Back to the Drawing Board

When I was a kid, I loved to draw.  There was always something exciting about putting pencil to paper and wondering what would take shape.  Would a bunch of flowers grow into a country garden or a tropical jungle?  Would the background be a dramatic sunset or a tranquil blue?  Would the plants be the only signs of life, or would a parrot or dryad flit amid the flowers?  These questions and others led me to pick up my pencil again this past week.  This jungly (not gardeny), sunset-streaked (not blue sky-painted), wing-free (no dryads here) landscape was the result.  And for the most part, I'm happy with it, even if it is a little on the green side (in more ways than one).  I used to be more liberal with details and color, and this foray revealed me to be a little rusty.  I'm going to keep at it, though.

Drawing is so different from making jewelry.  For one thing, it's less physically demanding.  Also, it doesn't require consideration of practical questions such as, "Is this durable enough to not fall apart but light enough to hang around someone's neck?"  I can just go for it without being burdened by all those what-ifs.  Then again, drawing has its own challenges, as it's time-consuming and tedious.  Still, that's part of what makes it satisfying.

In honor of this landscape, I put together an Etsy treasury called The Scenic Route.  A treasury, for the uninitiated, is a collection of sixteen Etsy listings that have something in common.  Sometimes all the listings are from shops owned by people from the same state or Etsy team; other times, they're all the same color or are holiday-themed or are vintage or feature polka dots, Elvis, or aliens.  Etsy members create them, then spread the word to the featured sellers and everyone else in their network in hopes of amassing enough clicks to land on Etsy's coveted homepage.  But it's also a nice way to meet fellow sellers or just play curator.  Believe it or not, I didn't even know how to make a treasury until this past spring.  (Unfortunately, I haven't yet figured out how to upload one to the blog, as the wheels of progress turn slowly down here in the Trove.  If you want to take a peek, then hop over to my Etsy shop.)  Now I make treasuries all the time; so far I have sixteen.  It's fun to find the one thing that connects a bunch of otherwise random pieces -- probably because it's like putting an outfit together.

Even in a post about wall art, all roads somehow lead back to clothes.