A Quick Trip...

William and I just returned from a quick trip South to take care of some business and visit with family.  We started our journey to the Durham area.  According to the GPS and our directions, the trip wasn't supposed to take that long... but we got snared up in traffic and it added several hours to our travels.  It was a beautiful day though and we were listening to Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris, so the extra time spent in the car wasn't so bad.

Our stay in Durham was really short, but we got to see a good friend and talk business.  We also got a chance to visit Scratch and had some tasty treats.  I ordered a slice of sorghum shoofly pie and some cheesy grits.  Durham seems to be a really cool town with a lot of interesting businesses and a lot of potential.

Once we finished up a quick tour of Durham, we headed across the state to Asheville.  Of course, we got caught up in traffic again and it put us way behind schedule.  But we arrived and it was good to see my sister and her family.

It's a little heartbreaking to see the kids.  They're growing up so fast.  I remember when Azalea was a baby and I was afraid to hold her, because I was worried that I'd break her.  Now she's on the verge of being a teenager and is a little person with her own thoughts and ideas.  I know she was a "person" before, but it just seems so much more real now.  Above, she was showing us one of her costumes for a school project.  She was emperor Hadrian and was sporting a wig/beard combo that Cynthia made for her.

Here's another picture of Azalea.  She had just finished baking a butter cake!  She made it all by herself and was so proud!

We weren't supposed to stay in Asheville as long as we did, but we were fortunate enough to stay a few more days.  We wanted to stay and she Azalea in a play she was in, so we extended by a few days.  Above is a picture of Max observing Cynthia crocheting while waiting for food at the Sonic.

I really enjoy my time with my family.  Not only do we get to catch up and spend time with each other, but we also get to make things.  Above is a picture of a collaborative project that I worked on with Cynthia.  Cynthia and I came up with the concept, Cynthia sculpted the wax master, Greg molded it and cast it, and I bezel set the stones.  All of us worked on the finishing.  I love them.  Each one is different and unique.  I also love the heft of each of the pendants.  They solid sterling silver and a have a comforting weight to each of the pieces.  If you're interested in taking a look at them, CLICK HERE.

Here's a snapshot of Azalea on stage in As You Like It.  She did great!  She played Jacques and performed the "all the world's a stage" monologue.  I'm really proud of her!

I'm really glad that we got to stay.  William and I probably won't have our own children, so these moments that we get to spend with our nieces and nephews are gold.   It's weird.  Before the kids were born, it was hard for me to imagine children or wanting to be a parent.  When I was little, I remember play acting as a father, but after that, I couldn't really picture being in that role.  I guess my complicated relationship with my own father and my self-absorption with my career put a damper on all that.  Now I've reached a point where I could see myself being a nurturer, but know that it is unlikely that we'll go down that road.  I guess the world really is a stage, "and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances..."

Before we departed, we stopped at the Moose Cafe for lunch.  It never ceases to hit the spot, filling that hunger for home cooking and sweet tea.  

On the way back, we listened to Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin.  It was nice to listen to the interconnected lives of the characters, as we wove our way through the mountains and along the highways headed home.

PayPal Donation Button for Creative heART Challenge...

When I first mentioned the prospects of acquiring the additional inventory of the store that closed, we received a lot of great feedback and suggestions on how best to fundraise to make this project a reality.  One of the ideas we got was to create a PayPal Donation button.  At the time, I had this thought that if someone wanted to contribute money to us, they should get something tangible in return.  So, they might as well buy something outright.  But after evaluating what worked and what didn't work during the first run of the Creative heART Challenge, some of the points that folks brought up made sense.  For instance, what if all of the current items are above their budget, but they still want to contribute?  Or, what if they'd rather donate money directly to the cause instead of having that money go towards shipping?  Also, what if someone wasn't interested in acquiring more things, but wanted to contribute funds without strings attached.  So... at the urging of a friend and fellow blogger, I decided to give it a whirl.

While I would prefer participants of this fundraiser to find things that speak to their hearts and creative spirits, if this is something you're interested in doing, we want to thank you in advance and let you know that we appreciate every little bit!  Little by little, the bird builds its nest!  Every penny helps us get a little closer to achieving our goal.  

