Some Days

even when it is rainy & freezing cold, & you are feeling very sorry for yourself because you are just so not a cold appreciating type of person - something happens to warm up every cell in your body.

Last Thursday was one of those days for me.

A couple of weeks earlier, my friend Rose had come up for the day to stock up on supplies for her wonderful jewellery designs. Lucky me, because she started her stock up with my beads. In the course of her looking at some of the Chalcedony beads 'up close & personal' I had shown her a few of the earlier ones, where I was more interested in getting some colour of of my new favourite glass than paying too much attention to great shaping, perfect ends & such.
Technically they were 'seconds', but each had something to recommend them....perhaps I was emotionally attached, but those I was keeping.

Having mentioned this to Rose, she suggested I give them to her & she would make me something. Oh yeah - that really appealed!

Rose asked what I would sort of design I would like. Being really helpful I said "a necklace", even though I knew she wanted a bit more to go on than that.

I am very aware of how easy it is to compromise a designer/artist of any sort by providing a set criteria. Having been on the other side of it I know how it can inhibit a persons creativity when they have to many 'guidelines' to follow.

I eventually said "make it asymmetrical, edgy & longish". But the main reason is that I was happy to provide minimal idea's of my own is that Rose was going to be the designer of this necklace - not I.
For me it was a no brainer, I like Roses work & I always like designs made by other people more than those I make myself. Perhaps my idea's are too fixed & I'm not flexible enough to compromise, who knows. Or perhaps I just prefer the sentiment behind things that have been made by someone else with me in mind.

Any which way, it paid off.... & then some!
When I unwrapped the parcel I almost cried.lol! Beautifully packaged, I unwrapped layer after layer of paper, tissue & padding to see a necklace that was simply perfect. You see it had no choice but to be perfect - aside from my loose guidelines of what I would like I had no expectations. I hadn't formulated any idea's in my mind of what I would do if it were me, or how I would like to see those beads presented.
This was the "asymmetrical, edgy & longish" & so very much more.

I put it on & there it stayed all day....& the next day.... & Saturday when I wore it to work.

Chalcedony Beads & Gunmetal Findings - Designer: Rose Patterson

Thank you Rose!
(& I will get a better photo of this)

What was I thinking?

Now I am not, most emphatically NOT, a frou frou type of girl. Period.

To me lace belongs on underwear & lingerie, flowers in the garden or a vase. I don't do frills, crystals, sparkles, sequins or any super shiny, reflective types of bling. I couldn't even do it in the 80's. Well maybe I did have a pair of lace tights......

Oh I've had clothes with flowers on them & tops with a bit of lace - but do I wear them more than once or twice? These days the answer is most emphatically "No"!
In part that is a generalization, as there always seems to be a rare exception to most of my 'rules' - I've had a couple of nice pieces of clothing in the past that had flowers on them & I loved them.
For the most part I am just not comfortable in frou frou stuff, & if it doesn't feel right - I don't feel confidant & therefore I don't carry it off well. Quite simple really.

I love jeans & trousers or well designed assymetrical dresses & skirts. Well cut & nicely tailored.
The same goes with shoes & boots, nice sleek simple cut & design with nicely detailed finishes!
Oh & just to show how fussy/picky/obsessive I am - I refuse to even try on footwear that has a seam up the front of the toe.
I don't know why I dislike it so much but perhaps it is because, to me, they look like there wasn't enough leather to make them so they had to join two pieces together. Of course, once again, there are exceptions.

So, here's the crunch - why, three or four summers ago, did I buy these??


What was I thinking? Oh yes, right away I thought of a modern day version of Arabian Nights - but really! Did I honestly think that the sale price tag of $10.00 would make me wear them ? Especially given that nothing I owned would go with them.

So there they sat admired but unworn - lonely & isolated in their box in the murky depths of my wardrobe.
Until I decided that I needed something to play with in the studio yesterday.....




The Result - eeeek!
But hey - I was just playing & it was an excuse to use some Gaffer glass as I seemed to have the right colours in that COE.



Oh.... & the irony was that I noticed what shoes I was wearing today as I took the photographs. These happily break every rule in my book - yet I wear them.



I wonder if it's because they are comfortable, or perhaps it's the slight difference in the price tags ;o)

Organized Chaos

I work best when things are tidy. I know, I know - but I just can't help it! And yes - I do hear the not so faint echo's of a boss chanting "lana lana lana". I'm methodical - what can I say.

Even my poor torch area is only allowed to get to a certain level of untidiness before I just can't focus on torching & instead get all antsy about not being able to immediately put my hand on the colour glass rod or tool that I want to use.

I decided a clear out & organization of my beads was a good place to start last weekend. Why? Because I wanted to list a few, & those wee treasures that I wasn't quite sure about when they had come out of the kiln, that had been surreptitiously buried in boxes & various other containers just may hold a new appeal a few months after the initial disappointment of their failure to meet my expectations. The fact of their mere existance was, in a way, weighing me down.... quite counter productive for reasons I am sure you can fathom.

