising.

That is innocent me before the world told all its stories.

Before I listened to anything but my mother and my heart.

I thought of her again here in Minnesota, states away from where she played her fleet-footed games.

I thought of her while I was wrapped up in fleece wondering how I got so tired and tense.

In caring for my business, for myself  I promise to care for the iterations of self that reside here in this space.

I vow to trust that someone who is waiting for something will be happy to wait one more day if it means a healthy and happy woman is sending it off.

I vow to let Little Sunny run toward the sunset hand in hand with my sweet son.

I promise to continue building and creating with love and integrity

that extends both to the intended and to my own hands and soul.

I charge myself with self-stewardship,

that I will not muscle past the guard who says to slow down,

even if they sound like they're crashing an awesome party of one.

.

I promise to let go of anything not completely vital to mine and my family's happiness and health.

I will comply with all posted placards and signs that indicate exhaustion,

that show me depletion.

I will fuck up.

I will decide to make a bundt cake at ten p.m. when I know damn well I should rest.

I will doodle about online well past my bedtime.

I will watch videos of cats dancing and such.

I will worry about things I cannot control,

lose sleep over those I love.

My wisdom will shepherd me back to the right place just like my mom always does. I have to trust that.

This year, this sweet and promising year will see a very exciting line of thought in metals and leather.

Omigod, so beautiful.

It will require discipline to realize so many of the things that I wish to

make physical

but I know, I trust

that if I tread the path gently and with love

it will feel even better

and little Sunny will be much more likely to match me, two steps for every one of my grown feet.

Won't you join me in promising to tend to the quietest and most tender of your selves?

A gentle manifesto for the creative soul is the order of the day, today and always.

xoxoxoxo,

Sunny



Sweetest things

HERE

.

xoxo,

Sunny

Shop Update Tomorrow

Oh hey, Beauties!

Really thrilled to say that I am having one last shop update tomorrow before I close the shops

for a few weeks.

Some R&R is required and oh it is coming!

There will be a few pairs of special magic spell earrings and a 

hydrangea ring with a sweet little dab of iolite on one petal: good stuff.

I do hope you'll stop by

Sunny Rising Metal if you're around the web.

Should have everything in around noonish.

xoxoxo,

Sunny

Sweet Things

In the Metal Shop

now.

And here is the sweetest thing of all: an interview with the one and only Kick Ass Witch, Joanna DeVoe

HERE

There is singing involved ;)
.

xoxo,

Sunny

Moon Ring.

Definitely one of the most beloved pieces I've made.

I love the moon.

I love honoring her with a valentine every once in a while.

HERE

.

xoxo,

Allison

Knuckling Down

It always starts with a vivid and brief thought: a flash of an idea... a melody or a thing that makes me go "hmm..." and then it passes.

Thunder way in the distance.

Hours pass.

Life lopes.

Suddenly it's on me like a hot hand and I just know I'm in for sleepless nights and 

a heady combination of misery and ecstasy 

that won't be over until it's over.

This isn't a complaint, just an accurate account of a creative process.

It's both amazing and exhausting and I know now after all these years that the rhythm is present

and ceaseless. It's so sensual and important that everything else begs to be swatted away, "Not now, empty cupboards...go away dust bunnies, I've got to work!"

Finished pieces will come out clean and good and frequently,

any hour Orion sleeps will fill with tasks that lead to some gorgeous end.

My sleep will be unbroken and full of dreams

where I am driving to fix a problem

and I wake up relieved to be back in my conscious life.

I feel on fire in the best and worst of ways.

All this to say, I've discovered the thrill of painting portrait on leather.

Lightly tooled.

Painted with loving and certain fingers.

Jesus walks, I am freaking out.

My saving grace in this imaginative storm is my son,

who wakes me with a funny word every day, so funny that I need to write them down.

"Exercise!"

"Daddy in a Boat!"

"Cupcake Bat!"

"Mama Leg!"

"Read book now, yeah!"

"Chicken ok?!?"

He never takes a backseat to my muse.

I've found in the last few weeks his little soul has bewitched me so badly that

at night I ache to go in and wake him up just to see what he'll say,

what he'll request.

It sounds silly, but he saves me from myself effortlessly

and I find a balance struck more than before.

Still exhausted, just smiling in the midst of it all.

Love,

Sunny

Come Along

Hand in hand let's look at the treasures of our block

in this winter drought

The spent and the fallen

the stubborn and the full

.

the flora rooted in this magical state

of California

with its rich soil and tremulous ground

needing rain in the worst way

but still lovely

and bursting with magic

.

Let's pay attention to the details

and believe in Greater Hands

braver souls

and abundant miracles.

xoxo,

Sunny and O

Metal Shop Sale

"SUNNYWINTER"

is the code to enter for 20% off your purchase 

today and tomorrow only

HERE

Happy New Year from my family to yours!

xoxo,

Sunny