June Book Club: The Bees

Looking back, I never posted what I made for this book!

It's odd because I remember making something after reading and loving the book...

 

Oh yeah---- it's probably because I finished the book while I was sitting outside waiting for the power to turn back on.

 

After we had lost power the night before in a heavy rainstorm that caused some flash flooding.

 

And said flooding affected my basement when the generator quit running in the morning and the cats woke us up to something along the lines of- 'we are hungry but we can't get to our food bowls without getting our feet wet, so get up and deal with this'

 

Which turned into my husband getting up to feed the cats, and wading through about 1 mm of water and coming back into the bedroom to tell me that the basement flooded....

 

Now if anyone knows me well, I can sleep like it's my job. That statement, along with the noise of an animal barfing on my carpet, made me jump out of bed like it was Christmas morning.

 

Although, this morning consisted of triaging my off-season clothes and boots and handbags, etc that I store there to see what took on water and what didn't. And then came the cleanup....

 

Which I am STILL dealing with. But that's another blog post!

 

ANYHOW-

 

What a great book!!!!! SO many visuals, and SUCH a tough gig to be a bee. Who knew?

 

Here's what I made:

I started this about a year or so ago when we got these really pretty Lucite flowers in at Allegory Gallery. The beaded links take some time (and a lot of patience) but the repetition of it all made SUCH a pretty piece that I had to finish it up and use it for the book.

I also scored these very cool honeycomb shaped buttons from an Andrew Thornton Destash, and I knew exactly that they would be perfect for this book! Again, same sort of seed bead chain connector concept with some crazy braided jump rings that I got at Pat Catans one day. I really like it! It's classic but it's funky! (Not your grandma's mother of pearl you guys! HA!)

I was also really taken by this passage in the book. Who would have guessed that with all the violence in the book that there was an underlying love story? SO lovely!

 

And here are some thistles that I salvaged from an arrangement that I may have pirated from my class reunion but were oh so fitting!

 

  And here is something that I found that I thought was SO appropriate but pretty funny given the storyline.

  

Stay tuned for my (also late) and upcoming book club post for July!

 

Thanks as always for reading. (And relating to my crazy life....)

 

The great bead reorganization project! Finding my inner zen- inside my toolbox...

So this is the contents of my tool box as I was sorting.... What a mess!

Doesn't that photo totally stress you out????

It was totally making me crazy when I knew I had something but it took me forever to find it.

 

 I made a bunch of piles to go through everything. I'm sort of anal that way because I needed to touch and feel and look through everything. It's the sorter in my hoarder personality...

 

I have a bunch of clear plastic boxes that were leftover from wood mounted stamp sets. (A project of mine a few years ago was to un-mount them from the wood blocks, and set them on a different medium that lets you use them on acrylic blocks instead. The storage space that gave me was incredible. I went from having a cabinet of stamp containers to my entire collection fitting inside (2) 6-inch binders. Totally worth the time and soooooo glad I did it)

 

I typically use these clear boxes to sort my beads by color. It's sort of like bead soup in a box because I hate keeping my beads in strands- unless they are really long. But a lot of these bead boxes are remnants from projects or bead mixes, so it works for me.

(I know it kinda kills my bead buddies, but that's just what works for them and their storage methods)

 

I also like to organize by color. So there is a ton of browns, greens and oranges.

I guess that's my flavor. lol

 

So here is everything allllll laid out. Looks so good, right????





Here is a shot of one of the clear boxes. I made a few piles of stuff to make projects in the future. Sort of like the muffin tin concept. I'll keep you posted.

These boxes hold all of my components. So, things like headpins, eye pins, crimp beads, crimp covers, clasps, jump rings, etc.

 This was a pile of onesie-twosie fancy gemstones that I put in a pile to store in my drawer of just simply gorgeous gemstone strands. And yes, they went into a plastic box and out of the bags. YUCK!

Here's some more fancy gemstone strands that were just floating around in with my stuff. They went into the gemstone drawer, which yes, is also organized by color....

 Lastly, here is a big pile of completed projects that were being drug around. I need a better system of organizing all my finished work and maybe an Etsy site to liquidate them.... but I get so attached to this stuff! It's hard to say goodbye sometimes.

I'm trying to- really!

 

 Here's a look at what the trays look like all nice and organized.

 This is my component drawer. Still sort of a mess, but I am not putting this stuff in boxes. It's easier to sift through the stuff as it is.
 

 Here's my drawer of seed beads. These mixes stay in the bags, as they were from Andrew's Design Challenges and I like to keep them like this for posterity. Also, who color codes their seed beads??? That's wayyyyy too much {ahem) fun for me.

 This drawer is my favorite one of all. My husband has specific instructions to call Alison and Andrew in the event that I get hit by the proverbial bus. Lots of $ in this drawer and it is one of my favorite things to look at when I am having a bad day. My pretties!!!!

