Ginkgo Leaves

Folks have been requesting that Larkin try their hand at ginkgo leaves for some time, and a recent request from a friend finally sealed the deal! Here is their take on the unique fan shape and ripply notches of the gingko leaf. 🍃

Ginkgo biloba is the oldest living tree species. Known as “living fossils,” the species has survived relatively unchanged for over 200 million years. Fossils in the genus have been dated back to the middle Jurassic— yep, they shared the earth with dinosaurs! 🦖 Some trees live over 1,200 years and have survived some extreme events— perhaps most notably the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

Due to their remarkable tenacity, ginkgo trees have come to represent strength, longevity, and endurance.

Not gonna lie, my college had ginkgoes around the library and *I* associate them with long hours of study and that <ahem> distinctive vomit/dog poop 💩 smell the fruit develops when it drops. 😅

Want to see them in person? The Talent Artisans & Growers market is back and Larkin will be there TONIGHT 5/23 5pm-sunset!

Medford Comic Con

Larkin is at Rogue Comic Con, in the Medford Pear Blossom Park this weekend!

They made this sweet copper cloak pin to complete a friend's cosplay. Extra points if you can identify the character from the pin! 😉

Comic Con is always a good time, rain or shine!

Rogue Comic Con is TWO DAYS for 2025

Saturday, May 17th 10am - 6pm

Sunday, May 18th 9am - 4pm

Finally, Vending By Bicycle!

Guest post by Larkin's dad, Emile!

For tomorrow's Rogue Valley Growers and Crafters Saturday Market, Larkin is finally going to realize a longstanding dream: vending by bike! 🚲🎉 They have been an avid pedal power advocate from the beginning, and in a somewhat nostalgic twist the last piece of the puzzle was finally converting the kid-hauling bike trailer from Larkin and Finn's youth (seen here with the car seat strapped on top) into a cargo trailer that could be pulled by Larkin's cargo bike.

We're always looking for inspiration; do you know of other folks vending by bike, here in the valley or elsewhere?

There's a lot of fun call outs for this one. Larkin got this bike from the lovely folks over at @piccadillycycles almost two years ago, and Piccadilly provides bike valet parking at many RVGCM markets (it's lovely, you should try it out!). I've been wanting to learn to weld for forever, and the family got me a very sweet little TIG machine for solstice that I used to weld up a new towing arm and hitch receiver so we could use the cargo bike to pull it. Larkin and I salvaged the wood used in the new trailer decking from some pallets that the ACE Hardware over in Medford gave us, and @bearcreekbicycle kindly gave me the old inner tube out of their recycling bin that I used for the deck lashings.

And of course, our cat Houdini helped Larkin pack the trailer! 😻

[Jenny's note: the first photo is totally staged, when Larkin rides away tomorrow they will be in full reflective gear and securely helmeted... I just didn't want to get up at the crack of dawn to see them off 😅]

A Market Postponed and A Bloomin' Lilac

Larkin is down with a wicked cold and prudently decided to take a rest day tomorrow rather than attending their usual first Tuesday market-- so if you're a @Rogue Valley Growers & Crafters Market regular, they will be there next week rather than tomorrow!

Meanwhile, Spring is seriously sproinging in our neck of the woods, and our lilacs are putting on quite a show this year! I thought it would be a fun time to throwback to that time three years ago when Larkin was a wee bairn of 17 and made their grandma Mary a sterling lilac sprig.

One Oak Leaf, Slightly Used

While it can be fun to recreate prototypically perfect leaves, it *really* lights Larkin up to duplicate all of nature’s glorious chaos!

Larkin modeled this sterling leaf pendant after an oak leaf that was… well, thoroughly aged. The duplicate includes the nibbled lacework holes of the original, and adds the wee eggs of the inchworm perpetrator.

This snapshot of the indomitable vitality of life is, like all of Larkin's work, entirely hand-fabricated from sterling silver.

