Well February sure did get away from me....I guess taking a bad fall will do that to a person....kinda puts a kink in living a creative life unless you think finding a comfortable position to sit, stand or sleep is creative and it pretty much is... Tripped right over a basket and fell out of my shoes (who knew one could do such a thing??) but now it's time to get back to business....and I do mean business!!! I have spent most of today....with the help of my sweet husband....downloading photos to send off to juried art and craft shows that I am hoping to get into in June. I haven't applied to a juried show in many many years and forgot what a process it was!!! Updated my bio and body of work profiles took much more time than I thought it would and choosing the right photos is daunting!!!Here is one of my booth set up that I thought was pretty good!! Then you have to hope you have the right verbiage in your artist's statement...not too flowery and not to cut and dry. Just the right amount of as my fiberarts group used to say "art speak"....and then the photos of "the work".....will they like it...will they not????? Well as they say....the waiting is the hardest part!! Wish me luck!

So in one of my last blog posts of 2012 I mentioned that one of my resolutions for 2013 was to cleanup my workspace after I completed a piece...when it comes to my bead embroidery pieces I tend to start a work and continue on that same piece until it is completed. I will venture off on other tangents if I need to make a sample for a class I am teaching or fooling around with a color combo that pops into my head but for the most part what is on my desk in the Vellux lined cookie sheet is my main project that I am pretty much continuously working on from start to finish. So this resolution seemed pretty benign, easy to keep, in short doable....and that is when I think the bead gods said HA!!!!

You see one of the other things I do at the end of a year into the beginning of the new year is to go through my stash and supplies and weed out what is not working for me anymore and to assess what I need to have to be able to create the pieces that are in my head or my sketch journal. This action in and of itself gets the creative juices flowing and is, for me, the perfect start to the year. This year I realized that my Swarovski palette was a bit lacking in some colors, shapes and sizes. Time to brew a cup of tea and drag out the Fire Mountain Gems and Beads Jewelry Maker's Comprehensive Catalog and make my needs and wants list! Now to my non beading readers let me explain a little about this catalog.....

.....it pretty much is to beaders what the Sears Catalog was to children in the early 1900s....inside I can find pretty much every beady thing I need to make whatever my mind's eye can create...I do shop for my supplies at my local bead store, estate and garage sales and on ebay but most of the shiny, sparkly bits come from Fire Mountain Gems! They are a wonderful company with the best customer service I could ask for...and being a former quilt shop owner, customer service is paramount to me!!! But I digress......So I took my cup of tea, pad, pencil and catalog in hand and a few hours later had my order ready to be uploaded to the FMG website with a promise that I would have my goodies withing 5-7 business days. Then it was back to the worktable to finish up the piece I was working on with the full intention of totally cleaning up said worktable when the last bead was stitched into place....but those oh so efficient FMG workers had other things in mind....2 days later this is what arrived on my doorstep

...what was a woman to do???? Of course I had to go through and check in the order (remember I used to own a quilt shop and checking in orders is part of my DNA!) and of course those sparkly bits of wonderfulness cried out to me and before I knew it all my good intentions of cleaning up before starting a new piece went out the New Years Resolution window...I had to start pulling components to start a new piece which would of course incorporate the newest colors of Swarovski that FMG came up with that I had to have....alas and alack not all New Year's resolutions are able to be kept....and maybe, just maybe they shouldn't be.......

Henry the VIII and other things...

Lately I have realized how much what I am watching on DVD while I work on my jewelry pieces affects the overall outcome of what I create...case in point...for the last month or so I have been re-watching all four seasons of The Tudors

and have found myself adding more and more ornate bead embroidery to my Ladies. When I play the "if I had my life to do over again" game in my head I always come to the realization that my dream job would have been doing something in a costume designers shop....not necessarily the actually designing but more like the embellishing detail work that make the garments come to life.

The first time I saw the Broadway show "Wicked" I ended up in a seat to the side in the very front row with my knees and nose practically pressed onto the stage. Now this was not the best seat if you wanted to see the entire production that was on stage but it was the perfect seat to see all of the fabulous costumes and intricate details that went into making said costumes...I was in heaven....the show was wonderful and eventually we went back to see it again, this time from the upper lodge and I was able to take in the whole of the scenery and the really see Elpheba fly....but I was never so happy as to be able to see the costumes up close and personal at that first performance!

