Blog

Well May was pretty much taken up with me stretching my birthday celebration out as long as possible.  I had a birthday treasure hunt for my customers and from what I hear, everyone had fun. Congratulations to Bonnie Seubert who was the grand prize winner! Bonnie won a custom made story bag on which she is going to tell the story of her family.  The other two winners were Luann Apperson and Jenny Kocher who each received a $51.00 gift certificate!  Way to go ladies!  

And here we are at the beginning of June.  It feels like summer is already here.  Memorial day brought a splurge of summer delicacies.  BLT, sweetcorn and watermelon. I say delicacies because I don't usually ENJOY bacon or white bread but I wanted to greet summer properly! 

I have been busy at work with a couple of new creations.  Here they are if you missed them. 

I have also finished up a couple of wall sculptures.  With summer's arrival and me watching the volunteer sunflower growing like crazy in my garden, I got inspired to create a couple of sunflower sculptures. They are molded just like my masks are only these are in the shapes of sunflowers and made to hang on the wall.

There is the molded portion but the fun part was the leaves and the color.  When I dried the leather I laid out eucalyptus leaf stems.  As the leather dried the leaves absorbed the color and made an imprint that was lighter than the leather.  I then burned some veins into the leaves and added natural pigments to enhance the shape of the flowers. And these are in yellow and natural to bring out the colors of the sun of course! 

I have said before that my customers provide my inspiration....in one way or another.  This week one of my customers lost her little parakeet.  It had been with her for many years.  I just felt compelled to send her a little memorial bag. I was amazed at the end result because it looked so much like her little bird. The tuft of green leather really set it off.  This was my inspiration this week. 

Because I do custom orders I have an opportunity to talk to people about their ideas.  It is not uncommon for me to see beautiful drawings of the ideas that they have been carrying around in their heads for years. And it is a magical thing when it comes to life for them.  If you are one of these people and would like to see your idea come to life, feel free to send me a drawing.  If I use your image for a future creation I will give you a gift certificate to my shop. My customers steer my business and I want to create for you so show me what you've got! 

Sometimes I end my blog with a deep thought of the day.  Today that thought is "green".  Right now Mother Earth is just green everywhere, the sun hasn't baked the grass yet, the leaves have reached their full size, the woods are thick and everything is heavy with....green!  Just take a moment to enjoy it.  Before we know it Autumn will be approaching and we will wish we had a few more days of green.  

Until next time - go green!  Julie

Happy Birthday to me!!!  And to you too.  Today's blog is going to include a birthday treasure hunt for birthday presents.  There are three birthday presents that you can win but you only need to find one of them.

So here is how the treasure hunt works. In order to win you must do the following things.

* You must sign up for my email newsletter at www.hollyhawkdesigns.net

* You must comment on this blog on my website at www.hollyhawkdesigns.net  

* You must follow me on Facebook

* You must comment on my Facebook post. 

* You must share on Facebook. 

* You must go to Etsy and find the listing that says Happy Birthday on the last line. 

* You must click on the "ask a question" button and ask me if you won as well as send your email address that you signed up with for my newsletter. 

The treasure hunt ends on May 23 but the first three to find the birthday present win!  So good luck and Happy Birthday to all! 

So wedding season is upon us!  It is a great time to share this with my followers.  As you already know, I have the most awesome customers in the world!  Last year I made wedding medicine bags for my clients Peach and Buckeye.  Thankfully they sent me pictures to share with you of their beautiful, bohemian gypsy day.  

Custom medicine bags are perfect for weddings.  They can be the meaningful gift that you give to each other.  They can hold private treasures of the day and they are completely customized and will be part of the memories of the day.  The stones that are chosen, the symbols on the bag, colors, everything on these bags have meaning.  What a great keepsake.  Thanks for sharing with us Peach and Buckeye. 

Cherokee Corn Tear update. Finally on April 5 they broke ground.  Earlier than I expected because that is like less than two weeks.  They kind of look like little onion sprouts.  They come up about an inch and a half and then they will get one little leaf on the top.  Then we will wait wait wait again....and all at once they will take off. 

Since I expect readership to be up a little on this blog I want to clarify how to sign up for this and my newsletter.  I anticipate my newsletter to be about a once a month event.  I am trying to blog every week to week and a half.  Signing up for these require two different things.  To sign up for the newsletter you click on the newsletter tab at the top of the page.  To sign up for the blog you must click on the top of the page under blog, have free software (RSS) on your computer, and you only have to sign up with your email on that one. I will only know if you have signed up for the newsletter because bogs don't allow you to see who is following. So, that said.  I LOVE it when people comment on the bottom of the blog.  It lets me know who has been here reading.  

So while you are there commenting please let me know if you have something you would like for me to blog about, if you have a question about something.  I do this to share with you so let me know what you would like to hear about! 

