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.

something silly

After working for so many hours on the December Bead Journal Project page I wanted to do something relaxing and so I decided to make silly sock monsters - except I used baby sized socks. They just make me laugh - It also makes me laugh seeing Zakk the puppy try to sneak them off the sewing table. Rather than torture him with temptation, I've packed them up and shipped them out to surprise someone.

December page completed

>
Being snowed in has had its' advantages as I finished up my December page this evening. I have an idea brewing for January but think I need to spend a day re-organizing my bead stash and I've not really put anything away in its' proper spot since this BJP began in September and it's difficult to tell what I have on hand.

How do you organize your beads? I've tried sorting by color, sorting by size, but it still seems like even when the beads are 'sorted' there is still a big jumble in each color drawer and I spend far far too much time finding what I want to use instead of actually beading.

Here's December completed.

December BJP page continues

Still snowed in - this is getting very very old, very very fast. I broke out the size 15 beads this morning figuring that since I had so much time to work on this page, I might as well use them.

snowbound

We've had quite abnormal weather here for the past week and I've been stuck in the house due to ice and snow which of course became the focus of my December Bead Journal Project page. It's still snowing so possibly I'll get this finished before Christmas. I never thought I'd WANT to go to the office so badly.

November BJP Finally Finished!

This one took me a very long time - a page of conflict, it offered me lots of conflicts. I'm not very happy with it, but I'm glad it's done. I've started December and am back to my 'comfort zone' of cool colors.

Here's November

Still stuck

I'm still stuck on my November Bead Journal Project page and have not begun December. I have this 'thing' about finishing a page before I proceed to the next month - a 'thing' that may have to be changed.

I have been working on some other projects - I took an on line class from Carla Sonheim that was very enjoyable. We made a fabric book and bag.



At the last minute I joined one of the 'Twelve Days of Christmas' projects where everyone sends in 12 hand made gifties and the hostess swaps them out so everyone gets a package back with 12 gifties - Of course I joined this at the last possible moment and so spent a very long time working on projects that I thought would go quickly. I made felt hearts that I needle felted some fiber onto and then embellished with beads and sequins and added a pin back. They were really fun to make.



In other news, baby Zakk had a pretty significant urinary track infection but after spending a lot of money at the vet, he is back to his old speed racer self.



Mushu had to have a bit of surgery and since I spoiled her terribly upon her return from hospital, she now believes she should always sleep in our bed under the covers with her head on a pillow and should always eat human food fed to her by spoon. I've created a monster. (She's awfully cute though isn't she?)



Hopefully I'll get to my November page soon so that I can progress onto December. I haven't even begun to think of a focus on the December page, I'm so perplexed with November.

Slow going in November

This page has me perplexed, but the whole month of November was pretty unsettling thus the November page is unsettling - well at least to me - there's lots going on, most of it in my head but the basis of the November page is opposition - colors (things/people) who should 'go together' but don't, just like orange and blue are complimentary colors but aren't quite complimentary on this page - the page is a little jarring to me - I think it needs a mirror - I'll see if I can find one.
Hopefully I can finish the page this week and move on to the December page and something a bit 'prettier'.

The Seven Tagger thing

I found out today I've been tagged by the lovely CarolL and so here are my responses:
Here are the rules of the game :


1. Link to your tagger and list these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blog.
4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.


1. I have 4 dogs and 6 cats.
2. I don't eat anything that swims.
3. I almost always have a digital camera in my handbag.
4. I am an only child.
5. My son is an only child as well.
6. I haven't decided what I want to be when I grow up yet.
7. I am very happy with the results of the recent presidential election in the US.

And now to tag others - hmmm -

1.KiwiEllen
2. Sabine\
3. Cynthia
4. Theresa
5. cynjon
6. Paula
7. Freebird

beading on the fly

I'm in Phoenix once again tending to my mother. It's a horror what the airlines can do to vials of beads packed in checked baggage. Luckily I secured everything in zip-lock bags so I have some interesting mixes but no bead soup on the bottom of my suitcase.

I worked on the November page for a bit in the waiting room at the hospital today while my mother was having a heart catheterization. I could only work for a little while because there was just so much sadness in that room with people all stressed and doctors coming out to share not such good news.

An interesting thing here - perhaps it's everywhere and I just don't know it - when a baby is born at the hospital, the birth is announced over the intercom and brahms lullaby is played. It was charming the first few times - I don't think I'd like to work there though - perhaps you learn to ignore it.


And so mother is home now and we are experiencing a significant role reversal as now she is taking off her oxygen and sneaking out to the garage to smoke - she thinks she's fooling me. She's a grown woman - If having emphysema hasn't made her quit smoking, I don't think that I can accomplish it. I told her today that she was a grown woman who needed to make choices in her life - only she could determine whether or not drinking and smoking were important enough to shorten her life. If she felt that they were - then that is the route she should take. During the last few years of my father's life, he was miserable - he couldn't smoke his pipe, he couldn't eat the foods he liked, he had to eat foods he hated - everything was measured and calculated - I remember once I called him on his birthday and he said "I had fake eggs with fake sausage and toast with fake butter - I got half of a real banana though" - my father lived to eat - growing up during the depression was his excuse. But I often thought that if he'd lived 2 happy years instead of 3 and a half miserable ones - what would have been the difference. And that's basically how I'm feeling now with my mother. She has to make her own choices.

I think I've finally gotten her settled for the night so perhaps I can work on the beading for a bit.

Beginning November

I've begun my November page a bit early, knowing that I'll probably end up doing my December page a bit late - it all evens out in the end. Once again this is a page that I have no plan for - Well I did kind of have a plan, but just like all of my other pages, it went out the window as soon as I sat down to bead. I don't know where the orange beads came from - suddenly they were just there and I rather like them there now that I'm used to them. We'll see where I go from here. I'm so happy that I decided on a rather largish sized page this year - it gives me more room to experiment.

October page finished!

Earth tones are not my forte. In fact, I don't even own a pair of brown shoes much less anything else in those tones but October was a month of challenges and so I challenged myself with earth tones. I'm very glad it's finished. I grew tired of it long before it was finished. But as a person who often doesn't finished things she's not pleased with, I am proud of myself for completing it.

Slow progress on October

Life keeps getting in the way of beading but I'm making slow progress on October - beading when I get the chance to sit down for a few minutes.