Heck Yeah, I'm a Gatherer!

I often think about how things used to be, still is in some areas of the world, before the industrial age, before the pioneer age, before the age of exploration by sea. Living off the land you were born to, making use of the resources around you.

I don't know how well I would have fared, being mostly decorative and kinda useless, but I do know I could have gathered the heck out of things!

I constantly walk with my head down, scouring for little things I can collect, so much so that I have to remind myself to look up, look around and see the world around me (make eye contact and smile, Shannon, they're not all demons).

But I can't help it! 

I love to gather; shells, pods, stones, pebbles, nuts, seeds, bits of wood or man made objects left to the elements. Each tiny piece has a story.

I think that is why most women are pegged as "shoppers". We shop in place of gathering now, it's in our biological make-up.

Stores have simply made it easy to gather.

Although reeeeeealllllllllly expensive. 

And so I have titled this piece as; 

The Gatherer 

I had the verdigris brass neck cuff with an African recycled glass bead forever, just sitting and waiting.

Then when Erin and Lorelei's book came out, I added linen to both sides of the focal bead, inspired by their use of cording with metal. But it still sat and sat....... never having any meaning or direction, until I started selling off my bead collection. I pulled every bead I owned out of drawers and found I have a nice little hoard of natural materials that look very cohesive when mixed together; melon buri seeds, panya seeds, horn, coconut, amber salwag and red bahay seeds!

The polymer clay focal is hand carved by Artybecca

It has two, very detailed sides.

I attached it to the African glass with a knotted leather bail and because the back hook of the neck cuff does not have a right or left, you can turn this piece around and wear the sun follower side of the necklace.

Yep, I think I would have done my tribe pride.

:)

Peace and Prosperity, 

Shannon