Studio Re-Do

Now, with taxes finally out of the way, I can let my brain wander back to creative pursuits and believe me there are plenty of ideas waiting to be born.  For an embarrassingly long time,  I have wanted to clear the clutter from my studio and create a wonderful space for designing and dreaming up new projects.  With so many creative artisans out on the web now, inspiration is often just a click away.  Feeling rather low a few days ago, as Murphy's Law seemed to be preventing me from the simple task of e-filing and printing out my tax forms to mail, I took a break on Pinterest and found a beautiful photo of Tammy Gilley's studio.  Imagine my joy at finding that she has blogged her studio re-do with before and after photos!  I could hardly believe that her studio was nearly as cluttered as mine where just walking through is a serious challenge.

I have decided that I am going to reward myself with my own studio re-do, and share the process with you here over the coming weeks.  With this promise, perhaps I will stay on track and actually finish.  I have begun my re-do with a very simple project to organize my growing stash of beads.  This has been part of a plan for a while now, and a reward to myself for getting through taxes.  I found a huge oil pan, the kind use use under a car that leaks onto the garage floor, for $12.  You can find these in various shapes and sizes, but this was the largest and the least expensive.  Also, and very important is that it HAS to be magnetic.  Take a small magnet shopping with you to test the metal.

Now then, since the pan is galvanized steel, it can be subject to rust.  Because of this, I did not want to screw it directly to the wall.  I had on hand some rubber faucet repair washers, and used them behind the pan to raise it off the wall (glue in place).  I used long screws that I had purchased complete with toggles and drilled a hole in each corner of the pan large enough for the screw to pass through easily.  Before gluing the washers on, I used the pan as a guide to mark the wall where holes needed to be.  After drilling holes large enough to insert the toggles, and getting the toggles hammered into the wall, I then held the pan in place and tightened down the screws.  As you can see, my pan sits right behind the door.  It is a perfect fit, and does not protrude to interfere with the door standing open.  I can easily reach any of the tins here, and the rest of the wall space is open for decor or other storage.

Next, all that was needed was to add the tins to hold the beads.  Since my daughter-in-law had already done a project like this for her spices in the kitchen, she had done the shopping legwork and I knew right where to find the best deal.  Michael's Crafts had them in the bridal favor section of the store in a tub holding 30 tins for about $17.  Since they were on sale when I went in, I bought three of the tubs because I have quite a lot of beads, and the pan will hold all of these and perhaps even more.  My DIL used magnetic tape for her tins, but I was concerned about the weight of the beads, and a quick inquiry with a salesperson confirmed that the tape was not magnetic enough to keep the bead tins from sliding.  So, instead I purchased small round magnets, a pack of 50 was $7.  

Using E6000 glue -in a well ventilated area! I placed a small dab of each magnet and popped it on the center-back of a tin. Patience is the next step.  Gotta give the glue time to set up properly before placing it on the pan or the tin will fall off the magnet.  ...Yah, I am not known for patience.  I had some tins that already held beads, but I highly recommend doing the gluing before filling the tins.  These tins are not very substantial, and will require gentle handling, so filling them before the glue just complicates things a little.

Once the glue is really set though, you are ready to have fun placing and organizing the tins on your pan.  I have not completely filled all mine yet, as I got so excited that I wanted to post this immediately, telling the world about the beginning of my studio re-do.  The plan is to organize them by color and type.  I can't wait to see them all in place, with an at-a-glance view of what is available for my projects.

