Aerial Melodies

It isn’t really late April/early May anymore without a visit to Spoutwood. My fourth year and it just keeps on giving, refreshing my senses and calming my world. I love going and seeing all of my friends and the goodies that vendors have to offer and getting my favorite taco salad (no really, it’s yummy). There’s the usual performers - like Frenchie and the Punk! - and newcomers like a beautiful silks act. It was kind of hot on Saturday and Jenn wasn’t feeling well in the morning so we don’t have any of Sarah’s usual “fairy photoshoot” pictures. In fact, I don’t have a full group shot at all. How did this happen?! Sigh. I was so happy to see Sarah and Jenn, Kat and Corey, and Sara. Corey and Ryan are so funny together, and it was great to joke around in our hotel room (which was freaking HUGE for no reason) and take more dips in the pool than we took showers. I mean, not that we didn’t shower, but… POOL. ;)

At risk of further implicating myself, let’s just go onward to some of my favorite photos!

[caption id=”” align=”aligncenter” width=”500” caption=”Ryan made a new fairy friend - Twig!”][/caption]

[caption id=”” align=”aligncenter” width=”500” caption=”One of the silks performances~”][/caption]

[caption id=”” align=”aligncenter” width=”375” caption=”This is where we got engaged in 2011! :)”][/caption]

[caption id=”” align=”aligncenter” width=”500” caption=”Love”][/caption]

[caption id=”” align=”aligncenter” width=”500” caption=”Sarah teaching Ryan to hoop”][/caption]

You can see all of the photos here! It really is a magical place and I’m a little disappointed that I took so few photos, but I certainly keep all those laughs and smiles in my mind for rainy days. I can’t wait to do it all over again next year.

Original Article

A lot of good things have happened over the last week! I will try to sort them out as best as I can… prepare yourselves! :)

First off, I moved into Loving Local on Wednesday evening and got a chance to preview all of the fantastic goodies that will be there! My table is front and center when you walk in, so I tried to make it as colorful and fun as I could. It’s been a lot of hard work prepping for this plus the show in Athens at the end of the month, but I feel like everything came together beautifully. I can’t wait for the shop to open Monday and attend the grand opening on Thursday!

Would you believe that lace table cloth was originally one half of a pair of curtains? $7.50 at Goodwill, my friends. Thrifty finds are key, and the beautiful mirrored cabinet was another great find. The other half of the lace? Being used to make wedding decor. Double duty! Oh, my friend and often times boothmate, Monica’s Handmade Bath & Body, is also in the shop. You can see her soaps peeking out in the back of the above photograph, but I was also excited to see how my label designs for her lotion sticks and chapsticks turned out. Everything looked amazing so of course I snapped an extra photo… ;) It’s so wonderful to see my graphic design work floating around in the real world and not on a computer screen!

Next up is the Color Run! The Color Run is a 5K fundraiser held in various cities. Every 1K, walkers/runners get blasted with color so by the end of the race, they look like they ran through a rainbow. :) Ryan and I opted to volunteer because I needed to stay clean to visit my parents later… and if by “clean” you mean “hot pink” then I’d say I was successful, ha.

We had such a great time with the pink crew; everyone was super friendly, fun loving, and cheerful considering we’d all been up since 6am on a Saturday morning! Our group was left without an iPod from the sponsors by accident, so my Pandora came to the rescue with 80s music and hair bands and all kinds of rock n’ roll goodness. One woman walked over to me and goes “THANK YOU for playing the best music on the track.” Was there ever a doubt, m’lady? ;) We had such a blast dancing in the pink haze to Van Halen and Journey and Heart. It was such a wonderful time and I can’t wait to see the professional photos taken near our area!