Also, lest ye be as crass as Larkin's grandpa... they're EGGS, not poop. Also also, we've been referring to this piece as the "om nom leaf" amongst ourselves.

Daffodil Earrings

Larkin designed these unique daffodil earrings so that they occupy the nebulous space half-way between stud earrings and hook earrings! They are designed with the stem as the hook, capturing the distinctive shape of a blooming daffodil.

Larkin was inspired by the daffodils blooming around our house to create these lovelies, but by the time the prototypes were finished our blooms were dry and done. Our local Buy Nothing Group came to the rescue! Thanks to bizarre microclimates, we found neighbors with fresher blossoms who were willing to let a photography goblin crouch in their yard for a few minutes. 😅📸

The stem, petals and pistil are hand-fabricated from sterling silver, while Larkin captured the corona in contrasting copper.

These daffodils are like wearing your own piece of spring! If you zoom in on the pictures with ears, you may notice our subject <cough> Larkin <cough> is also wearing a piece of spring... in the form of garden grime! Happy sink-your-toes-into-the-dirt-season y'all! 🌞🌱

Beachstone Jellyfish

Last time Larkin visited their grandparents at the coast, they were inspired to create these Medusozoa beauties! 🪼🪼

The stones have been shaped and matte polished by the forces of the ocean waves.🌊

The earrings are quartz, and the necklace is an unknown (to us) stone that has the distinctive striped look of many rocks on west coast beaches. There's something kinda poetic about the way Larkin combined these rough, natural goodies with their own slick, stylized silverwork.

Wingnuts, All Around

We always called these whirligigs or helicopter seeds until we learned their official name is samaras. Okay, actually we still often call them whirligigs or helicopter seeds. Technically, they are the winged nut of maple trees... and who doesn't love a wingnut? 🤪🌳🍁

What do you call these whirling, fluttering flora butterfly seeds?

Larkin now makes these as earrings, necklaces, and clothing pins!

Drift Co Re-Stock

Larkin is re-stocking today at The Drift Collective Ashland, including their prototype pair of these samara (the winged nut of the maple) earrings! 🍁

It has been so interesting seeing what Larkin's biggest hits have been in a brick and mortar location-- it's definitely a little different than online and at their in-person markets! Of course, the roly polies still kind of dominate everywhere they go-- more of them are being delivered to the Drift Co today as well. Team isopod for the win! 🎉

Otherwise, it has been hard keeping the copper and silver vining leaf earrings in stock and all of Larkin's mismatched earring designs have been doing very well.

If you're local and haven't checked out Drift Co, you absolutely should! They have so many amazing products, all handmade by local artists-- and believe me, the local artists could really use your support right now! 💕

Biggs Jasper Tree With Moonlit Toadstools

As promised, here are pictures of Larkin's latest piece... once I coaxed the cat off of it. 😅 This piece features a cabochon that Larkin cut from a gifted slab of jasper found in Biggs, Oregon. Biggs jasper is known for its landscape appearance, and Larkin designed this piece to make the most of that!

Larkin framed one side of the front with a tree shaped from copper wire that they then flooded with silver solder, resulting in a striking color and texture combination. The natural gnarls of the tree are balanced on the other side of the frame by a strong, smooth curve of solid silver. The tree’s roots hold the stone in place at the bottom of the piece, extending partially on to the back side.

"Tree of life" pieces are notoriously difficult to finish cleanly in a traditionally wire wrapped piece because there are SO many ends of wire that need to be tied off. Larkin's combination of wrapping and more traditional silver smithing means that they were able to neatly solder those bundled ends to the frame, rather than tying them off individually. This leaves the back wide open as another space to fill!

And fill it they did-- this piece is truly reversible, with a back that is as stunning as the front! Larkin fashioned a trio of copper toadstools, basking in the glow of a crescent moon while tapered wisps of evening breeze pass overhead. (I wouldn't necessarily have guessed that tapering wire is a tricky, time-consuming process, but apparently it is!)

