Faye!!!!

As I love my dog an unhealthy amount, I have to share with everyone a random fact...Faye came to live with me 5 years ago this month...yay Faye! Above is little Faye when she first came to live at my house in November of 2003, when my friend Riann was visiting and we stole her from my mom...my mom still has Faye's mom Wiggles, her brother Redford and sister Camille. Her other litter mates, who are twins will actually be visiting my moms house this week end...but anyway...Faye and I have had a lovely 5 years together...and here we are today...



oh little Faye...

I am a bibliophile...and this is my dream

I have a lot of books, thousands and thousands in fact. So many that when my ex husband and I split up amicably, he mentioned how glad he was to never have to move all of my books again, and in the past three years since then, I have only increased my collection. I do try to donate any books I no longer want, and I try to resist book gluttony...I also buy almost all of them used...(these little tidbits make me feel a little better about the bulging book shelves around my apartment)...although I am really lucky to have beautiful built in shelves in the living room, I still have 4 free standing ones taking up room.


While most people dream of gorgeous views, square footage and claw foot tubs, I have simple house dreams...a cottage by the ocean with built in book shelves in every room and a huge studio in a building of some sort a few feet from the cottage...which I would prefer to be covered in weathered shingles, but I can give on that, I also always loved old churches turned into homes, but I would really rather live in a cottage...ahhhh, one day it will be mine.



I also think I'll have to stay in the northeast, as much as I adore San Diego, I don't think I am able to deal with living any where other then the northeast, and I do love those seasons...ok I'm done daydreaming of waves and shelving, now back to work...

If I could jump into a photo...

I would leap right into this one...


I am suddenly incredibly busy on a daily basis, and I love it...being busy also makes me cherish the snippets of down time and moments spent with my near and dears...and makes me want to hang out in this room with a good book for an hour to reward myself...and as it has been so long since I've tossed out a random fact...Reading (non work related) during the day is my guilty pleasure...and its basically what a good vacation consists of as well....

The design process...

Its hard to create a space online that is similar to what a real studio space is, but I try to give little glimpses and tidbits that can give you a real feel of Manic Trout as much as I can. Today I thought I would show how I go through the design process...

Usually I start with either a doodle or sketch or a rough idea in my mind...then I start going through books of images that I collect as inspiration, I usually group photos with an idea in the back of my head of how they will fit together....although sometimes the way I group things will subconsciously affect the design, all the pink on these pages made the color choice hard to avoid when I started designing this necklace...



At this point I start pulling materials from the vast amount that I have in the studio...





Once I have all the materials I want to play around with I start to try different things until what is in my head is in my hands.

When the design is what I want, I draw a sketch of it with notes on measurements and materials and take a photo which I blow up and print for a binder of all designs so I can reference it when making each piece.



I lastly photo, price and name the piece and put it on Manic Trout!



Manic Trout Rebel Girl Necklace

A necklace is born!

Random Fact that makes me feel better

I have totally forgotten to post a random fact recently...so here is one that I just discovered that makes me feel so happy today, exactly what I needed to learn. I just discovered that in the first three months of 2008 I had thirteen more online orders then all of last year already! I can't even figure out what that means percentage wise, but I do know that it means all of my hard work is paying off and all of you wonderful Manic Trout fans are awesome, thank you!

Vintage Jewelry Collection

One of the main reasons that I try and use vintage materials is that I came to make my own jewelry through my love of vintage jewelry. From the time I was too young to be wearing jewelry, I would ask my grandmother to let me choose one piece of costume jewelry from an antique store as my birthday gift. I was very into silver cuffs for a few years, but they were interspersed with some necklaces as well. Through prep school I loved to mix these treasures with colorful pieces I made with beads or embroidery thread.

When I was at Syracuse for the last few years (I was there for a while as I went from the architecture school to the art school and changed majors there a few times) I was living in Armory Square. I lived in an awesome apartment above a huge Antiques store...ah the bliss! I could take an elevator from my floor to the store, which made furniture shopping especially easy. Anyway, I would get all inspired and just run downstairs where I would most likely find what I wanted...be it a table, vase, purse, coat, earrings...whatever! It was so wonderful, I loved it...the store and I both left Armory Square years ago, but most of my favorite things came from that time. I used to pile on the pieces back then too, always mixing vintage pieces with really bright glass and crystal pieces that I made. (hmmmm, is there a theme?)

Today I was all inspired to unearth some pieces and reminisce. I photoed a few of my favorites (on a vintage hankie!) to share and had to laugh at the amount of faceted glass, brass, lucite, chain and look at that ring! My my, I see where so much of my inspiration has come from...I have been working on some necklace ideas that would mix chain and locket necklaces with bright glass ones....I may have found what I needed to push me to the next level.

Random facts about Manic Trout

I was tagged the other day by the fabulous blog Cherry Coloured although I have not finished my post on this, I have however realized how fun random facts are. I have thus decided that I will begin to share random facts with you about Manic Trout, and sometimes about me.

So first off, I thought I would introduce you to some of the fun that I have with the real behind the scenes stuff...naming all of my designs. I once upon a time would just make up a name for each design and then picked a girls name for each color/style randomly...well, I really quickly started to come up with some stupid names, and I exhausted my resources for girls names as well. (some of these early made up names are still existent, I am embarrassed to say...i.e...the very original Bottle Cap Necklace) So I knew I had to look else where...

You must be chomping at the bit in anticipation right now...waiting to find out where I come up with all of these bizarre names! Well all of the designs names are songs, some make obvious sense and some just work in my complicated mind...but they are all song names. The Sweetest Thing Earrings are named for the Lauryn Hill song.

The names of each color/style I get from a web site that has lists and lists of names...so I pick a theme for each piece...the Salt Water Sound Necklaces which are inspired by Japanese fishing balls have Japanese names.


The Sweetest Thing Earrings have Gypsy names...and the meaning of the names usually plays in too...Pesha which is the name of a diminuitive pair of flower earrings, means small...Pattin which is a pair of tiny pink leaf earrings, means leaf. Shimza which are bright orange earrings that look like gummy roses, means joy and happiness and the very pretty Ilona earrings which are shaped like a pink lily means beautiful one.

I also have some silly and fun names...the Button Rings are all named after Super Villianesses! So you can find your inner bad girl and wear her name with pride!



Also fun to note is that the Bling Rings are named named after the women with the largest and best jewelry collections throughout history...Elizabeth Taylor, Jacqueline Onassis, Joan Crawford, Mary Pickford, Ava Gardner and Theda Bara to name a few.

In case you were wondering...the paintings have name themes too...they are named and I am sure influenced in both tiny and huge ways by the titles of books I am reading when I paint them...I will admit that I have bought and read books because I thought the titles were so good to work with.

I hope you enjoyed these random facts about Manic Trout!