The Muse is Back!

I've been busy lately with my beads. My Muse finally came back from her vacation full of inspiration and energy. Lots of new beads have been coming in the mail, (LOVE, LOVE, LOVE online shopping!) and the necklaces have been flying off the bead desk. Below are some of the newest necklaces with some wonderful handworked beads I found.



I also bought a new light box so I could take better pictures of my jewelry. I'm still learning how the camera works in various situations. The new zoom is great for getting up close and personal with some of the beads, check out the frog on the black crystal and pearl necklace.

I'm jazzed and havin' a GREAT time!

Valentine's Day

Wishing everyone the most wonderfully chocolatey Valentine's Day!

Happy February!

In the last couple of weeks, I've been getting back to my beads. Here are two of the latest necklaces.
Coral Turquoise AmberMade with sponge coral, turquoise nuggets and amber chunks, each piece separated by a small red white-heart bead.
Blue Poppie Enameled setThese pieces are so pretty. Surrounded by turquoise beads, dyed freshwater pearls, small gold beads and a chain dangle.

Third Heart

Triad of Heartz
An early Valentine for you.

Sometimes, I'll start my day with a few Z'oodles to get the ideas flowing and my brain in arty mode. It's so much fun and I've been more creative the last few weeks than I've been the last year.

I signed up for the Use The Muse contest again. Last time I wasn't able to even get to creating with my Muse, so I hope this time around I will be able to create a special piece. As each contest begins, more and more beaders are finding out about it and signing up. There are quite a few international beaders that are part of this challenge. The finished pieces are so beautiful and the fun part about it is, we all have to use the same beads and a special "Muse" that Scarlett sends us. If you're up to it, sign up, pay for the kit and wait to be surprised. BUT...don't tell anyone what the Muse is!

I still have four pages for my Bead Journal Project to finish. If I can find them. With all the moving and rearranging I've done, I put them somewhere safe and you know how that goes. I'd like to try again this next year, but according to the rules, I have to finish what I started before I can sign up again.

The Big Announcement!

After creating all these Z'oodles and working my fingers down to the bone, I had to find a way to do something with them. So, I decided to open up a Cafepress shop. Here you can open up a free shop, upload your art and have them print it out on items you choose to sell.

I still have some tweeking to do, but everything should be up and running, so please drop by, take a look and if you like what you see, let me know.

Click HERE to go visit my new store. Thanks for stopping by!

UPDATE: I've closed my store at Cafepress and have an online shop at OnlineAuction.com.

More of My Z'oodles

The heart is the latest "doodle" I've finished. These things are like potato chips. You just can't do one.
Spillwayz
Storm Wavez
Heartz

Storm Wavez is my homage to Hokusai. I love his work.

Here are a few more

Melting is a bit more structured than what I normally would do. Cool anyway, eh?
Melting
Bead Curtain

New Year, New Blog

I've been slowly working on my house and when I get tired of that, I've been working on my Zentangle. "Zentangle is an easy to learn and relaxing method of creating beautiful images from repetitive patterns." I discovered them about two years ago and have been addicted ever since. They are relaxing and also stimulating for the right side of the brain. No two are alike and for anyone who can't or thinks they cannot draw, Zentangles are for you.
Z Logo
Z Heart
Bubbles and Curvez
Vase and Grapez

You can go see more and sign up for their newsletter here Zentangle

I'll be putting up more of my "doodles" and have a big announcement for later. So, stay tuned!

I'm back

Yeah, just a bit of a break. Think of it as a gestation period and that I've come into the world again. Not much has been happening art wise. Most of my time has been spent driving back and forth to my Mom's house and packing boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff. I can finally say that the house sold, it is all cleaned out and my garage is FULL of furniture and, yeah you guessed it, boxes.

Now comes the the fun part of incorporating all that stuff into the house. I will most likely be working on this until the first of the year. There is major house re-organization to do and that also includes the basement. This is my only creative endeavor until I can get it all done.

Art has been put on hold. Which bothers me, because I wanted to take part in the current Use the Muse Challenge. But my Muse has run off with the Use the Muse and they are partying somewhere in the south of France. Although the postcards are lovely.

