Fly Free Designs (2026)

22/12/2025

A howl.

For the dark moon.
All that is hidden, but still pulls at us.

For what we have lost.
For who we were.

That time is gone now, may we remember the breaths that saw us through,
May we forget, with glee (how surprising) the sadness.

If I ever doubted, it was because I didn’t know how to hear this certain sound. The call of the wild doesn’t reach caged creatures because it gets mistaken for uncertainty.

May we hold on, with our whole howls, we are better together.

Come storms or fields of gold, we are better together.

We are ready. Do you hear that? We are ready.

20/12/2025

‘Twas the night before tomorrow,

Whatever day that is.

The pups were snoozing,
That’s just how it is.

My friend Lisa helped me vacuum,
All through the shop

For I had lost my marbles,
From my toes to tip top.

Santa! You dirty birdy. Forgetting all those jewels what?! It’s okay. It’s my delight and privilege to finish up some of these Montana agates and have some open houses tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday from 4-7pm. The boys have been showing improvements in their noise levels in their defense of the shop. Mainly because most people are very sweet and are able to give them a couple minutes to get used to them. I’ll check with about some sweet treats and if I get to see your smiling faces, this is a treat as well. And don’t forget to take a look plant if you want one 🥳

18/12/2025

Oh the weather outside is frightful.

Cause the wind is not delightful. How does it get down my shirt and inside my mind? The hounds are even on high alert and skiddish.

I almost forgot to say thank you to everyone. We go on, sorting out this chaos of life by sorting through the stones. I am grateful. In this year of strange years, holding tight to all the things I have to be grateful for, especially these small furry creatures.

I’ve gotten quite a few ‘last minute’ shopping requests (lol) so I’ll have open studio this weekend. Still have enough ribbons and wrapping paper for a final 25 huzzah.

Thank you again xx

15/12/2025

I have two guns.

One for each of you.

Look at what I’ve been up to! Instead of all of the listings going live at once, I’m just gonna publish the listings as they are completed. It would be amazing if the sun could start coming back soon, it was a race to capture the light.

Speckled and flowing Montana agates. Neon punch rubellites! Some studs?! Unclear where those came from, but it’s fun to surprise even myself! Have a good time 🌄🪶🦝😆⚒️

13/12/2025

So there I was…

Goin nuts like a raccoon stuck in a dumpster full of espresso martinis, wacky tabaccky, and backyard moonshine.

Sigh. It wouldn’t be fly free if I don’t have to remind myself to follow my own advice sometimes. One would think I would be older and wiser, but alas. Sans life nanny, time and space remain as slippery as always.

Much like my fingertips, ultimately time management falls squarely on my shoulders. But the stones start talking to me and before I know it, the ‘more manageable’ pile of ‘just a few’ necklaces, cuffs, and odds and ends has ballooned into an unruly pile of creations. Can you blame me?! That one upside down triangle with the dendrite tree??!! It must become a mountain necklace. That grey one with speckle spackle manganese looking like a cosmic asteroid belt?! Just like sleeping under the stars in the middle of a Montana summer. And I found photos of those iris agate mountain necklaces and a small chime sounded in the back of my mind. I used them all up?!. But maybe I had one or two of those agates tucked away somewhere, if only I could find them….

If only I had more hands. And existed on a plane of infinite timelines with no end.

Good things take time. My goal was to have my ‘reasonable’ pile finished up by tonight. But my hands decided that being unreasonable was more to our liking… the last day for ‘ground advantage’ shipping to make it in time for santa to shimmy down the chimney is December 15th after all ⚒️🪶🤶🏽

11/12/2025

It starts with breathing…

I’ve been making these necklaces for a long time. But I don’t make these necklaces all the time.

Sitting still isn’t really my strong suit. Patience has never been my virtue (kinda). A lack of patience plus lots of hot negative emotions does not a happy jeweler make.

One of the first points of introspection for me came from filing and sawing. Filing with fury means you heat your piece up too much and get these heat blisters that if you keep filing (I absolutely did) will turn into blood blisters (very slippery and inconvenient), and if you can’t properly grip your piece, you can’t keep working on your piece (duh).

There’s a certain kind of peace that comes with mundane repetition. The annoyance of waiting for fingers to heal was my fault. The state of my fingers was my responsibility.

This became a very important conversation for me to have as this young hotheaded Aires. I really couldn’t blame anyone else for the state of my fingers. The silver doesn’t mind being filed with fury. The file is ready to roll at whatever temper you want. Sawing with fury just means you have snapped a bunch of saw blades.

Filing and sawing are a part of silversmithing. You can’t get around them. You have to work with them. You are in charge of how easy or hard these processes are for you.

These necklaces are a practice for me in pursuit of mastery of sawing. Mountains are often on my mind, even in my dreams. These mountains are a single cut. If you mess up, you have to start over. It behooves oneself to gauge the temperature of your mood. Your mood will regulate your breaths, your breaths are what guide your blade.

I make them when my heart is beating steady. I make them when I believe in change for the better is possible. Worry isn’t the right tempo, hope is.

08/12/2025

In a very roundabout way, I think the real inheritance from my granny was being the cause and connection to meet Merlin and Barb. I like to think our grandparents have ways of looking after us by giving us little nudges here and there.