April Fools

So here we are, into the month of April and this is Fools Day. Taking a tip from the tarot, the Fool is really an innocent who has everything to learn and is wide open to all possibilities.  What a great way to start a month and even every day. It is like saying: this is the first day of the rest of my life. Becasue no-one is guaranteed an eternal existence, why not decide that each day should be a celebration of this gift of life we have been given and set out on a daily journey of discovery and wonderment. Even when life is seeming drab and uneventful, that is merely because we have chosen it to be so. Becasue I take care of an elderly mother, nearly 97, who has Alzheimer's Disease, more and more time is spent at home. Rather than spend time fretting about lost mobility and freedom to be impulsive about how I spend time, I find this the perfect excuse to pursue my artisan nature and research, craft and develop skills that I knew very little of before. The number of ways I can choose to spend my time now keep getting more abundant. Instead of a narrowing life, I choose to see life with adventure and openness to more wonders yet to be. It has been a good while since my last post. ...Blame it on tax preparation. Each year, I am absorbed into the pressures of doing a mountain of paperwork and exhausting my brain on the frustrations of an amateur's experience with QuickBooks and TurboTax software. I would be lost without them, but I do hate paperwork. I would so much rather be creating anything from jewelry, knitwear, food, faux walls, ...you name it. I do manage to sneak in a few projects amid the numbers just to keep my sanity. 

This is one of the more recent jewelry pieces I finished, which I call Cinderella's Rags & Rhinestones, and it was one of those challenges that I often create for myself to give my mind exercise.  This photo, taken on my back porch, is something I am equally excited about.  I created the form from a cardboard box and using a stencil (from a Google image search), which I printed and traced onto the cardboard.  After carefully cutting the silhouette out with a razor blade, I painted it several times with Gesso.  The final coat was textured. As luck would have it, in the same box there was a smaller box with a slit in it.  I glued a paint stirring stick to the back of the bust form and inserted it into the slit, and "Voila!!!" here you see the results.  I can see from this experiment that I need to tweak the display form a little for better photos, but I am thrilled that I now have a spot that gets natural light and shows off the jewelry to better advantage.

I Love Pinterest!

It's not often that I feel compelled to rave over some internet site, especially one that makes me spend so much time on it.  (tongue in cheek there)   However, after months of trying to persuade me to join Pinterest, that giant internet photo album, my son finally got me by pinning a few of my jewelry photos to a board on his page.  I know it was all ego, but I was curious.  Now, after only about one week, I find myself spending far too much time there.  ...Or am I?  As I ponder on this, I realize that Pinterest has done something that I would have thought impossible.  Using Pinterest is like being given a million dollars and told to go shopping for whatever you like.  Reminding me of my childhood, and that of so many of my friends, when we spent hours pouring through the Sears catalogs looking for things we loved.  We would cut out pictures of toys that we dreamed about owning, clothing, and anything else our imaginations could conjure from those pages.  Now, here I am again, "pinning" (a quick click process) favorite things as fast as I can to boards that keep multiplying.  Just as quickly as I can paste, someone else will see those things and re-pin them to their own boards.  Then, there are those who decide that they like your taste so much that they want to follow you.  Yeh, ...saves them the time of looking for things on their own.  I am finding that so many of my own followers, who are really a small growing handful, are all wanting to have secret little getaways, gypsy wagons to drive off into the sunset in, and rustic little cabins or grand castles (or both).  We all have crafty sides and DIY.  We all have fantastical imaginations and love faerie bowers.  We sew, we build, and that is the beauty of Pinterest.  Pinterest is the place where dreams are born and grow, built photo by photo.

Already, I have new projects planned and raring to go.  I have had an old clock body that is probably a hundred years old.  Gorgeously carved, and with burled walnut on its frame, my father and I tried to restore it many years ago.  It had been chewed by squirrels in an old garage attic.  I re-carved floral medallions and he built a new frame for part of it.  It was ready for "more" and yet I never could decide what to do with it.  Now, after Pinterest, I have the plan to mount a newer clock, that I have had in my kitchen, within its face, and use the bottom part where the pendulum would have shown as a tiny shelf for display.  Finally, after all these years, ...and all because of Pinterest photos getting my brain working in a different direction. .

