Our Story

Hello, we are Fiercely and Brian, and together we make CraftyFingas. We are an adventurous couple that make fine jewelry and unique crafts while we travel the world!

This is our story...

We both grew up in beautiful South lake Tahoe, California.

Together, we shared 5 years as best friends before we fell in Love 11 years ago, making 16 wonderful years of non-stop goofy adventures which are never ending.

We found each other through our immense love of music, and as we became concert buddies and best friends we discovered that the things we have in common seem to be limitless. This provides an incredible amount of opportunities to work side by side each other as we grow further in Love with each other every day.

Fiercely’s real name is Ashley, so sometimes we may say Fiercely, and sometimes we may say Ashley, just for some clarifications between social media platforms.

We share our interests in crafting jewelry, crystals and gemstones, gardening and growing food, and sustainable living which will all be supplemental sources of income on our travels. We also share our nerdiness in anime, our adventurous spirit and love for hiking in nature, thrill seeking at festivals, inspired by our love of art and sooo much more. These shared interests will be what drives us to our next adventure as they all play big roles in our lives.

Our typical year is broken down much like the seasons of the year, where our travels and adventures are focused on particular interests rather than the weather:

First is our Crafting season, which starts some random time in December, is when we head to Arizona. We spend a few months creating our jewelry and unique crafts and work the Tucson Gem Show with companies like Avant Mining, an Arkansas based mining company that specializes in selling some of the worlds highest quality quartz. We also spend some of our time landscaping and greening the desert, practicing permaculture principles in every garden we create.

Next is our Festival season, which starts in the beginning of April. We’ve been building at festivals since 2013, and have had the pleasure to be an integral part of Lucidity Festival in Santa Barbara, CA, as well as Desert Hearts Festival in San Diego, CA.

Brian was Build Forman of Lucidity Festival in 2016 and that connected us with our beloved Art Temple crew.

Art Temple is a collection of artists that build a safe haven at festivals for people to come learn, heal and have fun with their creativity through free sketching, watercolors even modeling. At Art Temple, we both spend our time as Templars, holding space as well as teaching our uniques skills of Wire Wrapping Fine Jewelry.

We will be expanding our festival season with Art Temple and travel wherever opportunities arise as we push the envelope on what is possible when art and creativity come together in such magical and inspirational places as festivals. 

Our Landscaping season takes up much of the summer, as we normally head back home to Tahoe and focus on our jobs through our Regenerative Landsculpting company, Nature’s Gardener.

Brian started South Lake Tahoe’s first perennial food garden on top of an old compact parking lot and has spent an incredible amount of time teaching the local communities how to grow food and bring forth new sustainable gardening methods into the local gardening scene. 

When we landscape we use Permaculture (permanent agriculture) techniques that mimic patterns found in nature as a means for a more sustainable way of gardening. Some techniques include hugelkultures, sheet mulching, and companion planting. Because everything starts in the soil, we specialize in soil building, creating a healthy, natural environment for plants to thrive in without the use of chemical fertilizers.

You can learn more of our garden projects and sustainable, edible-gardening methods at our website, NaturesGardener.com or check out our Nature's Gardener Instagram:

We usually end our busy landscaping season with an exhilarating and transformative trip to Burning Man. 

And last is our Travel Season. The last 7 years we’ve developed a circuit where we start our traveling season with the Denver Gem show where we sell crystals with Avant Mining again. From Denver our plans are open, and we leave this time open to travel anywhere and everywhere.

So far we've traveled through 20 states in the US, India,Thailand, Nepal, and Puerto Vallarta. Sometimes we plan our trips, sometimes we don’t… it’s all a part of the joy in traveling. This brings our year to an end as we head back to Tucson and start our cycle over again

The CraftyFingas story is an ongoing, never-ending search for adventure and creation. Together, with our pup Hiroki, we will be sharing this story with you and along with all the places we visit, things we learn and beauty we create.

With Love,

-Brian and Fiercely, CraftyFingas