☆☾ Just about to burst of inspiration from my travels during the past 2 weeks. My orders were slowing down so I spontaneously hopped on a plane to New Orleans, road tripped to Texas and then flew into Utah to meet family for a grand tour of Yellowstone National Park followed by the Grand Tetons. I feel this trip was the time I needed to step away from work and recharge. I returned home on Monday and felt excited and ready to jump right back into work. I gathered up a few outfits and took to the mountains for this shoot for Band of Gypsies.
One of my favorite things to do when I get dressed is to try and figure out how to wear my clothing in different, innovative ways. For this outfit, I gravitated to boots by PSKaufman, my long loved shawl by Girl On A Vine belted as a skirt and styled with a Band of Gypsies statement bodysuit that can easily convert strapless with a quick wrap around the back and tie to the front. It’s so fun to try and wear clothing in untraditional ways! I think I may have to wear all my Girl On A Vine shawls as skirts now!
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& here’s another quick note on reading and personal growth …
While I was away on my Yellowstone trip, I spent a decent amount of time delving into the book 101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think by Brianna Wiest. The knowledge beaming from these pages has eased my mind and facilitated a new perception which I hope to share with some of you really soon! For a little taste of her work, check out these two features on Thought Catalog titled, “16 Ways to Stop Worrying How Your Life Looks and Start Focusing on How It Feels” & “If We Saw Souls Instead of Bodies”
Some of you may have noticed that I’ve been blogging and posting to Instagram way less than I used to in the past. This is in part due to a loss of inspiration that began to surge through my veins in November of last year. Since then, I did my best to keep my head up but continuously felt exhausted and unable to express myself through photography and blogging as I had previously. Instead I stuck to fulfilling orders for Wild & Free Jewelry and tried to do detach myself from the virtual world a bit.
After taking this break, reading a lot of books and finding myself more immersed in nature, I feel as though I am ready to start sharing this side of myself with all of you again. Thank you for bearing with me through the dry spell as I waited to get my groove back.
I’ve realized that while social media can create an unhealthy mental state and fuel society based norms of beauty and behavior, it’s also an extremely powerful tool to connect and inspire one another on an exponential scale. Months ago, I began to feel uninspired because it appeared through my eyes that social media was transforming into a ego based monster that sucked away all my creativity (dramatic I know).
Many people believe social media has always existed in this way, but it wasn’t until last year that I first began to experience the pressure associated with this mindset. I found myself not wanting to post or share things as it became more of a stressful experience than a liberating one as it had felt previously.
Through a lot of analyzing, problem solving and altering my perception, I realized that social media is all about how you use it. The accounts I follow and love are open and “real” which unites people across cultures and serves as an exciting, freeing way to absorb information and ideas. Somewhere along the lines, it became hard to stick to this positive mindset and I needed to ground myself in the real world in order to remember how to use social media in the way that most authentically expresses who I am and what I want to achieve in this lifetime.
Part of my new vision is to share writing on this blog again as well as things that inspire and move me. I’ve decided to re-brand my Instagram to @wildandfree.corina so that I can begin to make things more personal and center on supporting brands more than I have in the past. You can still follow my designs via the new account @wildandfreejewelry.
Part of this change is also with the hope that I can convey to the masses that I am still one person designing things out of my home rather than a huge business as the nearly 200K following seemed to suggest at first glance. It’s really important to me to effectively support others in their creative dreams and share the fashion I love, especially when it’s ethically produced. Now that I have two separate accounts I hope execute both these incentives effectively with little confusion. I also look forward to getting more open and personal with all of you on my blogging account @wildandfree.corina and learning to think more like a business woman for @wildandfreejewelry.
This intense mental shift, coupled with a few passages from Wiest’s book have inspired me to share a new side of what Wild & Free (as well as myself) have grown into in recent months. One thing I hope to share really soon is a few tips on how to begin to use social media in new and exciting ways that won’t leave you feeling drained at the end of scrolling through your feed. I’m hoping to teach myself video editing and compile short clips on what I’m learning with this approach very soon!
As always, thank you for coming along on this journey. I’m excited to share more creativity and discoveries with you in the upcoming months.
xx Corina
Wild & Free Blog 