02/12/2025

I’ve been doing this work for a long time, over a decade. In the beginning I was scraping and saving every dollar I could to just get a basic setup working. I wasn’t really in a good way. My dad had just died and I had become estranged from my family because of our past.

There were some dicey times in those days. Scarcity in the middle of Montana winter can get severe very quickly. I hadn’t felt that certain panic since this year started going off of the rails. My position in this creative endeavor has never been a ‘sure thing’ but I had been making it work. There has always been ups and downs. However, I thought most likey, the pandemic had to be the time when I felt so incredibly non essential.

This year said: hold my beer. With the metals market in free fall, this is the wrong kind of falling free. I’ve barely started to get my feet back underneath me, and now one of the main COGS in my work is doubling… I’m no accountant, but I think this is not a good thing to indicate how many coconuts I am going to have to get through winter.

I have already talked to the boys about needing to see some improvement in their kennel behavior. We’ve formed quite a pack and it can be a little codependent at times. But I knew maybe getting a side job to keep them in their chicken habit consumption could be a reality. We do what we need to without complaint, it’s better to just get on with it. We adapt, pivot and grow where the bright lights point us.

Fly free’s little light is still shining. Thanks to you. I’m a little overwhelmed.

Thank you for this beautiful time in my life, for giving me the chance to help out these two little pups. For letting me find time to be able to spend time with people who have become chosen family. And by letting me find ways to overcome ghosts because I can share more of my stories by through the process of creating beautiful things. You have my undying gratitude for these gifts. And I even took a selfie!

Quite possibly the best Christmas present I could have ever even dreamed of, in this most strange of years to be alive. Thank you.

01/12/2025

Flashbacks!

But like, the fun kind. As I get older, it’s easier to look back on the seasons of life, as the years fade into each other somewhat. There have been a lot of changes.

There have been seasons of sadness where the holidays bore down on me with dread. Changes that meant instead of exploring joy and happiness, I was gaining familiarity with sadness and loneliness. There are many different reasons why I’ve avoided pictures for the majority of my life.

This is where I found the magic in this work. Year after year after YEARS, I’ve been asking my heart what happiness means. How I could ever get there. That’s probably the most frustrating thing about healing and becoming. I know what I DON’T want. I don’t want to hate the holidays. I don’t want to walk on eggshells. I don’t want to be scared to go home.

But in all of the counseling, reading, learning, pondering and dreaming, I didn’t know how to let happiness in. It’s not uncommon for people who have gone through tremendous stress to feel like imposters in their own lives. When much of your formative self has been spent on burrowing in to build defenses and armor, not even dandelions know how to grow in that dirt.

So then change your dirt. That’s what I did. Literally. I started only making things with stones that speak to my heart. All of the emotions I go through reflected in these shining surfaces. I was getting emotional looking back on different years today, because this is how I am beginning to learn the depths and boundaries of happiness.

Look at all this beauty. These photos are so much better than any words I could stutter out. Some of these things I did still make for protection. The world is still a treacherous place. But the best way that I’ve learned to keep the trouble at bay is to believe in the best.

So many of these pieces in these pictures are being worn right this very now by wild incredible people. I don’t have pictures of them, but every once in awhile I hear about their adventures. People with their own chaos and demons. Battles they are matching with their own strong beating hearts. Beating back ugliness with beauty.

Let’s go to war. Fly free 🫶🏽

30/11/2025

You can’t always get what you want, no

But if you try sometimes you just might find,

You get what you need, oh yeah, woo!

Ah, woo!
You get what you need.

The weather outside is mas frio. Maybe that’s the reason so many people have written lovely messages.

Relying on my hands, memories and heartbeats has been a wild ride. Now that my heart is beating a little stronger, I think it shows in some of the things I’ve made this year. The world can still be burning, but I’m not forgetting the little wins. The things that make life living as hard as I can are fueled by delight and excitement, not ghosts and empties.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, I was slow as sh*t about some of my uploads, so the small business Saturday is going to be small business weekend 🤪. And then the stone sale for cyber Monday!

New motto: if you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready. But if you are a little behind, Saturday/Sunday are a convenient block of time to have a website party. 🥳🥳

28/11/2025

Talking is so hard. Talking about my story is bi**ch! I’ve been in here for days but got to a point where I just needed to get the most important bits across. I think making jewelry has saved my life. When I came to the bench I was an incredibly sad, hurt, angry and broken person. But piece by piece I’ve been replacing those emotions with beauty, hope and overcoming. This is what they do for me, I hope they do the same for you. In this crazy years 2025, this weekend is 25% off the website, the old and the new (and some in between) 😘

28/11/2025

Hey you kids in the back!

Yeah you. Smile for the camera you little sh*ts

Hahahahahaha. Sometimes things don’t turn out the way we thought they would. Or the way they wished they would.

Today I was thinking about all the small ways that things have gone right. There’s a lot to be grateful for, even those little rascals in the back row, making everything harder for the rest of us 🤣

Happy thanksgiving 🦃

Fly Free Designs

22/12/2025

20/12/2025

18/12/2025

15/12/2025

13/12/2025

11/12/2025

08/12/2025

02/12/2025

01/12/2025

30/11/2025

28/11/2025

28/11/2025

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