Bay Area woman creates jewelry from Alaskan birch bark

NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla. - Sacha Fenimore loves earrings, but she would admittedly always forget them on family trips. Her solution was to buy a new pair during the trip.

"A few trips, my husband caught on to it, and he kind of pointed at the birch pile and said, ‘I'm sure you're very crafty, can't you turn that into jewelry?’ " Fenimore said with a laugh.

Pictured: Sacha Fenimore

That suggestion was the genesis of her small business, A Twisting Star.

"We have Alaskan birch jewelry that I create from the little pieces of birch bark that are on the woodpile at our family cabin up in Alaska," Fenimore explained.

Each piece of jewelry is hand-crafted and one of a kind. Fenimore creates mainly earrings, but also sells necklaces. Sometimes the birch encompasses the entire piece, while other times it’s an anchor to an accessory. The raw birch comes from fallen trees in her home state. They fall from bad weather, ground saturation or animals knocking them down.

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"The internals of the tree will rot and decay, but it will leave almost a perfect sleeve of bark," she said. "I just harvest that, dry it out and bring it home in a suitcase."

In her workshop, Fenimore currently has two trips worth of birch. She loves the flexibility of the material, likening it to the different layers of an onion.

"One piece of bark can give us so many different textures and designs," Fenimore said.

Fenimore loves talking about Alaska, especially to potential customers at local markets. She loves the reaction the jewelry creates for customers who have ties to birch trees, whether they are from the northern states that have them or if they simply have an affinity for nature.

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"I find that the personal connection, when people hear that it's not just a piece of blank wood, that it has a home, that it has a shared home with me and my family and my parents who have built that cabin for us and are leaving that legacy, It means more I think," Fenimore said.

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