The Bracelet Slinger Blog

The road has a way of sweeping away the little worries of the mind and making room for ideas and creativity, and the cracks from any lingering heartbreak get filled in with this overwhelming feeling of freedom. Nothing puts everything back into perspective better than the road. Because really, the road is just one big...

Ever since a modern American history class I had in college, I’ve had an infatuation with the Beat Generation and Jack Kerouac. I felt I had found my people and a little less alone in the nonsense of my own head. The writers of the culture had a way of making madness feel welcoming and a little less lonely. They boldly brought random every day thoughts out into the open and turned thinking...

Holy shit.  Everything I attempted to write here just came off completely controlled and surfacey.  So I’m just going to go complete stream of consciousness here.  2020 fucking sucked but also it dug up some toxicity that was hiding in my own fucking house.  I will never be able to unsee this shit again.  My life feels completely in shambles right now and hopefully the worst is over.  I wake up...

Anything handmade carries a piece of the artist’s spirit with it and is parallel to the hand that makes it...it is vulnerable and on a journey. It’s the closest thing to having an object come to life.

Making something by hand isn’t about making something perfect, it’s about...

Five years ago and on my way to Alaska.  No cell service.  No GPS.  No plan.

I can’t say the fabulous line, “Anything that could go wrong, did,” but, I can say that the one thing that did go wrong ended up being one of my most treasured and lifelong memories...

I was looking for a place to rest and pulled off some random little road.  The Yukon isn’t...

When something is handmade, a step of someone's journey is printed on the piece and becomes a trace of life...like tracks in the snow.  And these bracelets are footprints of my journey.

On the road this summer, with the ever changing environment, I was inspired to try new materials.  I started using finer threads of various fibers.  But as I started using these finer threads... 

My brother, a successful screenwriter in Los Angeles, passed along a helpful tip known by writers - to be a good writer you have to be willing to “kill your darlings” - meaning that a word, a sentence, or character that you’ve come up with and have become attached to, might be the one thing holding you back from creating your best work...

I hope everybody had wonderful meals yesterday.  I spent the holiday with my cousin Liz who cooked a delicious spread of vegan food.  Her recipes and creations were incredible - from the cornbread stuffing, mashed potatoes, slightly spicy sweet potatoes, crispy Brussel sprouts, and the cranberry sauce...delicious!  And the pies!  Though her skills far surpass mine in the kitchen...I leave you with...

As I mentioned in the previous post, my metalsmithing teacher talked about how to tap into the right side of the brain by scribbling and looking for appealing shapes.  Though that didn't directly give me a shape I liked, it did get the wheels moving.  So here I am going to attempt to write...stream of consciousness...to try to push myself out of my seasonal creative hibernation mode...kind of like mental scribbling....

My creative process is heavily reliant on my brain, and without getting too far off topic, my brain is mostly a two gear automatic transmission engine bouncing between low and high gear.  In high gear, everything is firing and flowing as fast as the autobahn...it's amazing and wonderful and I wish I could be in high gear all the time.  Everything I make feels good - whether it looks good to other people, is besides the point.  But I say it's good because it feels so fucking amazing to make.  In low gear, everything...

I haven't been feeling well lately.  My brain feels like it wants to eat itself.  I would really like to know what is going on in there when it hits.  Not having visible proof that it is a chemical imbalance or malfunction of the neural pathways is the most crazy-making part of it all - not having proof leaves room for self blame and all kinds of doubts - which has indeed been overflowing my thoughts...