Giftaway: Secret Garden Earrings

And the winner is: cloudgathererholdmedown !!!!!

Write to me at sunnyrisingleather@yahoo.com and we'll get shipping squared away!

Thanks to everyone who entered here and on IG.

xoxoxox,

Allison

I've always been insatiable for some Grand Answer for everything in life.

For the book that makes everything finally make sense,

all the glory and the horror of this earthly experience,

all the mysteries of what lies beyond the last breath we'll take.

I have not found one, which doesn't panic me the way I thought it might.

It's simply a game of waiting and seeing,

of knowing that things either work out or they don't.

That people stay in your life or the thread unravels.

That desires give way to a million impasses

and the years are shocking in their speed 

and your own aging face is at once tender

and funny

and sad.

And beautiful.

I am learning that there are some things that can be embraced to carve out a meaningful

and enjoyable time here on earth, and these bits and bobs have taken years to unearth.

Years to find the key that unlocks the door.

Years to turn the dirt

Years to plant the seeds.

Creating a sustainable joy,

living from a place that is more than merely just a constant response to stimuli…

That has been my secret garden,

planted and sown while living

the mundane

and the miraculous

.

Here is my magic spell for Good Life:

1. Be curious long after it's acceptable.

2. Love every single one of your thoughts, no matter how dark, no matter how fleeting. Then let them go.

3. Find your people and tend to them. Let them tend to you.

4. If someone wants to speak only of dramas or secrets with you, know that your involvement will only lead to sadness. For everyone involved.

5. Pause before you let your emotions run wild: the tide turns whether or not we fight it.

6. Make space for spacious thinking: sketchbooks, coffee, meditation.

7. Let an animal into your heart. Yes, it will hurt when they go.

8. Do things that make your heart race in a good way.

9. Grieve properly.

10. Be grateful.

11. Have a truly intimate relationship with whatever you perceive as divine.

12. Knuckle down.

13. Surrender.

14. Be of service

I am taking a small break -

in the meanwhile I would like to gift these beautiful earrings to a reader:

leave a comment here or on my Instagram 

and one lovely line will be randomly chosen.

In your comment, tell me one of your secrets of life.

I am always excited to learn how others live their very best selves.

A winner will be chosen on December 8th.

Good luck and thank you from the bottom of my heart for being here

all these years, or even just today for the first time.

xoxoxo,

Sunny

Magic For Shorter Days

Bare Branch Magic Spells

Ray Earrings.

As Above so Below Magic Spell Earrings with Variscite and three leaf clover.

This little trinity is focused on vitality.

Not sure about you, but the shorter days trick me: I confuse resting more

with some sort of white flag behavior

when really it is a deep honoring of the season.

How could I help but be more gentle when the very earth is going inward itself?

This week's focus was roots and bare branches

and the beauty of the sun we DO have, despite there being less of it.

Here's to this magical time: I hope you find your pearl in the dark.

.

.

.

Trickling into the

Metal Shop

tonight.

xoxo,

Sunny

A Life Most Ordinary. Plus Some Magic.

Kingman Turquoise Ginkgo Maidenhair Lace Lichen Magic Spells. An earful!!!!

Variscite Feather Magic Spells. Pepper Flower. Fern Inverse Chevron.

Odd Woman In Trinity, Kingman Turquoise Edition. Jacaranda frond. Pepper Flower.

Lavender and Dried Grass Magic Spells.

Three Leaf Clover Necklace

Of all the kinda opulent beauty that came out of the studio these last few weeks, I am most taken with the three leaf clover necklace.

It reminds me of my twenties, of the years where I yearned to be a four leaf clover,
to be seen and acknowledged and celebrated.

I didn't realize those wants came from a place that hurt.
I thought they were just fine, just ambition.
They are very normal thoughts, and I was a very normal kid for having them.


As the years have flown I've had both peak experiences and extraordinary chances and I have enjoyed them all, every one.

A few days ago, though, I was in the back yard of our little cottage and I spied patches of clover.
I ran my hands across those little vital bits
and thought of my twenty-something self,
and I thought of this ordinary day
with my son
in the yard
and how it is the result of miracles
and magic.

I thought of how it would feel to tell the seeker of the four-leaf-life
that she would find 99% of her joys from simple daily
things:
the wash of pink across the dawning sky
the laughter of her son
the fall of her hammer as she made beauty
the sip of coffee alone in a still house
holding a quiet man's hand at dinner
whipped cream
two cats on a lap in the winter
etc
…

I'd like to think she'd put aside her seeking for a minute
and look at the magnificence of what IS
and find it suffices
and even nourishes
her soul
.


All of these lovely pieces will be in the

Metal Shop

shortly.

xoxo,
Sunny

Raw Beauty.

Gemstone Keychains for the rockhound in all of us,

gorgeous everyday luxury.

Amethyst

Celestine

Peridot

Rose Quartz

Aquamarine

White Quartz.

HERE

with love,

Sunny

Winter's On Its Way

Golden Root and Bramble Earrings with Faceted Tourmaline in pink and sage green.

Golden Early Winter Branch Earrings

Layering Magic Necklace with Fiery Coober Pedy Opal. Sage and Feather.

RESERVED

It's been so long since I've written here at length.

I feel like the active living is what's been on the books these days, not so much the documenting.

I blink and a month is gone,

lost in a fever of creating and communicating and loving.

I keep thinking I will burn out and then I realize that everything is balanced:

there is the raising of the boy

tempered with the creating of the beauty (well, he's beauty too, but that's just understood)

and the loving of the people I love

and the lifting of the heaviest weights I can

and then there's the eating and sleeping and details.

Sometimes a sad day is just a detail,

where three years ago I would have reached out to community and requested fond thoughts

or suffered for the sadness.

These days suffering is a luxury I don't want to spend my time on.

So when my heart gets heavy with whatever I get into the studio

and it pours out in work.

Winter has historically been so hard on my emotions

and almost like putting up canned food, I am stocking my art

to nourish both myself and the woman who will wear it.

I am painting bare branches in sterling before the branches here get bare.

I am paving my path in light before I lose myself to the darker days.

This is O's first winter with complicated linguistics, with appreciation and questions about the sun and the moon and the early evening sky…

it makes me feel brave, telling him of winter's beauty, as though I've loved it myself.

And then I find myself loving these inward-nature changes as I explain them to him.

His face aglow with wonder, I cannot help but smile.

His questions tip the scale to beauty, every time.

While I miss this space very much, miss the space I made to write down 

life

I am bowled over by the life I am living.

I'm following the order of things

with interest and wonder

.

The Early Winter Earrings will be in the Metal Shop

later today.

xoxo,

Sunny

More Magic!

HERE

.

xoxo,

Sunny