Here it is:

An Update...

In my last post, I discussed where my 30 day project sort of derailed.  While it wasn't all bad and I did have some successes, I couldn't help but be a little crestfallen.  I think when you start something like this and you give yourself permission to invest yourself completely, you imagine the shiny golden ring at the end of it all.  You imagine yourself triumphant!  And that image is sometimes what gets you through the hard times and makes it all worth it in the end.  It's a tool to help you manifest your dreams and make the abstract real and solid.  But then... when that ring slips from your grasp, and it seems like the dream is dead... well, even with the most sunny of dispositions, it can be a little disappointing.  I won't lie... I was a little sad that I couldn't reach my goal in the timeframe planned.

And sometimes... when you're ready to give up and let go of that thing that didn't come to be, something happens.

I sometimes wish that I could glimpse the masterplan and see how everything is supposed to work out.  Along the way, it can be confusing and it can seem like you're flying blindly, flailing frantically.    Even so, I do think there's a path.  One thing leads to another, and if you're careful, you can trace a delicate finger along the ribbon of causality.

Two things...

Sometimes when you're a little down, it makes all the good things seem all that much better.  We recently were the recipients of tremendous generosity and can't count our blessings enough.  My sincere gratitude goes out to those angels.  Thank you!  You know who you are and we are so thankful.

As it turns out, our initial goal isn't completely lost after all.  I won't go into the details, mainly because they aren't mine to go into, but how it shakes out is that I have extra time to fundraise to make the transaction happen.  Second chances do exist.

I will say this, the Creative heART Challenge isn't over yet!  What I've learned through the evaluation of what worked and what didn't work is I need to listen to the muses and focus on that first.  I'll update as projects are completed and that may or may not fall within a daily schedule.  I'm also not going to give a definitive end time; I'm keeping the schedule to myself and if something strikes your fancy, grab it!  Don't wait!  I so very much want to make this happen, but I also don't want to sacrifice my life in the meantime.  As a result, I'm going to approach this much more fluidly and see if that doesn't generate a better result.  I feel really fortunate for this opportunity and will gladly engage some of those ideas that sparked during the first run of the Creative heART Challenge.  Keep your eyes peeled for more things to come!  Great things will happen!

Successes and Failures...

If you've been following along with my blog, then you know that I've been participating in a self-imposed challenge.  The idea was to make new creative things for 30 days, post them each day, sell them, and fundraise for a project for the store.  The goal was to purchase the remaining inventory off of a store that was closing and use this to supplement our current offerings.

I started off well and made a ton of stuff.   I even kept up with posting things each day.  But little challenges kept creeping up.  For instance, one of the obstacles that we were facing was moving everything to a new online store.  I don't think we were ready for something like that.  I also don't think our customers were ready for that either.  So we've sort of had to backtrack on that idea.  Our resolution to this issue was that we would post things that appeared online and in the brick and mortar store in the new online store and keep online only offerings in the old store.  It's not ideal, but I think for the moment, it'll have to work.

One of the other challenges was that there simply wasn't enough time.  I'd sit down to work, look up and realize that most of the day had zipped by.  And then I'd have to take photos, edit photos, upload items to the online store, and then blog about it.  While it doesn't seem terribly different from what I do on a regular basis, on top of all my other current projects, I found the time crunch to be a little intense.  Plus, if I struggled with a project, I'd be empty-handed for the day.

Another of the biggest problems was that I don't really work like that.  I'm more of a pollinator.  I have multiple project going on, I float around, I give a little attention to each project, and move on.  It might not seem like I get much done and then all of a sudden, BAM! I have a mountain of finished work.  I think with this project, it's more about setting little goals and planning for smaller, more manageable projects and getting them done.

And then... well... there just wasn't any response.  I was literally going without sleep and running on caffeine fumes and there wasn't a single sale.  I talked with a few folks who were interested in helping out and they said that they wanted to wait until it was over for them to decide on what they'd get.  I think I was getting subconsciously a little nervous.  What if I spent 30 days working on a project and no one bought a single thing.  It'd be an incredible waste of time.  I was naturally a little apprehensive.  A further distraction from this project was that I posted a few of my things that I was working on via Facebook and that DID get traction.  And then the next day, I posted another thing that I made on Facebook and that sold and so forth and so on.  And then a week passed and I realized I hadn't listed a single thing that I made on my blog.

