Towson Town Festival This weekend!

Hi everyone! Let's pray for no rain this year! If you get the chance, come out and say hello at Towson Town Festival this weekend! It's going to be lots of fun as always and I have a TON of new designs that I'm super excited to show! It's more playful, it's more fun.

I'll also have my Haiti relief pendants out for sale once again. As the media shy away from this topic, it becomes increasingly more important to keep the awareness alive. There are still hundred and hundreds of people without proper living conditions!

Can't make it to the show? I finally have a very, very tiny selection of my new work up for sale under the SHOP section of the website. We'll be putting more up with a proper shopping cart hopefully soon!

Last minute prep for tomorrow then it's lights out for me!

-Amy

Becoming Better by Being Yourself

hello everyone! So it's been awhile once again. Things are really moving right along! I've been working steadily and have been preparing for the next shows with the help of countless cups of green tea and early, early mornings! As you all have probably deduced from the new photos on the website, I'm now working in a new direction. I had been putting off this post because I wanted to have a wonderful in depth explanation for such a huge change. But after a bunch of drafting and erasing I realized it was just easier to come out and say it plainly: 

I always liked the style I was working in, but realized that I had been trying to fit myself into a category and mold what I was creating to fit an exact image. I finally had the courage to let go of that and just let myself MAKE. I just began creating without preconceived notions and what came out of it, what I saw, was something so much more personal. I thought I was happy creating what I was back then, but now I realize that it was only a pathway to what I have found now. I'm super excited to be sharing this with you all and I truly hope that you understand my choice to change.  

The work I'm creating now is filled with a fusion of my passions, loves, and curiosities. It includes a range of materials including metals, clays, stones, and fibers.  I really feel like more of myself is reflected in what I'm making now than ever was before. It's worth mentioning that this creative rebirth of sorts  marks the 5 year anniversary of of this creative journey that has taken me to so many places and introduced me to so many wonderful people. It's exciting to see the progression in my work and  where it has led my business today. 

 I guess I want to end this incredibly long post by calling out to other artists who may be feeling confined, uneasy or unsettled about the direction of their own work. I urge you to push out  of your walls that may have built up around you, and simply get back to the origins of what  led you to create in the first place. Allow  yourself to create and be inspired  by what you love and find interesting, not what you think others will find interesting. There is a fine balance between creating solely what you love, and creating solely for money. I truly believe  that balance can best be achieved by simply being true to yourself.  

Thanks so much to everyone for following  my work! It's my sincerest hope that you will enjoy the new pathways Sun Ah Blair Jewelry is taking!

love, peace, and happy creating, in whatever you may be doing.

-Amy

Sustainable Living LONG POST!

So this is going to be a lengthy post just as a heads up :)  I think the gorgeous weather has gotten me in a really good mood, and when I'm happy, I work hard! It just so happens that EVERYTHING I made/ did this week was eco forward so I'm here to post all about it! 

1) The first thing I didn't  really do but it has been a dream of mine for about 5 years to have my own vegetable garden.  So Kirk kindly built me one in our backyard and I couldn't be more excited! I don't believe this will nix my grocery shopping for good, but it should provide a healthy amount of local organic ingredients to the dinner table this summer. 

Kirk's Awesomeness in vegetable garden form

(No, this is not what it looks like...)

2) Linen Napkins! I finally got around to making them. Now  we not only have napkins (which were a scarce commodity in our kitchen) but they are reusable. Hooray for reducing and reusing! Plus I got to use my hello Kitty sewing machine Let's all rejoice!

My Hello Kitty is no joke! It's one tough flowery aqua blue machine! 8 layers of fabric were no problem at all.

3) This next one might sound a bit strange : Grass Paper. YES It's so cool and so green ( no pun intended)  I've always loved paper making if you didn't know. I used to make circles of paper using two coffee cans and a screen when I was little. I've gone and graduated from the cans and have since built myself a nice deckle and mold. So this was a small sidetrack from my original recycling project which was Trader Joe's bags into grocers cardstock. I just couldn't resist trying this though! 

I won't lie, the pulp smells pretty strong at first but the results are amazing! For my first try at it I was super impressed!  It dries really fast in the sun and I was able to cut and bend my first pieces. The best part is how clean and 100% biodegradable it is!  I will be using this in my packaging somehow.

A large vat of grass stain just waiting to happen!

So pretty and so environmentally friendly!

3) Last but not least, as you might have guessed, I am attempting to create a greener business from an artistic stand point. A lot of changes have happened for my business and are still happening but I have officially found a new direction for my work and I'm super excited to be sharing this news with you all! For now, that is all I will say! 

 Also as a last reminder, on April 9  we are officially changing our Blog  address from http://appusdesign.blogspot.com 

to    http://sunahjewelry.blogspot.com