It's an honor to introduce you to Melissa from Chandler, AZ who is witty, artistic and approaches her jewelry making with whimsy.
1. Tell us your story.What brought you to now?
Well it’s certainly been
a journey with ups and definitely a lot of downs! I began in college studying Biology which I
loved but realized rather quickly that I didn’t have the dedication required to
spend my nights with my nose in a book rather than going out dancing with my
friends, then I switched to Business and Culinary Arts which I also loved but
after spending one day in the back of Olive Garden with a whole bunch of
latinos cursing and yelling in Spanish I quickly came to the conclusion that
restaurants were also not the place for me. Soon I met my husband, got pregnant
with my daughter, puked my guts out for eight months straight before giving up on
college for the time being. A year later I decided to return to college fully
intending on graduating with a Bachelors in Illustration. Two weeks after
classes began I found out I was pregnant for the second time and the worship of
the porcelain god (the toilet)….continued…BUT I didn’t give up on school! I
LOVED my art classes. It wasn’t until my husband graduated and was offered a
job in AZ, which we couldn’t refuse that I decided to put school aside for the
time being. A few months before leaving a new neighbor moved in and we quickly became
friends. She showed me her vast collection of beads and the things that she was
working on. Within a month I realized that jewelry making was my new found passion.
I saw a lot of what I had learned in design classes I could easily apply to the
jewelry I was making and I fell in love with the idea that my work was being
seen on people everyday whereas a painting or even an illustration would more
than likely end up hanging in someone’s house for only a handful of people to
see regularly or buried on a shelf in book. The love of storytelling I realized
I had in my Illustration classes I found that I could relay in a lot of my designs
and a lot of the pieces I have designed, I have created with characters from
literature or out of my head, in mind.
2. Outside of creating, what do you do?
Well I have two small children
under the age of four so my average day is usually spent running to play dates,
filling sippy cups, changing dirty diapers, reading stories and tripping
ov- I mean picking up toys all with the
theme song of Dora the Explorer playing in the background. Other than that I still
love to paint even though I don’t really have the free time for it anymore. I
have an unspeakable urge to learn urban gardening and to have a vermicompost
(sp?) hidden under my sink which my husband whole heartedly opposes with the
words “unsanitary” and “completely
unnatural” in his argument . I love interior design and probably would have spent
a few semesters trying that had I had more time to bungle. I love the outdoors
(minus peeing in the woods and large angry bears that would eat me), love
writing and have a deep love of bluegrass though my attempts at learning any
musical instrument have been comical at best.
3.What does handmade mean to you?
Well I think there’s a
difference between the words handmade and homemade, sometimes the simple
difference in quality and the ability to produce quality goods over and over
again, Now that’s certainly not to knock
Grandma’s apple pie recipe or Great Aunt
Marge’s afghan that is lovingly draped over your sofa. Quite the contrary I
think that Handmade is simply an evolution of Homemade. Where 50 years ago
quilts, cross stitches and the like were simply things that were made to
enhance the home and were usually kept within the family now in the past decade
or so serve as the inspiration behind handmade items that are being produced
with the same love and attention to detail but are being sold to others and
shipped to places the maker may only dream of visiting. It’s really a beautiful process and when you
hold a handmade item in your hands, like a rare antique, you can’t help but
wonder about its maker and its journey to creation. I think in the corporate
world we live in today there is a great yearning for this sense of connection
to others, the belief that values of honesty, hard work, love, true beauty and
craftsmanship still exist within the general population.
4. What handmade item that you own means the most to you?
Well I
would definitely say one of the handmade bears that my grandmother, who is
sadly now blind, made for me when I was a child. A few of them have her
initials hand stitched into their backsides which makes me giggle now when I
think about it too hard but will make them that much more sentimental later
on. I have passed many of them down to
my two young children, which serves as a testament to their great craftsmanship
and durability having survived my childhood and now holding up very well under
the abuse of two more.