So in closing I will leave you with a bit of birthday wisdom, or at least something to think about.  If you didn't know how old you were, how old would you be? For me, my brain feels like its 20 and my body sometimes feels like its 80 so.....I am probably balancing out just about right.

Have fun on the birthday treasure hunt! - Julie

Although Spring is my favorite time of year it is also filled with saddest for me.  With Mother's Day approaching I know that it leaves some of us hurting and grieving. I hope that, for those of you who fit in that category, know that you are not alone.  Please feel free to share a memory or a thought in the comments of this blog.  I am sure that we would enjoy sharing. 

This is my beautiful mother Connie Hickman. She lost her battle with breast cancer 18 years ago this June.  I can hardly believe that I have even survived without her this long.  She was my Mother, my business partner, and my best friend. Losing her was devastating and as the years go by I now know that losing her will forever be devastating.  She was a great business woman and she was NEVER wrong.....about anything! And I know that she loved me more than anything else in this world.  She brought a lot of beauty into the lives of many through our business Rainbow Art & Frame.  I still tear up when I run into our old customers from the shop and they share memories of her.  

She had an affection for me mostly but she also loved white tulips, listening to music while drinking her morning coffee, potato chips, dogwood trees, and red geraniums in the summertime.  To indulge for a moment, I have two memories I would like to share.

 One was when we had went to a convention for work and attended a seminar.  Im not really sure what triggered it but we were sitting in the front row of about 75 people and the speaker said something that struck our funny bones.  Well we got to laughing and we tried not to look at each other but it just kept getting worse.  Being in the front row we were quite visible and starting to disrupt the seminar.....but we just couldn't quit laughing, finally we completely loose control and go into silent laughter....you know the kind, where you can't breathe and you think you are going to die but you have no control......yep!  That was us, finally the speaker quit speaking and we staggered out arm in arm laughing the whole way....we even contagiously affected a few others.  Totally disrupted the entire event......and we never went back in!

The second memory was of an Amtrak trip to Sante Fe for the Indian Market. Which was a great way to travel by the way.  Well, there is a little altitude difference between Indiana and Sante Fe which we discovered was a little more notable than we had thought.  My Mom liked to have her bed sheets so that she could bounce a coin off of them so anytime we traveled the first thing we would do is make her bed, right?  So we are trying to pull those sheets tight and we are huffing and puffing like we are running up a hill or something, which of course ends up in a fit of laughter.  Its serious this time though because we can't breath....and we know it....and that makes it even funnier!  We had to separate or one of us was going to pass out! Sometimes laughter is the best medicine and these are two things that make me laugh. 

My Mom collected Mother and Child themed items. There is something that I make that she would have loved.  It is a medicine bag duo for Mother and Child.  These are great as baby shower gifts or a Mother's Day gift.  Just like the baby in the womb, one bag fits inside the other, until the baby is born and then they separate. They are usually made out of the same hide so that they will have the same spirit of the animal.  I use beads and stones on these and when the bags are together the stones complete  a total chakra but once they are separated then they need the other one to be complete.  Much like the sacred relationship between a Mother and child.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/185566827/pregnancy-medicine-bag-duo-birth?ga_search_query=medicine+bag&ref=shop_items_search_7

These are a custom piece of course and several things can be added to make these uniquely yours, different beads, symbols, leather, etc. It is a keepsake as well.  The lady who this was designed for put it on her belly when she gave birth.  It is in all of her pictures and that makes a really cool keepsake years down the road.  

Another product that is dear to me are my Memorial Bags.  I know that this is something that my Mom "taught" me.  Without my grief for her I would not understand how important these bags are to their owners.  My memorial bags are story bags.  They tell a story of a person, an event, or a time on ones life. Though they can be made in any color of leather, it is usually light leather so that we can brand images into it to tell a story.  I usually choose a hide that has a hole in it to represent the hole in our hearts when we loose someone.  The fringe represents tears.  Sometimes we will include a string of tears that hangs on the side of the bag.  Usually there is branding on those tears that tell a story. Personal items can be added, symbols, beads, and usually every little element on one of these bags will have meaning. Here are a few images of these marvelous bags. 

You can order one of these on my Etsy shop or on my website.  Here is a link to my Etsy shop. https://www.etsy.com/listing/220172960/custom-memorial-grief-medicine-bag-large?ga_search_query=memorial+bags&ref=shop_items_search_2

My Mom used to say that out of everything bad comes something good.  Once again she was right.  Without experiencing the loss that I have I would not have been able to make these and touch the lives of my customers. So, in closing today I would like to remind you that no one can take away your memories and for those of you who are orphans this Mother's Day just know that you are not alone and many of us are grieving with you.  And for those of you who are lucky enough to still have your Mom with you, please don't take her for granted.  Tell her you love her and laugh with her this Mother's Day.  They leave us too soon sometimes. 

Peace to your hearts - Julie