Slashpile Designs Blog
The Slashpile Story June 26 2013
In 2006, we went treeplanting for the first time. Treeplanting is known to be an extremely difficult summer job. When we first arrived in the bush camp, people looked at us and thought there was no way we would last more than a week. But we did—we stayed the entire season, and were even top planters at our camp.
When you decide to do treeplanting, you commit to living in the bush for 4 months of the summer, living in a tent in very isolated camps in northern Canada (we planted mostly in Alberta). Everyday, you wake up super early to start planting trees, which you carry around with you all day over rough terrain, planting between 2000 and 4000 trees per day. You get paid per tree, so you have to work hard to make it worthwhile. There are bugs, swamps, extreme weather conditions, bears and many other challenges. That's not to say we didn't enjoy it--on the contrary! We had an amazing time and met such incredible people. We even went on to do more seasons, Tara as a tree checker (she had to have surgery on her shoulder after a year of planting) and I did 4 more seasons as a planter.
So back to the story--
In the clearcuts, there are these giant piles of sticks and logs, called Slashpiles. During the season, they kind of get in the way of planting, but at the end of our first season, we climbed them to photograph our ‘victory pose’ (see above, photo courtesy of Fabienne Good). After the season, we created a silver jewellery piece based on the slashpile, that was designed to be a medal for finishing the full season. This piece gave us the foundation of our branding for Slashpile Designs—every one of our pieces reflects a story, concept or achievement. And this piece is a prime example of how we do that.
We create jewellery, mainly in sterling silver. Unlike most jewellery, which is purely aesthetic, every piece has a story or concept behind it. Our products are designed to be personally significant to individuals, while at the same time, understood by a large audience. We get the inspiration for our pieces from our own lives, which we like to pack full of various activities, such as karate, snowboarding, roller derby…the list goes on. We are driven to create pieces that are both meaningful to the wearer and pleasing to the eye.
I hope this gives you a clearer insight into who we are and why we do what we do! If you take a look through our collections, hopefully you can even relate to some of our products with your own stories. We are constantly working to come up with new and exciting products that our customers can relate to with their own stories.
And now, a couple more treeplanting photos....