When I'm not making jewelry for you guys, I try to adventure as much as I can! Sometimes this could be just a weekend camping trip a couple hours away, or sometimes it could mean a couple weeks in a VERY different place, such as Bali or Japan. I have always loved to travel, it's my hobby, and it's what I set goals for! With a combination of hard work and luck I've been able to have quite a few adventures, but a couple years back, I realized that I had never even traveled to the Western US (sans a flight to Portland, and one to Las Vegas)!!!
My younger brother was spending the summer in LA, and I just thought, what a perfect reason to drive all the way across the US - a goal city! I had met my (now) partner only 5 months previous to this decision, and one night I tossed the idea out to him to come with me, as he had expressed a desire to see the grand canyon.
So, the summer of 2018, Joe and I set out on an almost three week trip to LA and back, of which we spent the most time in Utah, Arizona, and California. We camped out almost every night. I knew it was going to be beautiful. I knew it was going to be different than anything I ever saw. But I wasn't prepared for how MAGICAL it was! The colors, the air, the wildlife, the structures of the earth! It was just as earth shattering as the views in Indonesia, and I didn't have to take a 22 hour plane ride halfway around the world to get there - we are lucky enough in the US to have these landscapes right in our backyard!
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I was so inspired by the LAYERS of colors, the ombre from yellows to oranges to blues. A few months ago, I realized it had been over year since my trek, and I still thought about it almost every day. I knew I had to translate some of the beauty into my jewelry, since we even specialize in unique color combinations. That in itself has a beauty to me, using pieces of earth to represent the earth and sky from my experiences.
So my hope is that each piece of jewelry from the collection really encapsulates this feeling of magic and beauty and color and spirit of adventure.
Have you been to any of these striking places?! There's so much I didn't see, and I think I'll be traversing the continent again this summer, this time to Portland and back. What was your favorite location? If you haven't been, do you have a dream destination out west? I'd love to hear about it in the comments below. I never get tired of talking to others about both jewelry and travel :)
