(Living amongst) Bead Table Wednesday disorder

I certainly didn't intend it to be this way.  I never do.

But the good news is that I'm walking slowly and steadily towards the light and tomorrow at 3 PM will be the first of 3 or 4 scheduled updates for my stores!  I never stopped working over the summer (can't break that flow of ideas, after all..) but the finished work just kept piling up and now it is an absolute priority to get all this work listed.  Closure, and perhaps some money…what a great plan. Just as long as that light I see is not the oncoming train!

  Of course not, it’s the blinding light of my computer screen!     (had to move to the desktop though, my beloved Blackberry is too slow for this!)
                                                       
                                                                                            

Such a familiar and comforting sight, along with the knowledge that I’ll be sitting in front of it for a good little while ahead.  Ugh… familiar to lots of you.

                                           

I’ve been trying to organize a way to make listing faster, but of course, while setting up any new system, there is a period where you are actually slower than if you weren’t trying to improve everything.  Most of my stuff is one-of-a-kind, but there are certainly groups and subgroups, so I’m trying to make as many ‘generic’ draft listings as I think might be useful in Etsy’s not very user friendly draft listing folder.  (You can’t rearrange them, unfortunately…)  Generic listings such as ‘pod’ or ‘Complex pod’ or ‘strata bead’.  These generic listings contain the basic information such as  basic tags,price, materials and how, in general, this particular subgroup of pieces are made or came to be etc. Then, in theory, you just plug in the information relevant  to the particular piece you are listing, plop in the photos and list!  All this works because the draft folder allows you to copy your generic listing and by so doing, allows you to keep it for the next time that you have a piece in that series! I almost cried when I realized you could do this. This saves a lot of either flipping around in sold listings, searching for sold listings ( I just know I sold one sorta like last year etc.) and copying and pasting.  In a lot of the generic listings I’ve assembled variants that I’ve written about the pieces concerned. SO easy to cut, rather than find and cut and paste.  But it takes time and thought to organize the generic listings to my satisfaction.  When I become that self-disciplined and organized person that I am so looking forward to being, you know, the one who does at least 5 listings a day come hell or high water, I know this system will work well.  It’s already working well for some lines!

                           
                                      

I’m also changing the way I store the work before it’s listed.  I recently scored a hit on Kijiji and bought for practically nothing lots of those plastic cases with dividers and transparent tops so you can see through the lids without opening them.  Some of them are double-sided, very neat! Thing is, I used to store all my finished work neatly and separately in plastic bags, but they sort of became invisible and I sometimes forgot what I had. Also, there was a lot of  mucking about with bags while getting the work out to photograph, and then a second lot of mucking about putting it back into the bag with my sometimes arthritic hands and fingers. This works better – I have a case devoted to holding what is going to be photographed that session and then after the photo shoot it goes into a plastic jewellery bag and stays there until it’s sold.  (Those tiny jewellery bags drive my hands nuts but they do present well…)


                                            

So yes, when I get through this shameful backlog of work, I probably won’t need all these cases.  But it was worth the $15 to have them!  Sometimes, I make work and I’m not sure about it.  It’s great to have a dedicated case for work you’re brooding about. Then, after a little time, ‘tada!’ You can open up the case and see how it hits you with fresh eyes – all in one place!  AND, I might add, without having to paw through those damn bags.

Back to the grind.  Tomorrow, going live!

and the winners are….

I know and I apologise…I’m late.  The run up to school has suddenly included (among other things)  a complete overhaul of the kid’s rooms, including a paint job.  I’ve been meaning to paint their rooms since we moved in (4 years ago, says she with a red face) and it seems that now is the time.  The benefit is that now they can help with the job and learn about the joys of cheap renovation via painting!  Max’s room is a wonderful bright green which rejoices in the name of ‘Lime Freckle’.  Suits him…he has wonderful freckles, though not green ones.