The only other happenings right now is prep for Athens. I made a heating pad and two coffee sleeves to donate for the fundraiser at my gym, so I’m going to go to the cookout portion and cheer on everyone doing the fundraiser WOD as well. Two of the top 30 female athletes in the Southeast region! Couldn’t be two more awesome women. :) Of course I have no photos of these things so instead I leave you with a photo of Ryan’s coworker, Chloe:

Original Article

‘Sunset on the Horizon’ by AerialMelodies

A collection of items that remind this magpie of a setting sun against a vibrantly colored sky…

Red Rose and Tangerine Orang… RusticGem $44.00	Sunset on Pamlico Sound - Or… ArtistiicAband… $50.00	Sterling silver earrings, sw… SundaezChild $30.00	Cubist Sunset Purse WasabiFairy $125.00
Red Mustard Gradient Texture… balanced $38.00	Chainmaille Bracelet: “… helixchainmail… $20.00	Effervescence Earrings - Peb… SihayaDesigns $24.00	Deposit for Ombre Sunset bra… greenatheartru… $225.00
Mountain Sunset Enamel Earri… ArtfulOtter $80.00	Summer Sunset heart banner/ … LullabyMobiles $25.00	Orange-turquoise-Set of 2 or… HansHolzkopf $33.00	FIREFOX—Ombre Full Head Cli… faebellehair $125.00
Summer sunset knitted scarf…. lainenbois $30.00	Coral Earrings, Floral Acces… apocketofposie… $22.00	Almost GONE - Hand dyed Harv… abbyandellie $3.75	Original Drawing “Dream… susankennedy $41.99

Treasury tool supported by three quick questions

Original Article

This is a unique Featured Friday. It’s not a particular shop today but rather an entire store that is about to have it’s grand opening and yours truly is one of the artists that will be featured there!

This month, I will be one of a few featured artists in a new art boutique opening up in the Brookhaven area, Loving Local. The idea is for local artists to have a space to show their products, and no two artists are the same. Too often these galleries and boutiques grow so large and everything starts to become muddied - is this her product? his product? my product? - so I’m excited that Loving Local’s intention is to keep it truly local as well as making sure there is diversity. Diversity is good for artists and for customers; everyone is guaranteed to see a variety of products! I’m particularly excited that this is a collection of artists in the immediate area… While I love all handmade goods I sometimes feel the word “local” is used so liberally. Oregon is not local to Atlanta even if your mom lives here. ;)

On April 19th, the artists will come together at the shop to meet and greet with customers over the art, music, food, and drinks. If you’re in the Atlanta area, stop on by! The entire shopping area is super cute, plus how can you say no to live music and tasty treats? :) It’s also a nice way to put a face to the product and get to know the artists. I know I’m excited to meet all of them!

[caption id=”” align=”aligncenter” width=”500” caption=”All for Loving Local - it’s grown tenfold since this photo!”][/caption]

This is what I have mostly been working up toward. I am, for the most part, done. I have to sew my table runner and make sure everything is just so for the display, add my tags and wrap my coasters, but it’s nothing impossible. I have all of Sunday to work it out. I’m so grateful to be a part of this shop and thrilled to see how it grows and develops.

If you want to keep up with the shop happenings, like them on facebook: Loving Local

You can also find the shop online: Loving Local Art

Original Article

Just a small overhaul on the blog today. Decided to make it branded more toward me and less toward being solely a photo blog, though of course there will still be plenty of photos to view. :)

Still plugging away sewing pouches and working on some heating pads and lavender sachets. Need more stuffing for the pads, but I can at least get the sachets knocked out. Fun times!

As far as fitness goes, I’m at new personal records! 75# back squat, 55# shoulder press, and 195# deadlift! It’s funny to see the scores for everyone throughout the day because my first two numbers are lower than most but my deadlift blows a lot of people out of the water. Apparently I have a strong back and shoulders, which I have to give credit where it’s due to Crossfit workouts because my neck used to be weak and have daily pains but now? The episodes are so rare and fleeting that a simple massage fixes it. No longer is it hindering my ability to move about and it’s helping me get further along on my lifts. Win win!

Original Article

I absolutely cannot wait to be doing this again:

Minus the candy, I suppose… it was nearly Halloween at the time of this photograph and we were all encouraged to have some goodies for the kids. Or, you know, for the people running your booth who may or may not have consumed all the Butterfinger on their own. I’m innocent, I swear!