Perhaps the biggest thing to come up is that I like my life.  I've built a happy little home and I enjoy spending time with William and my cats and taking time for things to happen as they happen.  With the challenge of the daily deadlines, I wasn't really able to enjoy any of the things that I was working so hard to have.  The goal was to acquire more beads, but behind that was the ability to better serve our customers and behind that was to maintain my happy little home and build an even brighter future.

So those were my stumbling blocks...

Even though things didn't work according to plan, there were a lot of successes.

I think one of the most profound successes in this project is connecting with so many great people about my work.  I received so many positive compliments and so much encouragement and support.  I ended up getting a few sales (far short of my goal, but still some sales), I traded some of my work, and I received some wonderful gifts from friends.  It really blew me away to see how many people wanted us to do well.  It's amazing and I feel blessed.

All was not lost.  In engaging this project, I also tapped into my muses and awoke things within me that were long dormant.  Parts of my creative spirit soared!  It wasn't always easy.  Sometimes coming face to face with these aspects of myself was relentlessly daunting, but the process provided rich creative fodder and germinated a thousand different ideas.

It seems like my list of successes is far shorter than my list of failures, but those things that did work far outweigh and outshine any area where I felt like I fell short.  I think there are times when it's easy to focus on the negative and it feels as though you've hit a stone wall.  But if you examine everything, there is always good to be found and sometimes that thing which was at first invisible, turns out to be the greatest and most important thing.

Weekend with Kieu Pham Gray...

We are so lucky to be able to work with Kieu Pham Gray.  She's a talented jewelry-maker, teacher, and all-around tool guru.  Kieu and her husband, Andy, have a wonderful jewelry-making supply business called The Urban Beader.  They offer a wide array of tools and interesting jewelry-making materials.  We at Allegory Gallery hosted her weekend of workshops and we used Main Exhibit Gallery's awesome new classroom space.  Make sure to visit Main Exhibit Gallery's website to see a listing of all the great classes that they're offering in the new art center.

Kieu taught six classes.  On the first night, she taught how to solder and make the Double-cross Bracelet.  On the second day, she taught how to saw and solder in the Essential Pendant class.  The Essential Pendant is a wonderful project, featuring a diffuser pendant for essential oils.  We had a break between workshops for a book signing (with tasty treats from Warrior King Pastries) and then jumped into drilling beach glass and tube riveting.  Since our class was smaller for pearl knotting, we had the class at Mountain Palace over plates of steaming dumplings and Northern Chinese cuisine!

On the third day of classes, she taught torch enameling and silver-casting with cuttlefish bones.  It was a really great weekend, filled with creative information.

It was a really fun weekend and I think everyone had a really good time.  These weekend intensives are really a wonderful immersion experience and I feel my head swimming with possibilities.

One of the things that I love about these weekends is that they provide quality classes that might otherwise be out of reach for a lot of people.  They're also smaller, so there's a lot of individual attention and I feel like you get to know the instructor (and your fellow classmates) better.

We had such a marvelous time that we're already talking about having Kieu back in 2017!  It seems like a long time away, but it'll be here before you know it!  We are so appreciative of all the students who came out to support these classes; without you, we would not be able to do these things.  We are also grateful to Kieu for coming out to Ligonier to share her wealth of information and provide a fun and relaxed learning environment!  Thanks, Kieu!

OH!  And be sure to sign-up for a new project that Kieu is working on!  It's called, Ever Crafting and is an online community for serial crafters!  I'll be playing along as one of the jewelry gurus!  CLICK HERE to sign up.

Creative heART Challenge: Day 18...

Yesterday, I posted a picture of a painting I made called, "The King".  I was pretty happy with it once I finished, but one thing that I like to do is hang my most recent painting on my studio wall and live with it for a bit.  I'm able to see it from a different perspective and stand back.  I kept frowning at the painting when I looked at it and it quickly became apparent that I wasn't really happy with it at all!  I kept changing things in my head and eventually I couldn't take it anymore and took it down and started to fix it.

