New York

It has been a long while! Such a hot and busy summer this was and I hope it treated you well and that the beginning of Autumn is bringing lots of lovely things your way.

Can you believe September is almost over? I hardly believe it, with time going so fast and also, with such unusual high temperatures. Normally, abut this time of the year the leaves on the trees would have turned orange and brown and yellow but this time, the colours are late, just starting to show up. My tomato plants are still giving so much fruit and well, is not that I'm complaining about the chance to enjoy a bit more of warm weather but I worry about our planet and the way we are making it act weird and off. 

We have enjoyed our summer so much, travelling a bit and enjoying the backyard, relaxing and focusing on family projects. It has been a lovely summer! And I wanted to show you some pictures from our trip to NY earlier in June. 

It was super hot and humid over there and just the second time I had  ever visited. The first time was more than 10 years ago and we stayed there just for a couple of days, hardly seeing much else than a few landmarks (it was super fun thought!). I enjoyed it so much this time around, having a lot of days to take everything slowly and  having the chance to truly explore the city. Still, so much stuff left unseen, unvisited! So that makes for plans to go back in the future!

My favourite parts were exploring little streets, the Museum of Natural History and as half of our stay was very close to Central Park, spending the days in such interesting place was great. Just taking it easy, bringing lunch to the park and exploring little roads, and bridges and lakes and looking Amelia enjoy the playgrounds. It doesn't sound like much but just the quiet of being in another place, with nothing else to do but enjoy the views and explore, was amazing. Liberating. 

Much of the pics of this half part of our trip were taken with my phone so I invite to check my Instagram account to look at those ones (you'd have to go back a bit though, as I posted them while in NY).

The other half of our stay was in the Nolita neighbourhood and oh boy, that was cool. The restaurants and little shops. I was so full all the time just by trying a bit of this and that in different restos, and snack places and pastry shops and ice cream shops. But I loved it, haha! it was so good. 

We also got to visit the Etsy hq's! that was super interesting and it felt like I had come full circle in a way, having Etsy being such an important part of this creative adventure for such a long time. I'll make another post with pics just from that visit!

But now, the photos! 

Such nice memories...I just love going out of town with my family and having these experiences with them, gosh, there's just no better company than them. And Amelia, well, she's just the best, she's so enthusiastic and full of wonder, is contagious :D

Hope you liked the photos and thank you for reading my blog!
Iveth

Studio tour

Last month I was approached by Michelle from the blog Roasted Montreal for a little Q&A and took the opportunity to send her some updated photos from my studio. As I have hardly made any update on that here, I though I'd show you the photos so you see how things look around here, at lear, how they look when it'd clean and tidy ;)

My studio is located in my home's basement which, thank goodness, is very bright, have lots of windows and during the day it doesn'tt look like a basement at all, with all the sun coming in. That may be my favourite part of it. On the downside, it's not very private. I share the space with my family: there's our tv space and library too. The idea is to close my space with a glass wall (we don't want to lose that light I told you about) but when is that going to happen? alas, I don't know. It's kind of a big project that won't come cheap and there are already other big projects for the house that are more urgent. But I'll stay positive and hopeful that this year I'll make enough dough to make my studio private! 

In the first pics you can see my desk, AKA packing station with all my bric-a-brac. Most of the time I work on my laptop there, too. As you can see window sill space is very well used with lots of curiosities and also tools and jewellery stuff. The there's my bench which I love to pieces. In the bench I do most work except soldering and oxidizing (for that nasty stuff I prefer to work on a restroom where we placed a special ventilating system for all the fumes from soldering) so it's always full of tools and current works and experiments. 

Overall, I enjoy this space so much and appreciate the fortune of having a place to make all the jewellery my heart desires. 

I hope you enjoyed the photos!

xx
Iveth

Lately

We adopted a little cat last year, on my daughter's birthday! his name is Ronbon and he's the cutest thing. We love him so much and he makes a great part of our family. 

Don't you feel sometimes like there's is so much going on at nothing really, at the same time? 

The last months of 2016 were extremely busy, as they are. Then for the holidays we were planning on taking a break from all work and concentrate a bit on resting and get some house projects done too but that didn't work out as we all got sick. First it was my husband, then Amelia, then it was my turn and for a nice closing, my husband got sick AGAIN. it was terrible, I think we got the flu + sinus infections. So after such holidays we felt so tired! right now we are good, feeling like ourselves again and focusing on some projects.

I want to do so many thing this year, mainly working in two collections that I have already designed and launching my website. Maybe even re-work on my branding, give it a bit of an update. And taking a nice vacation aboard, in a warm place preferably.

I wish you the best 2016!

Etsy Fait au Quebec recap!

So, this year's EtsyFAQ has come and gone, it went in a bit of a blur, a happy blur. A weekend full of hard work but also lots, and lots of smiles and wonderful memories.

This experience left me so energized and well happy that I feel like running, like laughing, but specially I feel like thanking everyone who made it possible: vendors, visitors, customers, Etsy, the volunteers, family, awesome co-organizer Michelle Beausejour and our wonderful, wonderful organizing team from Les joailliers du dimanche and the Montreal Etsy team.

I could say a thousand things of how amazing it all went this past weekend, but I better post a few photos I took at the market to show you how Etsy Fait au Quebec was!

The Joaillier du dimanche collective, part of the organizing bunch, just missing Maxime here! Such resourceful, intelligent, hard working, enthusiastic women. I'm so proud to be part of them.

The whole organizing team! comprising Les joailliers du dimanche and the Montreal Etsy team! Etsy teams rock!

For more photos check out this FB album and to see all participant's work, check out the Shop the Market page!