   
                                                                              

A couple of shots of Max’s new green womb…he coils himself in there and reads for hours…

                       


Rachel’s room isn’t quite finished, but you can see the blue she has chosen.  It looks too Madonna’s robe blue here and is actually a little greener in real life.  My camera doesn’t do blues well.  Here is a demented shot of the wonderful (if a little sinister) Victorian doll’s house that Rachel inherited from her great aunt.  Yes, it is filled with miniatures…

My wonderful daughter also cut out all the entries for the draw and I folded them up into small bundles.  Somehow we like this better than the old random number generator, possibly because we are luddites at heart.  My daughter is no friend to technology (although she can work her way around a computer just fine, thank you…) and I’m seeing at school that it isolates you from your peer groups if you’re not connected.  But that is her choice – we all have to use technology in a way that works for us!  But I digress…you’d like to hear the winners, no?

                                         


                                                         
                                                     
                                            
         And the winners are.......Peg Gerrard and Linda Sudimack!
 
I don't have email addresses or shipping addresses for either of you, although I see that Linda has an Artfire shop linked to blogger, so I'll try sending a message there.  If either of you see this please contact me through Etsy or this blog so I can get your mailing addresses and send out your winnings!
And please, check in with me tomorrow as I’ll be adding my first video (made by me…) to my blog.  It will be up tomorrow barring any more unforeseen technical glitches.  Oy, the world of video formats and converters is horrible….

Just a baking fool....

Yup, the rush to the 25th day has begun!  Somewhere back before Halloween, I agreed to put forth my labour for a fundraiser run by my neighbour.  Because, I like to bake, right? My neighbour and her mother have been running this charity for 30 years, which supports women and children in need in the Ottawa area.  It appeals to my thinking about the way  a charity can work well - that is to say, locally donated and administered, with lots of volunteer labour.  I can't donate a lot of money because I can't actually spare it, but I can give my time.  Especially to a cause that supports women.

It's been interesting working out the kinks with making perfect shortbreads (and this group has an army of other volunteers squirrelled away making goodies, so it is very profitable) in a ceramic pan from the Brown Bag cookie company.  I finally have it down ( and I'm writing it down so I don't forget how to do it) so just ask me if you ever need to know.

So, if I've seemed a little distant and uncommunicative, this is why.  It has taken much longer than I thought it would (doesn't everything - when will I ever learn? ) and I still have 20 left to make out of 70.  They are pretty though, and they taste wonderful!  Hasn't helped my tendency to pack on pounds, either.  The good news is that I am, for the moment, officially sick of shortbread!  But the testing was brutal.....

Must be done and packed by Dec. 1st.

Well, if you can't have texture in polymer, then have it in shortbread, I say....

End of summer

My son starts school today and my daughter the day after, and the nights are getting cooler.  This is exciting to me because I am by nature an 'any season but summer' kind of person.  Probably due to the reduced guilt about staying inside and working cosily in my studio in cooler weather.  Not that summer isn't beautiful, but it was a hot one as many of you can attest....ready for fall, is all I can say!

I just had a few wonderful pictures from the summer to post and somehow never got around to it.  They will work well as a summary of what this particular summer offered.  Currently, my favourite blog for enjoying seasons, moods, atmosphere and a big peek into someones life is Kerry Bogert's blog.  I never miss a post!  Her photography is fun, free and thoughtful and evokes a mood so well and her commentary is at one with my thinking lately. I like the fact that it is life presented with its attendant joys and  frustrations. The sneaking away to work (or the wanting to sneak away ), oh, I know that one well, the mother/artist dilemma!

Swimming at our lake, a piece of land with nothing but a deck and some stairs....

A perfectly  preserved and dried out insect exoskeleton...

The trailer ( on our land) which now has the happy name 'Mouse Palace'...no longer usable after our sojourn of  4 years in Nova Scotia.  Nature will have it's way!

Sneaking through the bush from the lake to the trailer...such a beautiful path!

This beautiful but sinister thing was inside the trailer when my husband opened the door - fortunately no sign of the skin's former occupant inside the trailer.... I have never before seen one whole and intact, it was about 5 feet long in total!

Lovely echinacea plants with butterflies at a friend's cottage...

Our girls are becoming lovely young women...(one mine, one the daughter of a friend made in prenatal class)

And finally, the rainbow after the torrential rains on the 24th of June (St Jean Baptiste Day in Quebec, a provincial holiday), which caused terrrible flooding through the region.  The camera doesn't even begin to capture it.....