 This is another one of my favorite drawers. It has a whole bunch of vintage beads and stuff that I have collected and cannot wait to repurpose. Some day!!!!

 

So, thanks for taking a tour of my stuff with me.

I'd bore you with a trip through my bead bag, but, that's another time!

Creating a maker's space

HA!

That title got your attention, didn't it?

So, I have been in the process of getting my maker's space set up, and getting organized in general now that the big move is over.

The hardest part abut the move for me was that all my crafty stuff didn't get to move into the space I had intended it to. We have a detatched garage at the new place that has 'an apartment' above it, but in actuality, the space isn't really what we imagine it to be. Yet.

So we gutted it and we might end up taking the whole thing down and rebuilding from scratch. Whatever. That's YEARS away (if it even happens) and I need a place to get crafty, like, RIGHT FREAKING NOW.

So- after months of my toolbox being in said garage, wrapped in saran wrap, I unwrapped it and rolled it into the house. Pretty epic right? Not really, because there it sat, in disarray. just waiting for me to get inside and reorganize it.

Before: Sad toolbox in garage- sad closet in the house....

After: Happy Unwrapped toolbox and happy fresh clean closet!!!!

 

My next post will feature the process I went through to organize my beads and make things easier to find! YAY!

 

 



The Stunner

OK- so I have been telling everyone about this necklace that I made.

I feel like it was one of those moments that people say are 'epiphanies.'

But let's be real and say that 'the lightbulb went off in my head' at one point when I was going through my bead bag and I found some really gorgeous onesie/twosie sets of faceted yumminess...

Bead Soup Bracelets

So I got the opportunity to get back into the classroom last week when my Aunt and some of her friends came to Allegory for a fundraiser bracelet making class.

I was a little bit nervous, because I was making a bracelet that I had never made before but always wanted to try. And it was also completely out of my comfort zone- it used waxed linen!!!!!

If you know me, I HATE waxed linen, because I can't stand the feeling of the wax on my hands....

But the results of the project are awesome. And the ladies were so much fun to work with, that I forgot all about it!

Here we are having a blast:

I had some time on my hands last night and I felt the need to get creative. So here's what I came up with:

 

It was dark and the lighting wasn't super great, so I took pictures 3 different ways.

These were SO much fun to make, and I will definitely be making some more!

Summer Break Projects

I took the kids with me to the shop one day because it is summer break and I didn't have a sitter and it was fun to see what they would come up with project-wise. And we did have a ton of fun!

It was also nice to be able to make some stuff of my own because I had had an evening of inspiration the night before where I made a necklace that I absolutely love. (And consequently forgot to get a photo of)

As everyone knows, I have sort of been a little bit 'over everything' lately.
The house, the kids, the husband, the job, etc.

So when inspiration hit, I was riding a much needed wave of creativity and came up with this stuff:

Had this pretty strand of agate and these cute little spiral spacers laying around. This piece has Picasso seed bead spacers and I used my awesome looper tool to create a faux wire wrapped necklace that you can throw over your head and go. And how can you not be happy with the colors when you wear it?

 

 

So, I was definitely in a color scheme-y kind of mood when I came up with this piece. The colors didn't photograph as well as I would have liked and they look like they clash, but the cracked agate in this  piece has lots of pinks, whites, purples and browns.

I don't know if I absolutely LOVE the pattern I chose, and I might re-string it...

Either way, the oval shaped amethysts, and the diamond shaped rose quartz that highlight a single faceted moonstone make for a pretty piece.

 

And then we come to this piece....

I absolutely positively adore this.

BUT- it isn't long enough and I will definitely be looking into my toolbox to see if I can find some more ceramic or art beads that I can add to it to give it length so that you can see all the amazing beads that are on it.

And because you are probably wondering what I have been working on since?

Nothing.
Absolutely nothing......

Stay tuned until the next surge of inspiration!

May Book Club Project: Mistborn

In true form, I haven't read a single stinking book this year!
And although I gave it a good effort this month by downloading the audio book to listen to in Florida, it just didn't happen....
I took a five minute listen and instantly switched back over to music so I wouldn't ruin my frozen drink buzz at the pool!

But hey, I tried it and I just didn't like it.

Anyhow- the Google synopsis described the book as: gray and ashen, fantasy, blah blah blah. :)

So hey- I like gray. I could definitely find some stuff in my stash to make a project!

And this happened:

 

The large glass beads are from an Andrew Thornton Destash and the spacers are a pretty gray and blue speckled Picasso seed bead. The focal is a Staci Louise Original etched feather that I think is quite cool.

 

 

I am quite happy with this piece whether or not it fit into any part of the book or not!

 

And oh yeah- Alison and I had some fun with the fact that neither of us read the book...

Here we are at the local coffee shop, Abigails, "reading" and "discussing".

 

 

 

 

Stay tuned for next month, where we are reading, The Bees, by Laline Paull