Bead Table Wednesday....a little late

I have been looking at people's intriguing posts about what they have on their table for some time.  I joined the group on Flickr - so what's my problem?  How come I haven't posted?  Well, truth to tell, my work space is a disaster most of the time, but I've realized that I'm not the only one.  I'm trying very hard to set aside 15 minutes or so every day for tidying and sorting, but there is a steady accumulation that resists this determined assault and, worst of all, there is always one thing that resists the pigeon-hole.  Those things add up daily...things I've made and can't part with yet, things I'd be embarrassed to part with, things I haven't finished yet, things I will never finish...and on it goes.  So that's it then - my bead table today is having to deal with pieces/beads I never dealt with completely or properly!

These include:  a set of grapey textured beads that just got some ochre highlights after sitting around here for ages ( now I  like them),  a new layered pendant ( how did that sneak in there before the old junk - tsk tsk), some pods I reworked because I really didn't like them ( better now), some layered, old and mysterious looking stacked triangles that I didn't like til I took the alcohol pen to them ( alcohol pens, my new best friends, I think that rhymes...), post earrings I 've had finished for yonks and haven't been quite sure about (only one way to test that out - list them, dammit!), a striped flat oval set which I 've been dithering about because they don't quite look like the ones I was supposed to remake ( so what, maybe they are actually better than the first ones...), and the list goes on.

 The focus of the table - above ( I did wipe up the black paint spills in search of proper contrast...)

Then the individual problems, now hopefully solved!

As I write this out it's actually a little frightening to see the amount of dither and worry that is generated by this stuff.  Don't efficiency experts tell you that you should only handle a piece of paper once?  I must have handled some of these pieces dozens of times in trying to decide what to do about them, this is not interesting productive or efficient....

I think facing at least a few of my dilemmas on Bead Table Wednesdays could be helpful. To say the least. 

Bead Soup by horse and buggy

I am still working my way through the Bead Soup Blog party participant's offerings.  ( Hence the reference to slooow travel...)  There are some wonderful things to be seen:

Three participants leap to my mind particularly, Christine Damm of Stories they tell,  Sig Wynne-Evans ( whose prowess and design ability with seed beads wowed me) and Nancy Schindler of  Round Rabbit.  All quite different, all fantastic.  Actually, I could sit here all night long linking to blogs as those are just 3 of many that I enjoyed.  And, I have to say a huge thank you to the people who took the time and trouble to comment on my work, and to begin following my blog.  Hopefully, there will be more fun stuff for you to follow about my work and stuff that interests me about the creative process.  Check back tomorrow, I have a post planned on something completely different ( for me, in polymer, that is!).

 All this blog hopping is distracting me from the horrific realization that I put my iPod through the wash cycle yesterday...aargh!  Am drying it out in silica gel hoping that it will work again..hah!  I was half way through the 3rd book in the Millenium series...I am addicted to audible.com!  Well, perhaps my work will take on a lighter mood if I listen to something a little less grim!  Spent most of the day getting iTunes (another frustrating piece of work if there ever was one) to sync with my Sansa Clip tiny mp3 player.  Finally succeeded, but I miss my old iPod and the new Apple products are very glitzy, busy and important.  Here's hoping that the old one can be resuscitated.  How stupid could I get?  (Actually, please don't answer that....)

Aren't these stupendous?

Giving in

Sometimes you just have to give in to the urge to work something through - even if the timing couldn't be worse!  In the last few days I've been struggling with the ongoing paint job at the house (enough said), listing on Etsy, making some custom orders and helping the kids finish their Halloween costumes (required for school tomorrow).  I swore I would not help them this year, but somehow last night I helped my son make a matador hat and today I have to finish the edges of a bird costume that my daughter has almost finished.  She is actually becoming quite handy with a sewing machine - an essential life skill in my little world...

When those serendipitous things happen in your work, it is such a gift that you should just accept it and work with it instead of struggling.  Sometime ago I bought a set of metallic paints to use with polymer, but every time I tried them the result was so disappointingly garish that I would throw all the results away and curse my inability to resist temptation in art supply stores.

These new beads came about as a result of using up scrap bits of transfers and putting them onto the surface of my hollow beads.  It occurred to me that this might be a good way to use metallic, because there is some movement in the action of applying the metallic tile to the bead which removes the static quality of painted metallic.  It's this quality that I think I've identified as being the one I dislike.

It started late one night (after cleanup) with this set of beads -

You can see the tile and the random texture I used to fill the intervening spaces - nature abhors a vacuum and so, apparently, do I!

Then a couple of days later I dragged out the metallic paints...do you ever have an idea you think is great and might work but you are almost afraid to try it because  you will be so disappointed when it doesn't work?  That mindset, that's how it was...this little fellow popped  up because stripes are on my mind.

I liked the fact that the metallic paint was visible, starting to break up, and married well with the texture.  So then these followed, all  taking little tiny steps towards other ideas.

I do like the painterly landscape quality of this particular set.  What's fun is learning to control the degree of spread of the tiles, and you do have a LOT of control - which I like.

This is the last one so far -

It has a quietness about it because the metallic is buried under translucent. Just one of the literally hundreds of possible variations for this technique.  I'm wondering if anyone would be interested in a tutorial on this technique, or if it is just my current enthusiasm that is making me a little blind here?  Do let me know!

Sorry for the long post - if I could discover how to put photos side by side on Blogger I would be a happy woman!  I think I must be missing something very obvious...

Getting going...

I've been debating this step for months - why is it so difficult?

Each day, several things pass through my mind that I think would be great to blog about, but somehow that detail that must be completed wins out. Enough, make a start...

This week I've joined a couple of new directories on the internet - crafthaus and the handmade highway. Both have great potential and great people and a good vision - I like where they are headed. It's a little late for this season, but next year I'm headed towards integrating all the stuff I have on the go, developing and exploring this new work and documenting the parts of that process that might be useful or interesting to other people. I know what I find fascinating about other people's blogs and, although difficult to express, it could be seen as the small and fleeting epiphanies of the creative process. A problem solved. The knowledge that layers up, over time, into confidence and a genuine voice.

Actually, I don't know what's round 'the next bend'! That will make it all the more interesting. I have been known to take some fairly tight corners in my life.

There - that wasn't so bad, I could do that again..