If you’re the Georgia area at the end of April, come out to Athens for the festival! It’s two days so there’s plenty of time to visit and pick up all kinds of handcrafted goodies from all the vendors. I’ll be sharing a booth with the amazing Monica’s Handmade Bath & Body once again, so if you are there, come find us! :)

Original Article

Original post may be found here.

These last few weeks have, of course, revolved heavily around crafting ALL THE THINGS. With my products due in Loving Local April 9th (ahead of the grand opening on April 19 - will post more info later in this post!) and then Athens Indie Craftstravaganzaa at the end of April, it’s safe to say that I have a lot of work ahead of me. The good news is that last weekend I holed myself away at my friend’s house - she’s the amazing talent behind the yummiest natural soaps, Monica’s Homemade Bath & Body! - and while she toiled away experimenting with new scents, I knocked out 12 coffee sleeves. We joked a bit about how she can make a batch of soaps much more quickly than I can sew yet I can spot check every step of my process while she has to hope that the soap sets correctly over a couple of weeks. It’s true that sewing is slow… but man I would be a happy little birdie if I woke up to a home that smelled of sweet lemongrass every day! :)

Prior to the weekend, I made 10 coaster sets. Most will come to Athens, but I saved a few for Loving Local. Of course I also still make jewelry and have found myself happily wire wrapping while watching Ryan play Mass Effect 3. ;)  Yet sewing is what I keep coming back to and it’s so fun exploring through a rainbow of thread to see what can come of it~

I may or may not have a faithful and unwavering love of all things Gutermann. <3

Once I choose my fabric (no photos of my piles of fabric that have taken over three entire cabinets…) and my thread, I move on to zippers because it’s zippered pouch time in the Aerial Melodies household!

I also may or may not organize everything by color. RAINBOWS. :D

After everything is picked out, I work my magic on the machine or fight the machine depending on it’s daily mood swings, ha. Tonight I sat down to sew some more pouches while Ryan was picking up dinner and lo and behold, I discovered a way to work faster. Not just saving a little time; this was 30 entire minutes worth of not having to fight and kick and claw my way through a pouch. Essentially I replaced a foot on the machine and suddenly the entire pouch just fell right into place. Same pouch design and look, but for once I wasn’t in the middle step of zipper attachment and arguing with the zipper and the machine about how to put it all together. Whipping out a bunch of these is going to be a lot more fun than before, and I really loved putting zippers on ALL THE THINGS before. As in it was ridiculous how much I loved zippers. I’m pretty sure my sewing class at Whipstitch thought I was crazy. ;)

At the end of the day, I wind up with a towering stack of stuff! Everything is slowly getting more and more organized, which goes against the core of my being a little bit - artists thrive in chaos, they say! - but I kind of like being able to watch the colors change, content grow, and patterns brushing up against one another right and left. It’s fun! Also, I may or may not take a quick sniff of the lavender sachet box… What? It smells so good.

Loving Local pieces! There’s another set of boxes for Athens/Etsy not pictured.

So that’s my current life in a nutshell! Full time job » Gym » Sewing » Dinner » More Sewing » Sleep. Lather, rinse, repeat. My friends probably think I’m crazy, but in the end one has to have a passion for what they love to do. I’m certainly finding mine. :)

If you’re in the Atlanta area and want to come support the opening of Loving Local, please come out! It will be on Thursday, April 19th from 7-9pm. Loving Local is located at 1418 Dresden Drive Suite 120, Atlanta, GA.

There’s a lot of good news to go around my household these days!

First, I heard today that my boothmate and I both got into the Athens Indie Craftstravaganzaa Spring 2012 show! It will be a two-day show this time so I’ll have an overnight in Athens. I’m hoping the show does well and that I can refrain from buying everything from everyone else (because I will totally do that). If you’ve never been but will be in the area, it’s a real blast and carries such a wide variety of talent. This season will also be host to around 20 or so vintage vendors, so if antiques and unique old treasures are your thing, you’ll definitely want to come by. Personally I’m hoping that the owners of Farm Burger have their food cart there again… that was some dreamy food. Mmm!

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