Here's a side-by-side view.  Something was off.  I'm trying to fight the compulsion to go back and noodle with my paintings too much... because I'm afraid of overworking them, but there was just something that I couldn't ignore and I had to adjust it.

So... I toned down the white dots with a brown wash and I added a little extra to his silhouette between the horns.  Those were subtle changes, but I think they improved the painting a hundredfold!  The wash helped make it more "of the woods" and less "Green Power Ranger".  It also made the dot pattern look less like glittery rhinestones.  Once I adjust those things, I noticed that the character and the space were not integrated enough and I needed to activate the negative space around the figure.  So I added these halo/solar eclipse forms.  And now it's truly done and I'm much more pleased with it.

So, today wasn't a day spent on making completely new work... but the work I did is work that I'm happy with.  CLICK HERE to see the painting in the online shop.

Creative heART Challenge: Day 17...

This  is my latest painting.  I'm not used to painting men, so this is a bit of a departure for me.  A few months ago, I had a dream that I opened a bar called, "The Wild Jackalope".  There was a man in the corner picking on a banjo and a woman singing sad songs.  A with a red beard lit the oils of an orange peel on fire to much amusement and delight.  I sat in the back, measuring herbs on an old-time scale, preparing herbal infusion in tall glass bottles.  I was too short to reach the top shelf.  A woman in white tights and a rainbow scarf danced by herself in slow circles.  The face of the figure in the painting is sort of the face of the man with the red beard, at least as best as I can remember.  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  It'll also be one of the last big format painting for awhile.  If you want to check it out in the online store, CLICK HERE.

Creative heART Challenge: Day 16...

I'm tired, but I feel good about what I accomplished.  I had to play around with this one a bit.  At first, I painted the figure with flowing, Kiki Smith hair... but I thought it was a bit distracting.  And then I had the dots going throughout the "sticks", but the pattern on pattern was a bit much and really flattened the space.  So I painted them back to black and incorporated the "halos".  In some ways, I think this one was probably one of my bigger challenges, because it depicts an older face.  You can draw the lines and add the right shadows, but there's something almost ethereal about capturing a person's true age.  So that's why it's dang hard and a lot of people fail at it.  I remember being in a residency program with an artist named Fran Kaufman.  She was witty, charming, and very thoughtful.  She also spoke her mind.  At the time she was working on these really abstracted portraits.  There were probably a hundred of them, all pinned in a careful grid.  She said, "I like babies and I like old people.  Everyone in between, I could care less about.  The babies and the old people are so similar, but so different.  Heck, they're decades apart, but can look so much the same.  What's that thing that distinguishes them?  It's not the teeth or hair.  Is it wisdom?  Exhaustion?  I'm interested in what makes a face a face."  I still think of that conversation and I laugh to myself whenever I see a baby painted during the Renaissance that looks like a little old man.

To find out more about this painting and to add it to your collection, CLICK HERE.

Creative heART Challenge: Day 15...

This is my latest painting!  I'm a smitten kitten.  With each painting I complete, I feel a little bit braver and a little more confident.  Now that I'm getting back into the rhythm of painting again, I can feel the ideas tingling on my fingertips.

Part of me wanted to call this series of paintings, "Ten Years Later".  There wasn't really a definitive stopping point for my painting (and as I mentioned earlier, I did do a few pieces here and there), but it was probably a full ten years since I solidly worked with painting as my main medium.  I've thought a lot about the hiatus. It really didn't click until one of my teachers from high school posted a picture of a painting I had done for her.  Up until that point, I didn't really have that extensive of an art background.  Most of my inspiration came from books, things I saw on TV, or comic books.  We weren't really the type of family to go to museums on vacations and while I did go to a few art galleries, a lot of them specialized in regional pastoral artwork (think palm trees and beaches).  So what I painted was a figure, usually a female with flowing hair, with a floaty Starry Night-like background.  I painted these non-stop.  

And then I went to art school.

