Vintage?

I love vintage glass beads, especially the flower shaped ones. I don't know what it is about the glass but it just seems different (it probably has heavy metals in it so don't put them in your mouth). One of my favorite time wasting habits is searching the net for vintage glass beads and herein is the problem. I think of something as being vintage if it is OLDER THAN ME which means something manufactured before the 1950's. I think we're heading toward antique status here rather than vintage but in my world, it's still vintage. Imagine my surprise when I pop 'vintage' into a search engine and find plastic - vintage plastic? plastic? that's not vintage - (now before you correct me please remember that this is my own personal world that we're talking about here) and these plastic beads aren't cool bakelite which is really resin and not plastic anyway - we are talking about things taht I found in my Aunt Elaine's jewelry box when I was a child in the 60's. NOT VINTAGE - (remember this is still my own private world we are discussing).

The same goes for the Melamine that they are now selling at vintage - it was ugly at Aunt Ruth's house and it's ugly now. My children (who are in their 30's) were so excited when they received a set of 'vintage' melamine dinnerware for their wedding - the pattern was the same that my Aunt Alice had with those mod little rounded triangle thingys - ugh. And the 'vintage rafia tumblers'. I saw some on eBay for $12.50 each. They used to give those to you at the gas station when you filled your tank (after they were done checking your air pressure, oil and windshield wiper fluids).

I suppose now I'm sounding like my Grandma Lola - remembering the 'good old days' - but that's not it at all. All I ask is that when searching for things that are 'old', I don't find things that were manufactured after I was born. Is that too much to ask?

Snow!

I woke up to a snow covered world and stayed home from work and finished my second January page. I really need to learn how to use a thimble because one of the fingers on my right hand looks like ground meat.

Continuation of 2nd January page

I'm really enjoying playing with all of these new stitches - It's taking a long time to do but I really do love the bottom portion of this piece - I'm so glad that I decided to do another January page.

progress on 2nd January BJP page continues

and I'm still having fun!

January page - again

Inspired by Robin Atkins new book Heart to Hands, I've begun a second page for January for the Bead Journal Project. I am having so much fun learning and experimenting with new stitches. Here's the beginning of the second page for this month.

Happy Inauguration Day!

I finished my January Bead Journal Project page over the weekend. It's quite a different 'look' for me - I feel like this month is all about change and as I wrote previously, there are a lot of changes involved in this page - change in needles, change in colors, change even in backing material, using metals - lots of change - some of it good, some of it not so good. I liked the new needles, didn't care for the tear away stabilizer backing and red, white and blue is still not my favorite color combination. Here is the finished page.

Arrggg!

I tried something new this past weekend - a beaded doll. Somehow I didn't think it would be so difficult - boy was I wrong! Stitching around a 3 dimensional surface is a whole different ball game than simply stitching beads to fabric. I poked myself, I swore a LOT, I almost gave up but I decided to stick it out - even if the result was - well - funny looking. I'm proud of myself for finishing, even though I really wanted to give it to the cats to bury in their box. I still want to make a beaded doll, but I think that I will wait for either a class or have my friend Megan Noel teach me because 'do it yourself' dolls just don't seem to work.

And now - for your amusement is beaded doll #1 (she has hips just like mine)

New Year Beading

We celebrated Christmas and my son's birthday on New Year's Day due to the horrible weather conditions here on the actual day. While the kids were here I worked on a little 5 x 5 inch beaded square. While I was in Phoenix that last time I'd purchased a couple of small packets of mixed beads just because I liked the color combinations and then thought "well, what am I going to do with these?". The answer was this little square. It was really mindless and fun to do.


This weekend I started the January BJP page. Changes. There are lots of changes happening - a new year, a new president and new direction for this country. I thought I might make some changes myself so for this piece I used a different size of needle (I used short size 10's while I regularly use very long ultra thin needles; I used silamide while i normally use nymo; I used different colors of thread while I normally use one neutral color throughout a piece. I even used a different backing - a tear away stabilizer rather than my standard wool felt. And, I used a totally different color combination than I would normally use. This is inspired by politics and the upcoming innaguration as well as anything else. The larger metal piece says 'imagine' and the small pebble says 'peace'. The weather has been unseasonably cold and my arthritis has been bothering more than usual because of it so I've spent the entire weekend in the house beading. I am trying to slow down so that I can enjoy the process of this page more but it doesn't seem to be happening.