I do wish I had taken a photo of this half of my cutting table at 1.00am on Saturday morning it was literally a sea of glass beads - even 3 hours after upending everything onto it's surface & having made some small headway into sorting groups of orphans, I was still looking around with a sense of hopelessness at exactly where to start. At almost 3am I went to bed ....not much further ahead.

Sunday I got ruthless, stopped dithering & adopted an attitude of 'off with their heads'...you know what I mean. They were sorted into groups of sets, focals or orphans & subgroups destined for either Etsy, my website , the local website we have here, or jewelry . By Monday a lot of them were photographed & listed locally. Daily more of them are being packaged in their temporary plastic bags & popped into their venue specific container.

Today on our local website I had 6 sales. What a wonderful reward for the initial sense of hopelessness I felt at 3am on Sunday morning!

Tomorrow I get to play with glass & fire, guilt free!

Big, Black & oh soooo Sexy!

A brief search around a few blogs or forums will tell anyone that I am not the only bead maker that has ‘issues’ with my camera.
Most of the time it is well behaved – a little Canon A550 entry level point & shoot that will captures kids, pets, scenery & flowers quite nicely - albeit not with the finesse of my older , tired & temperamental Canon G2, but it does the job....sort of.

“Issues” is really an understatement when it comes to beads – we are at war!

Quite frankly – it hates me….& the feeling is entirely mutual. I’m sure when I turn it on in the vicinity of beads it sneers at me – I’ve heard it. It then gets stubborn & refuses to capture colour & light correctly or consistently, displays a nasty temper by showing me random coloured backgrounds ranging from blue, yellow through to pink tinged – when all have been taken in identical lighting conditions, within seconds of each other on the same manual settings.

The one that thinks Cuteness plays a part!

It really should be grateful that it is being used over it’s heftier Big Brother the “G2”. Maybe it thinks it can get away with it because of it’s ‘cute’ factor. Who knows??

War indeed - & it is NOT going to win!

I have a plan – a cunning plan. In fact if it was any more cunning I could pin a tail on it & call it a weasel.
My plan will scare it into submission….well, I hope it will.

I have started making certain noises around my wee A550 – noise that involve the phrases “SLR” & “Canon Digital Rebel XSi” (or as it is known here the EOS 450D …personally I far prefer the one with Rebel in the name – lol).

Today I went one step further & even went to the camera store & fondled a Rebel XSi. As I cradled that sexy beast (& it is SEXY!) in my hand I realised just how much I missed the feel of a real camera – the wonderful balance they seem to have that comes with the additional size & weight, not to mention the complete control you have when manually focusing via a lens….
When we played around with photographing some beads ‘au natural’ it’s true power became immediately apparent……

The Big, Black, Sexy one that knows better

Anyway you get the idea! I’m trying to scare that cute wee A550 into submission – don’t know if it will work, but I sure am enjoying the memory of that Sexy Black Rebel!... (& if the wee cute but useless thing doesn't know that I can't actually afford to buy one - well that doesn't matter...does it?)

Dying to Play With Colour! (& textiles)

I’ve always been a textile junkie – or fabric ho ….take your pick of phrases. To be honest ‘textile junkie' would probably be more accurate though.

I’m a pretty tactile person – so fabrics, fibers, textures & patterns have intrigued since a young age - very young it seems … when I was little I used to suck my thumb & stroke the corner seam of my pillow case!

It’s not something that went away as I grew either , apart from the thumb sucking which I apparently stopped the day I started school when I realised no one else was doing it (talk about easily led - lol!). It progressed into full on sewing & of course the inevitable fabric hoarding – until I discovered glass.

So today, when a stupid dodgy router enforced multiple breaks from the internet, I finally optimized some time by doing what I have been itching to do for ages. I got out the beautiful Dupion Silk ties/strings I had started edging last night when said dodgy router first started misbehaving, some Kool Aid kindly sent by Mallory & a 1kg bag of expired date ground espresso coffee - & started playing .

I had no choice but to be creative, experimental & adventurous in my combinations of things to try, as I am not a huge fan of bright brights – I prefer more muted, muddy tones of most colours.

I’m rather pleased with the results – but the sucky camera has not picked them up well at all (I shall try again tomorrow in daylight rather than with the flash.

Did I mention that I also have a somewhat intense & torrid affair with colour? (shhhh – don’t tell Allan!). Not so much the colours I wear….but the colours that surround me hugely affect me & influence the way I feel - once started with this wonderful colour play I just could not stop - I think I may have gone into overdrive for an experiment on silk, the end result of which is pretty much unuseable.

Now all I have to do is source a reasonably priced supplier of Dupion (not Spotlight – that’s for sure) & some 100% cotton serging/overlocking threads so I can eliminate that pesky white border.

You know right now I’m kind of reluctant to put my sewing machine & overlocker away…..I almost feel a need to play with some more textiles ……..