I won't say that they told me what to paint, but I distinctively remember one of my instructors laughing at one of my paintings and gathering everyone around it and saying, "And this students is the definitive, angsty humanoid figure floating in space... except this one has hair!"  It was crushing at the time, because I felt ridiculed.  But I didn't really have a frame of reference and once I had learned more about common art themes and worked with hormonal teenagers, I discovered that this is indeed a popular subject matter.  What I came to find out was that this is common, because it is really a universal concept... especially in recent decades.  It's all about the search for Self and the raw emotion felt in the presence of the unknown.  The humanoid is usually this hairless, nondescript figure that represents the artist... usually as an idealized form.  And once I had this realization, I thought it was juvenile and I laughed at my old paintings.  Because supposedly since I discovered this little nugget of wisdom, I thought I knew more about the world and art and the need for humans to make art.

And so... I won't say that they told me what to paint, but "art crushes" are just as common as the floating humanoid.  An art crush is basically when you see art you fall in love with or work with an instructor that you admire and your work starts to take on that flavor.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing; it's one way that people learn.  Over the next four years, I worked with a lot of artists interested in minimalism, geometry, abstraction, theory, and situational art.  And while it was really educational and a wonderful experience, my head was chock full o'nuts at the end.  And those ten years were in a way, a period of forgetting.  

What I came to unearth, particularly through working on these paintings, is that that search for Self never really ends.  So what I once laughed at, I now cherish.  For it is a window into that search for a place in this Universe.  These characters in my floating world are pieced together from bits of ideas and emotions and dreams.  I do think these paintings are better than my older ones, but that's just because I've had time to practice and hone my technique and incorporate a few tricks.  Ultimately, the core is not so far removed from that boy putting paint to canvas, trying to figure things out, and find his voice.

Creative heART Challenge: Day 14...

I have to admit that I've been enjoying falling down the rabbit hole with these paintings.  I stayed up all night painting this one.  In retrospect and after looking at it a bit, I was thinking more fire elemental and less She-Devil.  I guess it could go either way.

When I started this series, I rounded up a bunch of old paintings and collages.  I cut up the collages and reconfigured them on top of the old canvases.  Once the glue is dry, I build up layers of different mediums to create a more uniform painting surface.  Then, with acrylic paints, I add washes and very Expressionistic brushwork.  After the space has been fleshed out, I figure out where I want to place my "figure".  Depending on the composition, the "figure" can take on several different forms and isn't altogether humanoid.  Finally, after I've pulled a character from the silhouette, I paint a face, collage it on the painting and add embellishments and details depending on the personality of the character.  I used to be really inspired by Aboriginal artwork and the dot-work sometimes emerges in my paintings.

To take a closer look and to purchase it, CLICK HERE.

Creative heART Challenge: Day 13...

In developing this series of work, I've been thinking a lot of what lives in dreams and the imagination.  This provides a lot of source inspiration for the characters that populate this amorphous space.  I'm endlessly fascinated with fairy tales and folklore and the creatures that are featured in them.  They often times are a blend of human and animal, not completely alien but also not completely human.  In them, there's the Wild and the Wild can be both kind and cruel.

To learn the details about this painting and to possibly purchase it, CLICK HERE.

Creative heART Challenge: Day 12...

So, I may or may not have stayed up too late last night working on my latest painting!  I'm happy with this one.  It's not as easy to like this one as much as my last painting... the face in this one has more asymmetrical features, the eyes are different, the face placement is lower than conventional portraiture, and I've started to play around with a bit more symbolism, BUT I think these things make me like it all the more!  I feel good about this one and the forward motion of my paintings!  

You can learn more about this painting (and even purchase it if you so desire) by CLICKING HERE.

Creative heART Challenge: Day 11...

I thought that I could get two birds with one stone, so for Day 11 of the Creative heART Challenge, I'm also posting Cloud Bridge Design Challenge piece.  If you're not familiar with the Design Challenges, I put together kits and we send them out all over the world.  Every month there's a new reveal and people share the creations that they made with as much or as little of the kit as they desire.

The Cloud Bridge kit was inspired by the Pantone Color of the Year selection for 2016.  It wasn't just one color, but a blending of TWO!  The two colors selected were Rose Quartz and Serenity.  When I looked at these colors, I instantly thought of sky and clouds.  (Oddly enough, the banner that I made for the Creative heART Challenge is "Pantone correct".  I didn't even realize that until the two images were up against each other.)