Holiday "Break"

Hey, friends! We're back! We're easing our way back into social media after a long break with this short photo essay illustrating the daily trials and tribulations of Larkin's product photographer. 😅

Holidays are always busy around our house-- Larkin and their brother both have birthdays in late December, as well as all of the usual holiday hoopla. Larkin is 20! I know... what?!! So I guess now we have to find and edit all the digital places we've referred to Larkin as a "teen jeweler" in the last seven (!!) years.

This is also the first holiday season that Larkin was so busy filling orders and keeping inventory in stock at @thedriftcoashland that they didn't have time to do very much new, creative work. They are back to it, and really enjoying the play time. 😊

This year will bring some fun, big new changes for Larkin! We'll be posting new updates, including more flattering (less Catzilla 😹) photos of their latest piece soon... thanks so much for joining us on this wild ride!

Mama Needs A New Pendant

Hold on to your hats and glasses folks, this is going to be a long one. 😅🎩🕶

A summation if you don't have patience for my verbosity: isn't this spectacular? You can't have it! 😆

Larkin and I have a standing agreement that I'm allowed to keep any one-of-a-kind piece I want. They know me well enough that they never bothered putting hard limits on the offer. 🤣Apparently I'm a bit scared of commitment because you know how many I've kept so far? Zero! There is one I sort of regret letting go. 🤷‍♀️

But this one ticked all of my boxes, and IT'S MINE! ❤️

Before I became a full-time homeschooling parent and (subsequently) on-line slinger of handmade jewelry, I got degrees in chemistry and environmental science. So the round-bottomed flask? Kinda perfect. The texturing Larkin put on the cork blows me away-- who knew solid sterling silver could look so porous and, well, corky?! (Of course, in labs we exclusively used ground glass stoppers, but I'm also a fan of all things fantasy and magical, so no hard feelings! 🧙)

Another sure-fire way to my heart? Slap a tentacle or a dragon eyeball onto something! 🐙🪼🐲 Larkin captured the fluid sinuosity of tentacles so perfectly here, and the detail on each tiny sucker is amazing.

Finally, the stone! This is the last cab from a chert we found on my parent's (Larkin's grandparent's) property in Humboldt, California. It's a stunning stone from a stunning place that our family holds dear to our hearts. The way Larkin created a gentle ocean swell on the surface of the stone and chose to keep some bubbly surface texturing complements the watery theme of the piece perfectly.

The one last-minute disappointment came in the last five minutes of setting the stone into the finished piece-- a small chip fractured from the stone at the bottom edge (I circled it here). The imperfection might make Larkin think twice about selling the piece, but doesn't make me think twice about keeping it. 😉

Look at me; proud new owner of an Idle Talons original! Thank you, Larkin! ❤️

A New Board Is Born!

Aaaaah we made it-- just in time for the 2024 Talent Harvest Festival tomorrow! Larkin will be at the Wagner Plaza Local Goods Market downtown and it seems like every business in town is offering up specials and fun activities-- don't miss it if you're local!

It turns out we made swapping all of Larkin's inventory onto new cards even harder than it could have been. 😅 As long as we had everything off of cards, we figured it would be a good time for Larkin to give everything a thorough cleaning and polish before re-carding them.

During this process, we were chagrined to discover that the masking tape we've been using to affix cords to the back of cards does leave a sticky residue if it has been on there too long. 😬👀 Larkin has a rapid enough turnover that it probably hasn't happened often, but if you've purchased a sticky cord please stop by Larkin's booth any time and they'd be happy to give you a new adhesive-free one! Meanwhile, fancy new tape that claims to be residue-free is arriving this weekend. ✨

We are super pleased with the end result-- Larkin's board has never looked more professional! 😁 The first picture is the new board, the second is the old board (with a few blank spaces right after a market).

Small Tree Clothing Pins

Have I mentioned that Larkin has been loving playing with different takes on these tree designs lately?