“Change your thoughts to change your life”

“Change your thoughts to change your life”

This thinking is having a profound effect on me lately. With so much negativity being broadcast at every turn, it seems I am faced with the choice of either diving deep into depression or focusing myself into living more positively and meaningfully. The choice is easy! …And therefore I am looking forward to a really great year! This morning while surfing through my favorite blogs, I found some photos on one of snowflakes on New Year’s Eve on Resurrection Fern's blog. They were in the pattern of Truth according to Messages in Water, work done by Dr. Masuru Emoto. So, to start the New Year off to a celebration of meaning, I am taking “Truth” as my keyword to live by for today …maybe the week …or even a month, because 30 days makes it a habit. For me, this means that as I define myself, I am an ARTIST!

I want every day to be filled with artistry and creative pursuits. I will start today with breakfast and a wonderful omelet. I will remain in Truth by speaking the Truth as I see it, by being creative, by expressing myself creatively and artfully and mindfully in every way I can imagine!
The process of achievement is really guaranteed through definition. So, today and forever, I am an artist. I am defining myself as talented, successful, fruitful, auspicious, profitable, thriving, and living a wonderful life I create easily for myself!

...JUST WATCH ME!

Happy New Year!

Now that the New Year is upon us, and in a few days, all the decorations will be packed away until next December, I take more time to renew my connections with what makes Christmas special to me. The tree is full of memories with hand-made decorations hanging generously from all the branches.

Each year, mid-December, as Christmas drew near, my father would take the family out to choose a Christmas tree. We spent hours in the Mid-West snowy cold driving from one tree lot to another in search of the perfect tree. After much consideration, dispute, and anguished selection, we finally made a choice and tied the tree to the roof of the car, and drove our prize home. There it would sit propped up out in the cold, allowing the branches that had been compressed into a flat shape, to adjust into their natural shape. We would occasionally shake the tree and branches to help it untangle and shed dried needles.

One year, as I was going through the preparations, I discovered a perfect little nestdeep in it's branches, which I accordingly took it for a sign of good fortune. After all, how many times are we lucky enough to get a tree that had a nest too? And so, in its propitiousness, I have honored that same little nest in a conspicuous place at the front of the tree ever since. Now, many (many) years later, as my glance falls upon it, I am reminded of its origins and the circumstances that surround it. In remembering my father on this New Years Day, I celebrate his loving and creative spirit by sharing with you the miniature birdhouses that he made for me one year. I also honor all those family and friends who helped to create a variety of decorations to include felt snowmen, fabric covered balls, paper snowflakes, clothespin soldiers, and tiny paper doily angels. One year we got my sons involved and made bread dough ornaments of an angel, teddy bear and a even a fisherman holding a huge worm. (Boys will be boys!) When each of them got married, I shared some of these ornaments with them so that they also have memories on the branches.

My very best wishes to you all for a very happy, healthy and prosperous New Year!

The Necklace that toyed itself into existence

My latest creative pursuit is a necklace that started with one of those ugly beads. It was elongated, and a drab shade of orangey-rusty-brown. Really an ugly thing. Lately, however, I have been looking at this sort of thing as a challenge to create something that exonerates it and makes it beautiful in its own way. To begin, the bead was added to a rosary type link and wire wrapped, continuing the wrapping to spiral about the bead. In the spiraling I added small orange seed beads to help hide it. It looked better, but what do you do with one rather large ugly bead wrapped with wire and decorated with seed beads. OK, being me, I made it the focal point. In my last necklace, the bead was the focal, but this time, the bead didn't carry enough design interest to make on its own. I set it aside, and was just playing with wire, created a triangular spiral that waved off at the end. ...Had no idea what to do with that either! Somehow, ...maybe they bumped together, and the idea of using them together began taking shape. Hanging off the lower edge of the triangle, the forming pendant was somewhat interesting, but was lacking still. The focus really needed to go to something else.