I've been on a roll making these asymmetrical pieces.  I love how I can blend an eclectic mix of beads and make things flow together.  I remember when I first started making jewelry and asymmetrical designs weren't really popular.  I embraced it as my "thing".  After awhile though, I got a little burnt out and wanted to tackle symmetry.  I also didn't want to be a one trick pony.  (Later I discovered the connection between visual branding and my jewelry and I sort of kicked myself for not taking advantage of it more, but such is hindsight.)  Anyway, I had fallen out of the practice of making asymmetrical pieces and have recently revisited this in my jewelry making.

In this piece, I mixed a lot of different elements from the kit.  It can be worn as a wrapped bracelet or a long necklace.  It can also be worn with the clasp in the back or off to the side.  I think it has a lot of versatility.  In this piece, I also challenged myself to use the vintage sequins.  People love the look of them in the mixes, but often times shy away from actually using them.  In this piece, I used them to buffer beads.  This is particularly useful if a bead has a bigger hole and is next to a smaller bead that might otherwise get swallowed up by the bead with the bigger hole.  It also gives a hint of color and works to unify the piece.

Here's a second piece that uses bits from the kit!  Again, it's an asymmetrical piece.  I included some chunky simple cut rose quartz, pink opal rondelles, blue chalcedony rondelles, aquamarine rounds, Czech glass rounds, and a bronze bird toggle from my family at Green Girl Studios.  As spacers, I used grey Japanese seed beads with a pearlescent finish.  I could have used metal spacers, but I think these beads give it a softer look.  The necklace is light and airy and because there's a decorative clasp and it's an asymmetrical piece, the wearing options are many!

If you want to see more creations made by participants of the Cloud Bridge Challenge, CLICK HERE.  We post our pieces in a Facebook group devoted to the Design Challenges.  It's a great place to keep up to date with the latest news and information about the kits and to interact with other participants!

Creative heART Challenge: Day 10...

It's interesting getting back into the flow of painting again.  It has been almost ten years since I sort of shifted my focus away from painting.  I've done a few little things here and there, but I haven't really had a chance to fully engage for awhile now.  It's both wonderfully exciting and a little frightening.

Here is what I created for the 10th day of the Creative heART Challenge, and I'm really happy.  CLICK HERE to find out more about this piece and to call it your own.

Creative heART Challenge: Day 9...

I think one of the hardest things about making creative work is finding the balance between what makes you happy and what makes others happy.  For instance, when I started this mixed media piece, I struggled.  I had wanted it to work out a certain way and it just wouldn't.  Eventually, I got the painting to a really good spot and then I kept noodling around and I messed it up.  So I scraped away what wasn't working for me and started over.  I had posted some images of this process.  Normally I don't have a problem with showing process pictures, but when you're in new territory or aren't feeling 100% confident, revealing yourself too early puts you in a vulnerable position.  So I posted some pictures that showed the aftermath of me pulling up layers of paint and collage and surprisingly people liked it and that was almost worse than if people hated it.  Then when I posted another "in process" picture, many of the people who saw it the first time said they liked that version better.  At that point, we'd already passed the Rubicon and it was too late to backtrack.  The danger here is that I stopped to consider this.  Could I potentially recapture some of the chaos and piece together the mess I made?  The answer was NO.  It also dawned on me that there were too many opinions in my head and I had to listen to my heart and mind and follow my own artistic muses.

And this is what happened:

I learned a lot in the creation of this piece.  I know that I learned more than if everything worked out smoothly.  Sometimes you need those hiccups to make you a better artist.

To take a look at this in our online store and to learn more about it, CLICK HERE.

Mirth...

Earthbound creatures, stomping through the white.
We hurled snowballs, we built snowmen.
We made snow angels – beating arms with frantic delight.
Cold wings, featherless flight.
Laughter carried on the wind.

Creative heART Challenge: Day 8...

I think one of my other struggles with this challenge is finding enough time to do it all.  Making things is fine.  Photographing things is fine.  Adding things to the online store is fine.  Blogging is fine.  But put together on a daily deadline, it's a little daunting.  When I feel overwhelmed, I think about how it'll all be worth it.  I also think about all the cool things I have been making and all the ideas that I'm finally tackling after years of percolation!