What the upshot of today's ramblings is that you never know what will influence your creativity....my suggestion is to be open to it all!!

Feeling a little Mid Century Modern

For the past few months my husband and I have been on a quest for a retro/vintage HiFi ala Rob and Laura Petrie

We were searching for a very specific look....warm oak or maple with fabric or woven wood panels covering the speakers...preferably slide top with storage space for albums..of course it had to work and have an excellent sound and we had be within our budget which was between $100 and $150. We finally located one on the everloving Central Jersey Craigslist site...and wonder of wonders it was in our township!! The couple we bought if from were lovely and had taken such very good care of their 1967 Magnavox HiFi/stereo...they even had the original receipt!

So slowly but surely we are finding the pieces to give our living room the Mid Century Modern vibe we have come to love....oh how I wish I still had some of the pieces from my childhood living room but the hunt for them is most of the fun!

Vintage rhinestone jewelry=sparkle=love

Today I started working on another Lady/Goddess. The creative muse was calling my name very loudly and I decided not to ignore her!!! So now I am back to blogging about my process.....when I last posted about The Lady of the Winter Solstice her face was getting attached....next comes the vintage rhinestone brooch....

I do so love vintage rhinestone jewelry!

Let the Year of Creativity begin!

I have decided to dedicate the coming year to living the most creative life I possibly can. This will not only pertain to the obvious...beading, fiber arts, cooking, decorating, etc........but also to things like finding a part time job, how to stay active and such....I have always been a relatively creative/think outside the box kind of person when it comes to arts and handcrafts and why not apply that to other areas of my life where I really could use some help? My grandmother Madeline comes to mind when I think of creativity....she was a fashion designer for a small firm back in the 50s-80s and she brought that creativity into every aspect of her life and home. She was re-purposing furniture way before it was the thing to do. I remember the huge round coffee table in the living room of her and my Grandfather's home on Linden Blvd. in Brooklyn circa 1965...the couch was one of those low slung sectionals

that had deep seat cushions that allowed you to sit comfortably with your legs curled up under you but were not easy to get up and out of if you were an adult of a certain age...and this couch needed a low and large coffee table! Of course they could not find a table that was large enough or low enough so Madeline found an old round kitchen table, sawed off the legs and did this Pollack-like paint technique and viola'...the perfect coffee table! She was so ahead of her time and I miss her terribly. So in her memory I am dedicating this year to creative living. One of the first things I have done is explore some free apps on my phone...the first one being PicStitch...it allows me to stitch together 2-6 pictures into a quiltlike collage.

I can see many ways to use this app very creatively!

Well the last weekend of 2012 is just about over and the new year will be upon us tomorrow evening...spent much of the past two days cleaning of my workspace and finishing up a few projects that were abandoned for one reason or another and tossing or recycling the things I knew would never get finished...it's a good feeling to have a fresh working area for the new year! I have made a commitment to myself to cleanup every time after finishing a piece...we'll see how long that lasts...... As I was saying in my last post....I am going to try and give an overview of my creative process from the beginnings of a piece to it's completion...today's picture is one that shows how The Lady of the Winter Solstice got her shape and her face attached...hmmmm...that sounds like I am a surgeon which could never have happened since I am squeamish around anything at all to do with blood (ask my husband...I even hide my eyes when they do fake operations on tv shows!!) and I also was never very good at following directions which I imagine you have to be to become a surgeon...but I am pretty wicked with a needle and thread if you add beads into the mix!!

I just love the way the face seems to glow and anyone who knows me well knows that those colors satisfy my soul. I am always searching for interesting faces or bits of jewelry, pottery, buttons & glass cabs that would work as a face for my Ladies/Goddesses. I am planning on really exploring this way of working in the coming year...I certainly have a really good selection of vintage rhinestone and crystal jewelry that I have collected over the past 6 or 7 months during the height of garage and estate sale season

Well that's all for 2012....sending out thoughts of joy, peace and creativity for the New Year....