Rocks. I love rocks. A few weeks back, I had found a small egg-shaped river stone that was in the garden path in my backyard. It was a stone that just told me that it was meant to be more than a part of the path, going unnoticed and anonymous. At the very least it would have been happy as a worry stone, residing in a pocket and caressed occasionally, connecting the bearer with a sense of Mother Earth and grounding. The desperate mind will try anything, and so the river stone found a new place to rest. Wrapping it was a little challenging because there were no dents or corners to hold the wrapping wire, but after playing around with it I finally came up with a satisfying result. The pendant was looking very primitive and somehow talisman-like.

Next, I searched through the diminishing supply of ugly beads to find the drabbest, dingy gray rounds I could find. They needed to look earthy and natural. Adding those and a few more primitive wire links, it began to feel important. However, it needed more prestige. How about some verdigris? Just like the beard of an old man, it got more credible in age. A homemade recipe, I used:

• 2 parts white vinegar
• 1 part non-sudsy ammonia
• 1/2 part non-iodized salt

Put these ingredients into a spray bottle and mist the piece. The chemical reaction starts very quickly. Spray a few more times. Remove the piece to a paper towel and allow to dry and sit overnight. The "rusting" process will continue, and the next day you can see the results. Mine were a bit too green, moving the necklace into a different color range, so I washed it and rubbed some of it off. Once dry, I was able to move into adding the fiber part to the neck. Now, the Talisman came together quickly, and this is the result....

Mother Earth's Talisman Necklace

The Ugly Bead Necklace Finished

I did it! I got thorough my self-imposed challenge to create something useful out of the ugliest beads I have. There were even some very nice compliments on photos I posted in my Flickr group. One person said it looked like "a party on a chain." ...Love that idea, and as the chain grew, the party got more carefree. It became a friend rather than an opponent. My ugly friend encouraged permissiveness, ...an anything goes approach. After all, there was absolutely nothing to be lost, I was starting at the bottom of the barrel with this. All I was contributing was a little effort, and that was of value in itself because I was getting more practice. .

Starting at the Bottom

As I was creating this piece, I found myself going through an incredible thought process. Every so often, I would question the validity of spending time on creating something worthwhile with such a sorry-looking batch of components: ugly, misshapen, unmatched, left-over cheap glass beads bought in bulk when I first got interested in beading, and crazy, imperfect forged metal practice pieces I had crafted of copper wire as learned in the BuildZone jewelry making course.


The Process

As the necklace grew, it took me through some interesting thoughts. Beginning with a lot of self-doubts (those Gremlins I blogged about a few posts back), I was not at all sure of why I took this challenge on. Why would anyone in their right mind start creating with a bunch of stuff that seemed to say "just put me in the trash!" Isn't is much nicer to think about having gorgeous materials and what the end result of silver and gemstones could be? What was driving me? ...stubbornness? ...a sense of frugality? ...a "way out" excuse for defeat? I am really not sure.

Yet the ugly bead necklace grew, and as it grew, I felt a sense of acceptance. It allowed me to free myself of any constraints that might have held me back. I gave myself over to the spirit of freedom, and creative energy flowed through my braincells and into my fingertips. I ceased to think so much and just did what felt right with each added link. It didn't have to be anything but ugly, and yet with each link I started to like it more and more. A strange sort of beauty was unfolding in my hands and although I knew each imperfection well, I felt like I was forging a life. Out of ugliness and pain came joy and freedom, and a thing of carefree beauty. It doesn't matter if it is of the basest materials because it has a spirit of the highest nature. Maybe it has a "face" that only a mother can love, but this is one child I love to look at.

The Sweet Finish

I may add a few more ribbon tails, and a random dangle here and there, but this child is birthed. As I look at this piece, I am thinking many thoughts so different than those that weighed me down at the start. It reminds me that beauty is only skin deep, but also that just because something isn't always beautiful by most standards, doesn't mean that it has no beauty or value in and of itself. It reminds me that beauty can be found wherever we look for it, and that we should do what we love never separating ourselves from the Creator within. In all things there is purpose, and that our intent and openness can lead us to a beauty that we are not always aware of. I feel a real sense of serenity in that.


May you find beauty and serenity in your day.