One of things that I've been enjoying while embarking on this project is going through all my beads.  I like to think of the places I got them and the people I've met along the way.  Whenever I'm making things, particularly things that are to be worn, I try to focus all my positive intentions and good energy into the pieces.  I want people to carry all that good with them.  In these pieces, I've had fun mixing and matching all the different beads that have been collected over the years.  This necklace features carved bone from India, seed beads from Japan, fossilized conch shell and lapis beads from Tibet, a toggle made in Thailand by way of Ohio, and carnelian nuggets I found in Tucson.

I was first drawn to beads because of all the stories.  Body adornment is one of the oldest signifiers of human civilization.  It predates written language and appears in every culture.  Even in the most impoverished communities or ones with minimalistic aesthetics, there's some form of jewelry.  And all those things have stories.  I like the idea that as a designer, I'm making my own stories and using all these pieces and parts and creating another story that the wearer will carry with them in their own stories.  This necklace features very old Venetian glass that was once traded for gold, serpentine, African glass, bone, resin amber from Nepal, and Hebron Kano African glass.  It's said that the Hebron beads were made in the 1800's.  This necklace represents a global exchange of ideas across the ages.

Hope...

They put us in the ground, buried beneath earth and debris.
Out of sight, out of mind.
We never stopped striving, reaching higher.
Stronger from the struggle, growing deep roots.

Creative heART Challenge: Day 7...

I don't have many offerings today and I probably won't have many for the next few days.  I think one of the hardest parts of this challenge is that the way that I work.  I tend to work on things in layers and a little at a time.  So it can seem like I'm not very productive, when in actuality, I've been busily working away.

I think one of the other hurdles for me is that time moves in a slip-slide fashion for me.  I don't keep regular hours, so keeping track of time and days is tricky for me.  It doesn't help that when I'm working, I could sit down for what seems like 15 minutes and then when I look up, hours have passed.  I get so lost in my work sometimes.

This necklace may look relatively simple and for all intensive purposes, it is.  The beads though have been in my collection for years.  One of my first loves in the bead world was opalescent glass.  I was bewitched by how it seems like it is lit from within.  This necklace features vintage Mali Wedding beads.  Normally, when you buy Mali wedding beads (originally made in what is now the Czech Republic for trade in Africa), you get a bright, multi-colored assortment.  I ended up picking through thousands of beads to pick out these!  The sterling silver toggle comes by way of Saki Silver.  It's apt that it's a heart, because I love these beads!

This necklace features a bunch of aquamarine.  I love aquamarine.  It has such a shimmery, beautiful light blue color.  I mixed an assortment of different cuts with some vintage seed beads and Czech glass rounds.  I think the piece looks light and airy.  The toggle comes courtesy of my family at Green Girl Studios.  It's sterling silver.  While I was digging through boxes, I found a cache of projects that I made for magazines from years ago.  I ended up cannibalizing them for their parts.  The toggle is one of the pieces that I harvested!  

Bead and Craft Bloggers...

The Writing and Art of Andrew Thornton
Andrew kicks off his month-long Creative heART Challenge with a collection of necklaces!  Check out what he made!

Snap out of it, Jean!  There's beading to be done!
Jean reviews "Jewel Loom Inspirations" – a marvelous and fun book for beaders by Julianna C. Avelar!

Valentine Heart Shaker Card
Eileen made a Valentine heart shaker card filled with red confetti hearts using her Silhouette.  See how and download your choice of PDF templates or SVG files.

Have Fun with Found Object Drawings
Try to look at common things in a different way by making drawings starting with found objects.

Stitch an Encouraging Saying
Connie has added a NEW free pattern with a meaningful saying that will be perfect for a card or framed design.  Be sure to save it now!

Bead Vlog
Tammy's creating sparkly jewelry with her bead bargain box goodies.

Rich Mom Videos
If you have been thinking of dusting off your Etsy shop or starting one, then you may want to watch what Rich Mom has to say.

Beading Arts
Cyndi shares an easy wire bracelet that only LOOKS complicated!