Wire Wrapped Rings

I've begun to add wire-wrapped rings to the Nature Inspires shop! I'm so excited, I've had design ideas for these for a while, and finally had the chance to make a few yesterday. The free form pearls are my favorites! Perhaps I will wear at my wedding in a week???

New Developments and Outdoor Bridal

It has been quite a while since I posted! I've been busy since the last post and much has happened with Nature Inspires. I've since added many wire-wrapped jewelry designs, updated most of the photos and have begun to create with outdoor wedddings in mind!

Perhaps it is due the fact that I have been planning my own outdoor wedding lately (I get married nine days!) but I have come to love designing and making jewelry with outdoor brides and bridesmaids in mind. So far there are several earrings, rings, and necklaces, and I will soon be adding hair accessories too. I now also make most all of the ear wires in my designs. As seen in the photos below.


Sterling Silver and Pink Agate



The Pure Collection

Pure: simple, unmodified.

Some essential oils are simply beautiful on their own. The pure aroma of certain flowers or wood can, in my opinion, offer a supreme aromatic experience compared to many of the blends out there. This is why I have chosen to create The Pure Collection of single-note solid perfumes. These scents deserve the spotlight. Right now this collection includes Ylang Ylang, Jasmine, Rose, Cedarwood, and Rosewood. They can be purchased individually, or as a gift set. For the singles, I have found the perfect little circular boxes to package them in! Each is tied with ribbon, ready to give as a gift. I have had a great time making these solid perfumes. It took several times to get the recipe how I wanted, but it turned out fantastic and they may just be my favorite thing I’ve made for Nature Inspires Botanicals yet. I also had fun making labels for them (I finally found label paper I can print on at home that doesn’t smudge!) I may eventually add to this collection, but for now, I feel these five are most fitting.

The world may be confusing, each day may present its own frustrations, but when making these single-note solid perfumes the world, for a time became a little simpler. Likewise, when I wear one of these I am calmed by the simplicity of such a singular, beautiful scent.

I hope you all enjoy these as much as I do.

Spring Foraging Fever

The snow in northern Vermont has turned to sloppy piles of brown and grey slush and there are still a lot of these piles around – but it is melting, sort of.

I’ve been wearing my mud boots the past few days, relishing in the squish of thawed earth beneath my feet. It’s a mess, but I am beyond excited because this means that soon there will be buds on the trees, new shoots poking through the leaf duff in the woods, fiddlehead ferns will begin unfurling, and wild flowers will begin to paint the world in my favorite colors. Simply said, I cannot wait! I’m eager to begin foraging for natural elements to use in my jewelry making this spring and summer.

In the fall I fell in love with the art of using dried and pressed foliage in my window necklace jewelry. I intend to forage for many more things to incorporate into jewelry windows this year including ferns and flowers and who knows what else! I’m not sure exactly why I am so in love with these little windows – but they are the perfect way to showcase a piece of nature around your neck. Check the Nature Inspires shop for more of these delights as spring gets its bloom on!

Nature Inspires Botanicals

Some of you may have noticed I have recently created another part of Nature Inspires. Ideas had been brewing in my mind for several months about things I wanted to make: lip tints and shimmers, bath salts, essential oil perfumes and others…not to mention, after my whole fiasco with recreating labels, I still wasn’t 100% satisfied with the look of the lip balm labels. So, I decided to give this area the appropriate attention and started my second etsy shop for Nature Inspires Botanicals. The shop name for this is ‘NaturesBotanicals’ since the full name was too long!

So far, I have recreated the lip balm labels to my satisfaction and yours too hopefully! I got rid of any of the scents that weren’t all natural (now I only use essential oils to scent) , created four unique blends of essential oil perfumes and two varieties of bath salts which come in 100% recycled glass corked bottles!

I now also sell sheer lip tints for those that like a little color, but don’t wear lipstick: Poppy and Lingonberry, and what I am calling Pink Orchid Lip Silk. Originally, I was trying to create a shimmer, and it does have a slight shimmer, and very light pink tint, but what I didn’t realize was how absolutely silky the orchid extract would make this lip balm! I use it daily!

I hope you enjoy these new botanical bath and beauty items. They are all made with plant extracts and essential oils that are beneficial to your body, mind and spirit.

I will be be showing them off at the spring craft show in Somersworth, NH on April 16th!

For the Love of Labels

Designing my own lip balm labels is almost as satisfying as blending oils to create a new scent. That is, until I decided I wanted to try printing them myself. I ordered the labels I thought I wanted, learned a new design program that came with them and worked away at creating new labels for the new lip balms that were still cooling after being poured into their tubes. Great! I thought, now I can print as many as I want, when I want, and no shipping costs every time I want to have more labels printed...

I inserted the sheet of clear matte blank labels and happily clicked the "print" button.. What at first looked like a beautiful label left a big fat smudge on my finger as I peeled it off the sheet. Maybe it just needed to dry more, I reasoned. I sped up the process with a fan, then a heated fan. Still smudged. I waited a few hours. I peeled another label and wound it around a tube - it looked fingerpainted. I tried the brown kraft paper labels I had bought for tins of lip balm, not tubes. They were smaller, but I was getting deperate. Align: It's a word I've always liked. I wrecked more than 40 labels trying to align these buggers. Two hours and many little balls of paper on the floor later, I stormed out of the room, opened a fresh lip balm, sniffed, applied, smoothed and let out a deep breath.

I did eventually get four of them to print. But they weren't the size I had intended for the tube anyway, and the ink just didn't pop like it would with a white background.

I spent the next three hours designing the labels all over again in another design program - the one I used when I had the labels printed elsewhere - and almost clicked the "ship" button. But I didn't.

The next day I bought full 8.5 x11 inch label sheets, found a 1.5 inch round punch, came home, printed my lip balm label designs, and punched them out myself. No need to "align."

Know that when you buy one of the Nature Inspires Goddess Lip Balms, that it has been made with love, from the moment I carefully pour the hot recipe into their tubes, to the moment I happily stick their labels on. Still, I realize it's not the label that does your lips a favor, its what inside.

The Many Wonders of Birch Bark

It's 2 degrees here in Elmore, VT and to get my woodstove started I used scrap strips of paper birch bark - some of the best fire starter there is.
I also used birch bark to make another pair of moon earrings this morning. My love of birches goes way back, as does their history (read my essay on birches here: http://naomimahalajudd.com/birch_blood.aspx).
Going along with the full moon birch earrings I've made from the light dappled colored outer bark, I have now also made Harvest Moon birch earrings from the thicker inner layers of bark which are a golden peach color.
I'll often go on walks just to look for the right layers of bark to use in jewelry, but when I'm sorting through our box of kindling for scraps of bark to feed the fire, I'll often pause, strip some of the layers apart to see what beauty lies inside and set aside a few sheets that look like earring material. Inspiration sometimes lurks between the loam covered layers of bark, and the nearly fire fed peels of paper.
If you are one of those who has purchased one of my moon earrings, what you wear on your ears, very well might have been destined for ash. It's this spontaneity that I  love about using natural materials, sometimes you don't know you'll use them until the last second.

Harvest Moon Earrings

Full Moon Earrings