I'm at the point now when I look at it all and just wonder where to start. I'll be like the tortoise, slow and steady wins the race. And if all else fails, I'll call my friend, Jennifer, a professional organizer, to help me get out of this mess. ;)

Half way point with BJP

Ahhh,six pages down and six to go. I have the dowel that holds the pages hanging off the bookshelf in my bedroom. I think these are looking great and I can't wait for the other six to join them!

Not all hearts are red

Here is the page for my Bead Journal Project for February.

February was named for the Roman goddess Februa, mother of Mars. She is the patroness of the passion of love. The birthstone of the month is amethyst.

When I decided to bead a heart for this month I didn't want to do the prerequisite red and so picked purple, not knowing about the birthstone. Isn't serendipity a wonderful thing? I needle felted the heart, a bit off center, with a lovely purple wool roving and then beaded around it with size 8 seed beads and clear flower beads.

After I did this heart, I got out some more of the cleaned respirator filters (20) and needle felted hearts on them. I think they will make fun brooches for some of my summer shows this year.

Snowflakes at BJP

Snowflake Ok, so it's only one snowflake, but it's a big 'un! For this month's page I had a hard time thinking up a theme. Then is snowed again. Well, duh! What else. Snow in winter, what a novel idea!

I had started a beaded bead earlier in the week and wasn't quite happy with it, so I took my little piece of flat, round peyote stitch and used it as a centerpiece for my page. I didn't have a plan and scrounged around for beads for each round. I left quite a bit of the background unbeaded to give it an airy feel. Then finished it off with a 3-bead edge and the peyote stitch hanger.

It was my first time at the "Hunt and Bead" method of working a piece. I had fun and got exercise at the same time. Usually, I have an idea of what I'm going to do in my head and I try to gather up my materials for the project I'll be working on. (see post below) This time both the page and my brain were blank. Hey....be nice. ;) I think it worked well.

How a necklace begins

This necklace started out in my head as a very simple design that used black velveteen beads and the leopard pendant. I decided to take a few steps out of the simple box and make a fringed necklace out of them. I had purchased these pieces in early December and decided recently to work with them.
Copper is one of my favorite colors for beading and this copper colored leopard was there just asking me to buy him. How could I say no? The large black beads were hanging close by and I HAD to have these soft and fuzzy beads to go with my leopard.

After setting these two elements out, I searched through my bead desk and my studio for just the right combinations of beads. I still need some 12mm or 10mm black glass beads for the necklace part of this fringed necklace.

This is also serendipity. My guild's Spring Theme Show this year is "Story Time". We will have a short paragraph from the story depicted by our art. "How the leopard got his spots" by Rudyard Kipling, is the story that will accompany this necklace. I didn't know about the theme until last week. I love it when things like that happen.

Can you see the necklace in the various elements of this design?

December BJP

I was just over at the Bead Journal Project to tell everyone I had my page done. But, I forgot to get it up here! So now it is.

I call this page "Silent Night, White Night". We had very powerful snowstorms, for this area, and the worst weather in about 40 years. Up here, we had 22" of snow with a light glazing of freezing rain and another layer of snow on top. It was white. Very white. One night I took the cat out and the moon was peaking through the clouds. It was beautiful and extremely bright. That gave me the idea for my page. The trees are brickstitch with straight stitch trunks and the moon is a flat wooden bead that I "encased" in silver-lined seed beads.

I wanted to add one of my wisdom teeth to it, but can't seem to find my stash of body parts. As it is, the page tells the story of the end of December for me. But, when I do find those teeth, I will sew one on.

Catching Up

My last post was Friday night, December 19th. It was snowing and beginning to pile up. We were well provisioned for the coming storms and I had my projects ready to work on while we were snowed in. I even had projects ready when the power went out! Saturday came the twinge, then Sunday, Solstice, came the pain. One of my molars was becoming abscessed. There was no way to get out and even if I could, it was Christmas week AND all the dentists were snowed in, too. I ended up sleeping through most of the week and taking aspirin for the pain. Christmas morning was a relief. I got one of the best gifts ever, the major pain stopped, just the annoying background pain hung on. That was bearable under the circumstances. I called my doctor on Friday to have him call in a prescription at my local drug store, but I couldn't get out. We tried and got stuck half way up our road. After digging out and working the truck back and forth for about 20 minutes we finally got up to the main road and found it hadn't been plowed. So, we turned around and went home.

