RAD Press- Handmade in Portland features Shannon Conrad of Rubygirl

Congratulations to persistant Ring-A-Day-er and RAD Shannon Conrad for the fabulous interview "HiP Creative Spotlight: Shannon Conrad of rubygirl" on Handmade in Portland!

As well as talking about building a handmade business, her family, and the satisfaction of meeting strangers wearing her jewelry there is a lovely feature on the Ring a Day project. Yay! Shannon talks about how the project began, her favourite ring (usually yesturday's) and the wonderful Ring a Day community.



Read an exerp of the RAD press below:

Let’s talk about a Ring a Day. What was the concept behind that? And how is it going?

I’m part of a team on Etsy, called Etsy Metal, it’s the metalsmiths team. And one of the members had this idea. She had taken a class and the instructor had said that she had done this as a creative process, and it stuck in her mind. She presented it to the team and so I decided to try.

Setting out, a lot of people agreed to do it at least for January. But there were those of us that said, if I’m going to do it, I want to push past that. The nice thing about how we set up Ring a Day is that there are no rules. It is up to you. It’s a personal challenge. I could tie a string around my finger and that’s today’s ring. Personally, I try to fabricate as much as possible, because my goal with Ring a Day is to…well, you do things over and over, I see it in production work, I am faster and better at certain things because I’ve done it a hundred times. So I try to fabricate more often and do less conceptual stuff. It’s given me a chance to try things that have been in my head. And some of the things that have come out, I want to do whole lines of.

The whole process is frustrating and exciting and it makes me anxious and there are all of these emotions that go into it. But it has been really good. It has pushed me creatively. It has pushed me to be in the studio every day. There are times when I don’t have orders pending or anything when it would be really easy to flake off a day, and this doesn’t allow that. It makes me think creatively every day.

I think what is really great about Ring a Day is the community it has built. Anybody can do it. You don’t have to be a metalsmith or be part of the Etsy Metal team. We opened it up to anybody. One of the girls posted statistics on her blog. I want to say that 118 people have made rings at some point. It’s down to four of us who are completely on target. Mostly it’s sheer stubbornness on my part.

Do you have a favorite ring?

Probably what I did last night. And if you asked me yesterday, I would have said the same thing. At 200 and some odd rings, I don’t think I do have a favorite.

Read the rest of the article here.