They made these clothing pins with a sharp pin that has been twisted for a little extra sparkle and hardness-- these pins are fashioned from 18 gauge wire and are about the same thickness as a standard lapel pin (or a thumbtack) so will work in any fabric that doesn't mind being stabbed by something that size.📌

Two choices... because, you know, sometimes you feel moon-y and sometimes you don't! 🌕🌳

New Product Cards!

Here's an Idle Talons business milestone that probably means more to me (Larkin's mum) than anyone else! 😅 WE GOT PRODUCT CARDS PRINTED!

Until now, I've been printing cards on card stock, ironing them (I know... but our laser printer always made the pages curve!), stamping them, and cutting them out.

These ones are so much better! It's a heavier, more durable card stock, we had contact info printed on the back so they also kind of act as business cards, they have rounded corners... and I didn't make them! 😁 I am still stamping them with the handmade silver dragon logo stamp so they retain a bit of that small handmade business chic. ;)

We won't have all of Larkin's products moved to the new cards in time for (tomorrow's!) First Tuesday Rogue Valley Growers & Crafters Market, but we hope to have an all-new display ready for the next Saturday market!

Moss Agate Wedding Set

Those of you who have been following along for awhile may remember the silver ivy circlet Larkin created last year. We had the idea at the time that it would make a gorgeous centerpiece for nature-inspired wedding adornment, and someone agreed with us!

They wanted a custom necklace to match the circlet and complement their champagne-colored wedding dress. Larkin had a piece of moss agate they had found on a recent trip to Washington that seemed the perfect blushing champagne color, and this set was born!

Larkin feels especially honored every time someone chooses to wear their jewelry for an especially momentous occasion and we are hoping the bride (you know who you are 😉) will share pictures of their big day!

Tomato Blossoms

Larkin couldn't help adding tomato blossoms to their tomato design!

Each blossom features the same fuzzy calyx as the tomatoes, plus paper-wrinkly petals surrounding a realistically segmented silver stamen. It's hard to do justice in photos to all the tiny details Larkin includes in their work!

Larkin is super excited about the mixed pair of earrings featuring one tomato and one blossom, but has matching sets available as well. ;)

Silver Tomatoes

🎶"Only two things money can't buy

That's true love and homegrown tomatoes"🎵

'Tis the season and Larkin's tomato plants are sprouting some unusual fruit. 😉

Larkin really packed a lot of detail into these little cuties! They dust-textured the calyx to closely resemble the fuzzy surface of tomato leaves. But I think my favorite detail is the little lump they added to the stem that is the spot it separates when the fruit is picked.

I did a lot of googling trying to figure out of there was a name for that lump, but came up short. I did, however, learn that the section of stem below the lump is a peduncle! I'll be casually trying to work that term into conversations for a long time to come. 😅

I also captured a rare shot of Larkin wearing their own work! 🍅❤️

Dragonfly Update

The dragonflies are swarming!

Larkin needed to re-stock these critters and decided to update their original design. They gave each textured wing a slight tweak so they are slightly off planar and better capture the essence of dragonfly movement.

They also added necklaces to their regular line-up so they can adorn clavicles or earlobes!

Silver Inchworm Stud Earrings

Inchworms have long been on Larkin's short list of top favorite cute insects!

Larkin hand fabricates each of these sweet little creepers from sterling silver. Each has a wee bulbous head and a slightly tapered tail, and is caught in the middle of that characteristic inchworm scrunch.🐛

These inchworms will sit differently depending on earlobe size and position of piercing— they will hang slightly off a small, attached earlobe (pictured on Larkin's ear) and perch fully on a larger detached lobe (pictured on Larkin's younger brother Finn's ear).

They are light enough they can also be positioned to creep sideways up or down the ear!

I also had to include a shot from the photo shoot when I caught Larkin and (large orange cat) Pippin gazing adoringly into each other's eyes. 😻🐾