A few moments from my summer.  Happy autumn!

One thing

Somehow a month of precious time has slithered by.  I won't even ask how that happened, or what that month has been filled with - driving various members of these family to their appointed cultural and sportive events, I think.  Before January and February arrive, I always think they will be filled with a calm and purposeful review of my work  and where it's going, and most excitingly, the development of all those ideas that have been waiting in the wings!  The good thing is that the ideas haven't gone....
I'll just have to learn how to join in to that rushing flow of time more easily....

The first thing to announce (because I really did have two things to talk about here) is the results of the draw for testing my hollow bracelets.  I decided to draw two names from my list of 14 people who commented on my post, because really, you can't test something enough before seeing it out into the world!  Using the handy dandy online random number generator  brought me two numbers -1 and 10!  Going by my list, that turns out to be Anke Humpert of Anartisland, and Christine Damm of Stories they tell.  That's pretty exciting!  I'll be contacting them to see if they are still willing!  And as an aside, so sorry I didn't draw Evelyn, as it turns out that she lives about 12 km. from me, just across the river! 

I did make a few interesting beads this month:  as always, some helpful customers prodded me in the right direction.  A series of highly decorative pods emerged, as a continuation of other work I've done, but mixed with the surfaces I've been exploring recently.  Some very stylized and some not so...

Here's a grouping:

A token gesture to Valentine's Day -

And more eyes to stare at you...

As it turns out, I have another post to do today!  I have received the package from my Bead Soup Blog partner, and I will return later with photos....

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...

Time waits for noone, nor does a giveaway...

It's been a while - and I do apologise!  I had the best of intentions when September started.  It's certainly been a busy month and, most exciting for me, I reached 150 sales in my Etsy shop!  Time management remains a problem, especially as I have the project of painting the house to complete before winter sets in completely (notice how I cleverly don't give myself an actual deadline?  Clever, that...)  The hours with the brush in hand also let ideas roll (somewhat frustratingly) through my head.

To get to the point - to celebrate 150 sales, I am having a little giveaway here!   Just comment on this blog before the end of next Monday, October 18 and I'll enter you for the draw for these lovely orphans.  (Please, they need a home!)  They include (among others) a flat fly bead,  3 new ruffle beads, assorted other transfer beads and a leafy pod thing.  On Tuesday morning next, I'll write your names on bits of paper and get my kids to do the deed!

I'll be back tommorow to tell you about a new project I'm involved in, and to post some new work!  Really, truly!

It's almost time!

The last gasp of summer is upon me and today we are off to the waterpark to slide.  This jaunt is very timely as the temperature is supposed to go up to 33 C today!  School starts on Wednesday and it's going to be a hot first day too.   No autumnally crisp first school day for this year!

I'm a bit saddened by the pathetically small amount of work I've mnanged to do this summer.  Except for a tiny bit of experimentation here and there, there simply hasn't been time with the number of trips we've done this summer (small trips requiring, it seems, VAST amounts of preparation!).  I've been trying, with some sucess, to train my children to be a bit more self reliant in the cooking, cleaning and preparation for activities department, with some success.  While also realizing that any lack of competence in this on their part is completely my fault - note - start training them early!

However, lots of ideas are percolating inside my head.  It remains to be seen if they can be dug out of the sludge.  I even fell down on the sketchbook documentation of said ideas.  I have enjoyed reading the blogs I follow when I had time to get on the computer (somehow, there is always time to check one's shop), and I salute you all on your regular blogging habits, and the great posts.  That small injection of the crafty life did a lot to help me feel connected.

Must go and get wet, but I will return, hopefully regularly, starting September 1st.  I leave you with pictures of a hollow bracelet I seem to have been working on ALL summer!  (And it shows in the overworking, too) .  It's on a pearl base and I've discovered I have a love/hate relationship with pearl clay.  When it's right for a project, it's great and when it's not -  it is purely and simply - incredibly tacky looking!

 Sorry about the number of shots.  Hard to find a good one, am out of practice!