We finally got out on Sunday. I was able to get my antibotics and some food for the coming floods. (We certainly had a "fun" Christmas/New Years holiday.) Tuesday was the dentist appointment where I learned that one of my root canals went bad and I needed to have it re-rooted. WHAT? I've never heard of that before! Off to the specialist and more appointments. This actually happens more than we would like to know. This Friday, I get back to my regular dentist and have the temporary filling drilled out and a new cap on my gold crown. It's nice to be without pain in my face. I certainly don't want that again!

What a way to start the new year. Hopefully this is all the major doctor/dentist things I have to put up with this year.

So.....did I get all those projects done or even started? Not a chance. I worked sporadically on my December Nature Gathered piece. I didn't even start my December Bead Journal Project until after New Year's. I'm running about a month behind on that one, but am up to date on the Nature Gathered work.

November BJP

Three Goddesses

I've had this piece done for weeks and completely forgot to upload it to my blog. I guess I got into the thought process that since is was done that's all I had to do. Duh! I was very busy at that time with getting ready for a large show and having enough jewelry and art for it.

When I started looking at the month, November, I went to my Pagan Book of Days by Nigel Pennick, to get an idea. I read down the page a bit, describing the month and what it held, and thought I could do a Moon month page. Then I read farther and saw that November "is sacred to the Mothers, the three goddesses that personify the triple goddess of girl, mother, and old woman, particularly in her third aspect. Its sacred color is red." That worked for me.

I went through my stash and found three faces that would signify the Mother, Maiden and the Crone. I divided them up in a not so even way, (not everything in life is fair), and put the Crone at the top. Each goddess has her color, white for the Maid, black for the Mother and red for the Crone. Each is surrounded by her "color" in a separate bead stitch, with a silver background and a red border.

As the days darkened while I could find the time to work on my page, I was able to acknowledge the Crone in myself. Persephone sleeps and my creativity slows down, waiting for the first green sprouts of Spring.

Busy Hands.....

Zebra Bead Necklace with handmade bead pendant
Zebra Bead Necklace with black and silver beads and black facted glass beads
Antiqued Silver Necklace in various bead designs
Chinese Turquoise and Coral Necklace These are a few of the necklaces I've been busy working on in the past few weeks. Yep, I'm having fun with my beads! While working on one necklace I come up with other ideas for more necklaces and it seems my mind is busier than my hands can keep up. Now I have to come up with a way to display my work for the Open Doors Show. I don't want to use the same thing as I did last year. Hmmmm, I'll have to do a trial set up in the garage. I'll take pics to show what it will look like.

Last Monday, my friend Diane went in for surgery for her cancer. After a number of chemo treatments we all thought the tumor was shrunken enough to cut it out and have no more problems. Well....come to find out, the chemo had destroyed it completely and there is NO sign of it anywhere! To ensure the there would be no "female" problems later in life, the surgeon performed a hysterectomy, a procedure that was discussed with Diane before the first surgery. She is doing VERY well and sounded clear and happy and relieved. I was not able to go see her while she was here because of a cold I have. grrrr This is what I get for going out and being sociable the week before. But, I'm so GLAD everything came out great! She still has two more chemo treatments before the end of the year and then she gets to grow her hair back!

Crystals and more

I've been rather busy this past week. I had fun playing with more of my crystals and created this necklace,got about 30 pairs of earrings done and had a challenge with the October theme for my 8 x 8 challenge. You can see what I did for it here: Natured Gathered

Now I have to finish up my November page for the Bead Journal Project and get some more little things done for the Portland Art Collective show. Don't forget to periodically check on our blog to see some great art and further information regarding the Open Doors Show Portland Art Collective

Fire and Wind

Here are the two necklaces that I finally came up with for the
Earth, Wind, Fire, Water show in Gresham. Take in is tomorrow and runs until December 11th. Each one of these necklaces has been reworked, restarted in different forms and changed from the original ideas I had for them. I'm happy with the way they turned out and hope that everyone at the show will be too.

The Tao Speaks

While cleaning out things I came across my Pocket Edition of the Tao te Ching. I opened the book at a quite appropriate page relating to the past few weeks.

Chapter 75
"When taxes are too high,
people go hungry.
When the government is too intrusive,
people lose their spirit.

Act for the people's benefit.
Trust them; leave them alone."

Stephen Mitchell, Tao te Ching, 1988