Today we’d like to introduce you to Carly Langman.
Hi Carly, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Harvested Creations began in the middle of 2024, during a period of transition in my life when I had the opportunity to step away somewhat from my existing career and think about what I wanted to do next. I was fortunate to have time to explore the things that genuinely interested and inspired me.
Around that time, I travelled home to Australia and spent time with family, surrounded by a beautiful garden filled with an incredible variety of plants. Back in Tucson, I was also spending a lot of time walking and appreciating the extraordinary plant life of the Sonoran Desert. I became increasingly fascinated by how much natural beauty surrounds us every day and how easily we can overlook it.
I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of what we consider “precious” in jewelry. We go to extraordinary lengths to mine materials from the earth, transport them around the world, cut and process them, when there are remarkable colors, textures and forms growing all around us. I began wondering: why couldn’t those things be precious, too? I wanted to find a way to preserve and elevate that fleeting botanical beauty and turn it into something that could be worn and treasured.
My earliest pieces were honestly a little clumsy. I was learning how different flowers, leaves, seeds and other natural materials behaved, experimenting with different preservation techniques and figuring out what worked and what didn’t. I started selling at markets toward the end of 2024, and since then the business and my work have evolved quite a bit.
I’ve continued experimenting and refining my techniques, and the pieces I make today are far more polished than those early attempts. I’ve also learned a tremendous amount about the business itself: which markets are right for my work, who my customers are, and what people connect with most. Along the way, I’ve found a particularly natural fit with botanical gardens, which feels wonderfully appropriate for work that is so fundamentally about celebrating plants.
What began as a creative experiment at a transitional point in my life has gradually become something with a much clearer identity and purpose. Harvested Creations is still evolving and the experimentation and discovery are a big part of what keeps it exciting for me.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
In many ways, it actually has been a relatively smooth road, simply because I passionately love what I do. There are certainly pressures, particularly when I need to produce enough pieces for upcoming markets or shops but the work itself has never felt like a grind. I still come to it with a genuine sense of excitement every day.
Probably the biggest challenge has been learning that when you work with botanicals, you’re working on nature’s schedule, not your own. Every plant has its cycle. There may be a very narrow window when a particular leaf, flower, seed pod or fruit is at exactly the stage I need, and if I miss it, I may have to wait an entire year for another opportunity. Even harvesting at the right time doesn’t guarantee that a botanical will ultimately be suitable for jewelry. I’ve had to become much more selective about what I harvest and learn through experience exactly when and how to collect and process different materials. Maintaining a supply of high-quality botanicals is probably the most stressful part of the business.
I’ve also had to learn how to value and price my work. At markets, I sometimes find myself alongside jewelry makers selling at a lower price point, and initially I found that difficult. Eventually, though, I had to recognize that my process is unusually involved. I’m growing or foraging the botanical material myself, harvesting it, processing and preserving it, and then making each piece of jewelry from scratch. My pricing has to reflect that process and the time behind it. Doing so many markets has helped enormously because I’ve been able to see firsthand how people respond to the work, and I’ve become much more confident about its value.
One other challenge has been learning to call myself an artist! I still naturally think of myself as an experimental maker – someone who is constantly playing with materials, testing ideas and figuring out what else might be possible. But as Harvested Creations has grown, I’m slowly becoming more comfortable embracing the word “artist” too.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
At the heart of my work is a desire to make the botanical element itself the star of the show. I’m not so much interested in using nature to decorate jewelry as I am in finding ways to turn nature itself into jewelry. That means I try to interfere with the botanical as little as possible. I use minimal metal and generally avoid surrounding or encasing the natural material in elaborate settings. Instead, I want someone to notice the tiny details we so often overlook. The texture of a piece of bark, shape of a seed pod, the veining of a leaf, or simply the color of a single petal.
I’m particularly proud of the techniques I’ve developed for working with plants native to the Sonoran Desert. I’ve found ways to preserve an entire palo verde flower, for example, while still keeping its shape and to create jewelry from prickly pear petals, penstemon, ocotillo and even mesquite pods. There’s something incredibly satisfying about taking a botanical that people may have walked past hundreds of times and presenting it in a way that makes them stop and really look at it.
Interestingly, my most popular pieces at markets are often the big, colorful, showy flowers, but there’s another customer who is drawn specifically to the native Sonoran pieces. They recognize the plant and often have a personal connection to it. I love that my work can appeal in both ways – sometimes simply because something is beautiful, and sometimes because it evokes a particular landscape, place or memory.
One area I’m especially excited to explore further is citrus peel. It’s one of the most frustrating materials I work with, but also one of my favorites. The colors, textures and shapes I can achieve with it are fascinating to me, and I’ve begun experimenting with mid-century modern-inspired forms using citrus peel as the medium. That’s an area where I feel myself moving beyond simply preserving a botanical and beginning to explore more deliberately what I can create with it.
Ultimately, I think what sets my work apart is that I don’t want the natural material to become lost in the jewelry. I want people to come away with a deeper appreciation of the extraordinary beauty in the very ordinary pieces of nature that surround us. In some ways, my work also offers an alternative idea of what we consider precious, and what jewelry can be. Adornment doesn’t necessarily have to be shiny, metallic, glitzy or traditionally glamorous to be beautiful. There is another kind of beauty that feels quieter and more grounded: the beauty of something that once grew, flowered or fell from a tree. I love the idea that something so humble can be elevated, worn on the body and valued as something precious.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
One of the unexpected joys of creating my business has been seeing the emotional connections people have with plants. At markets, someone will recognize a particular flower or leaf and immediately have a story to tell me. It might remind them of a garden they grew up with, a place they’ve lived, a person they love, or simply the desert they call home. I started this work because of my own fascination with plants, but I’ve come to realize how deeply connected many of us are to the natural world and the memories we associate with it.
Harvested Creations is also still very young. I only began making jewelry in 2024, and I feel as though I’ve barely scratched the surface of what might be possible. I’m constantly picking things up, turning them over in my hands and wondering, “Could I make something out of this?” Sometimes the answer is absolutely not, but quite often after enough experimenting, I find a way!
That’s probably what excites me most about where I am now. I don’t have a fixed idea of what Harvested Creations will look like five years from now. I hope I’ll still be experimenting, still noticing things I haven’t noticed before, and still finding new ways to transform the overlooked pieces of the natural world into something people want to wear and treasure.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://harvestedcreations.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harvestedcreations/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Harvested-Creations/61564306473373/