5. What’s my secret in life? Any words to live by?
I remember as a child when I
wasn’t happy about something my mother would always say to me “It could be
worse” and my response would always be “Well it could be a crap lot better
too!”. Now that probably sounds very cynical and very ungracious but I certainly
never meant it that way. What I always meant but couldn’t sufficiently
articulate at 13 was “there’s a way that this could be better just allow me to
throw a counterproductive and emotional
fit until I can figure it out" . Let me explain a little more. I heard
someone say once “don’t waste your time beating a dead horse”, meaning don’t give up, but if the method
isn’t working don’t keep doing the same stupid thing over and over again
praying that it will work this billionth time.
We’re all intelligent human beings and what makes us different from
every other creature on earth is our ability to reason and to problem solve. Don’t
ever be complacent. If you’re unhappy with the direction your life is taking
muster up the courage to change it. There’s always a solution to our problems
if we’ll just stop what we’re doing long enough to: 1. Clear our heads long
enough to identify what the real problem is and 2. Face that problem head on
and figure out a realistic solution. We only have a slated amount of time on
this planet we might as well be happy right?
One more thought I live by. Again I don’t know the name of
the genius who said it but “Be yourself because everyone else is taken”. That
one’s pretty self-explanatory. Don’t waste your time trying to be someone or
something else. We all have so many varied God given talents and quirks. Find
out who you are and never stop being you no matter what.
6. Where do you draw Inspiration?
I am always inspired by my
children, mainly from the books and the characters in them. One of my newer
designs was actually inspired by a combination of the books Olivia and
Charlotte’s Web and my grandmothers small farm in upstate NY. Since I studied
Illustration in college I can just never get away from the idea of telling a
story in my designs even if that story isn’t discernible in the finished piece.
I am continually inspired by the
memories I have growing up in New England. Maybe I’m just getting older and my
memory is prematurely slipping but I can’t help but think I had a pretty great
childhood, nestled in a truly beautiful nook of the country and these
memories often serve to help me create the country, shabby chic,
backdrop that a lot of my designs and my etsy shop boast.
7. Share your top 5 favorite web sites:
(Don’t go to them now finish reading my incredibly
intriguing and brilliant feature first)
2.
Facebook (who doesn’t waste too much time on
there right?)
3.
Etsy (Where my shop and so many other brilliant
artisans sell their wares)
4.
Junk Market Style This is an
awesome sort of blog where you and others post what you do with random crap you
find to make superiorly awesome usable and decorative goods. There are also a
series of books written by the authors of this blog that are absolutely great.
5.
Apparently I DON’T spend enough time on the
internet because I can only come up with four at this time.
8. Where did creating start for you?
A few years ago after I got
married my mom sent this huge file of all the crap she had collected over the
years as I was growing up. Complete with everything from the predictable stick
figure drawings of the family with the house in the background and the sun in
the top right corner to my dental records from when I was nine and had to have
13 cavities filled (Yes I liked candy but wasn’t a fan of toothpaste), there
was also included all of my report cards from grade school. As I perused them
and reminisced about how bad a student I was even at such a young age, I
realized a recurring theme in the remarks of all my teachers. “Missy doodles
too much.”, “Missy needs to put away the crayons and pay attention to me.”, “Missy shows a lot of talent in art but needs to learn to read or she will be
useless to society”. Okay that last one maybe I embellished a little but you
get the general gist of the attitude of my elementary teachers. So obviously I
think I was more creative than anything else from an early age. I just can’t
remember not being creative.
9. Where do you sell your items?
My fabulous etsy shop is located
here:
Victorian Swag
And I am also a featured handmade artist at the
Velvet Boutique in Chandler AZ and will be seeking out other local boutiques in the
coming months.
10. Give a shout-out to a fellow handmade artist like yourself!
Well I have not met her or talked to her yet but I am a huge
cyber fan of
Emily Winfield Martin. So here I am shouting to her “EMILY I LOVE
YOUR WORK! YOUR ILLUSTRATIONS ARE CRAZY BRILLIANT!!
