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.......

Ladies Of Infinite Sparkle necklaces

I have started a series of pieces that I call my Ladies Of Infinite Sparkle. They all start with a piece of vintage jewelry and take on a life from there. This lovely lady started with a marcasite butterfly pin that found at an estate sale...from there I added her art glass face and lower body and swarovski rivolis for the absolute sparkle factor. Daggers adorn her hair...flowers her neck and crystals and seed beads complete her look. I have always loved the "process" of making art and the hunting and gathering is soul satisfying to me...I never know where a piece will take me until I am there.

Lois