A Show Filled Week!

As I mentioned I had a couple craft shows to attend.  It was a fun & busy 4 day weekend.  First up was Girl's Night Out at the Holiday Inn here in town.

And here's a quick look at my set up.  It was an interesting evening, with hundreds of ladies shopping all the different vendors, wine and a fashion show!

Then there was The Big One Craft Show at the Civic Center.  Again, this was a crazy busy show, but still tons of fun!

And this is how I set up for this one, although I think I'll have to make some changes the next time around.  It just doesn't look quite big and full enough for me.  I'm thinking about adding some different height boxes for under the tablecloth.

Well, this was my weekend in a nutshell, then this past week I was down in the Minneapolis to see one of my friends from high school in The Rocky Horror Picture Show with my mom, went bead shopping with her and then saw Real Steel with my dad the day after!  All in all, it's been a great two weeks!

The adventure continues

As I'm getting ready for some shows this weekend, I chose to take on the next couple projects in Marcia's book.  First up is my version of Shimmer Queen:

Since I don't have any focal beads that are the right size, I chose to go the punk route and chose something from the hardware store!

Next up is the Medici Drop earrings, and of course once again I don't have the right drop crystals for this project either, so to make it work for me, I used teardrop stones:

I made it in a few color tones to get some variety.


Next up in this chapter was the Cassiopeia necklace, which I don't have the pearls for once again.  I feel like this will be a reoccurring theme throughout this undertaking but that will be part of the challenge.  I will find a way to make each project work for me with what I have!

I really enjoyed making this one, it was fun to make the pendant piece:

And that's everything for today.  Now it's time to get ready for the shows this weekend!

Mad About Marcia

I've been really inspired by Marcia and her blog lately, and thought I would follow along with another blogger and beader I found via her site.  She's doing sort of a Julie/Julia thing, but instead of cooking, it's Marcia's book Beaded Opulence.  You can find her blog here. The first project in the book is called Abacus, and it's actually pretty gorgeous, although I have to admit, along with Cyn, I didn't give it much thought at first.  Now, this is pretty much what I do on a daily basis, so I've already finished the first three projects in the book, along with a few others that I had done previously, so I'll post pics of all of them at the end, for now, here's Abacus:

and this is how it sits on a wrist:

I've been really pushing myself to try and be more open and creative with my patterns.  It's a struggle for me since I learned to bead entirely by reading and figuring out patterns, so simply making it up as I go isn't usually an option.  Now that I've been beading for as long as I have and gained a better understanding of how the beads sit and the foundations for different stitches, I find it a new challenge for me to simply let go and bead by feeling.  It is the reason I took Marcia's class at the 2011 Bead & Button show, to challenge myself creatively.  It is paying off exponentially, since I have just done one of my first pieces ever that is entirely without a pattern or a picture to go on.  Here is the result:

Now, on to the second pattern in Marcia's book, Spun Glass!  I had made this one previously, before I ever started on this journey through her book, but never the less, it is a completed version.  I did not use wonderful crystals as suggested, but plastic bicones that had been sitting around for ages.  It just felt like the right time to use them:

and the result seems to have turned out okay.  I'll admit for the next project, I did in fact, watch the movie Twilight while making the Twilight project, only because I watched with the Rifftrax (essentially Mystery Science Theater 3000 aka making fun of the movie the entire time)  and it just made sense.  I was initially turned off to this project because I am so stuck on wanting patterns and everything to be in order, so this was one of my biggest challenges, just mixing up the beads and letting it happen:

There are a few others through the book that I've already completed, but we'll get to those later on.  I'm off to prepare for dinner with my in-laws tonight as well as two shows later this week.  As a parting thought, I'll leave you with one of Marcia's kits I did that I picked up at the Bead & Button Show.

And so it begins...

I've been inspired by Marcia over at MadDesigns to start blogging about my beading experiences.  I thought I would start by giving a little information about myself..  I started beading around 10 years ago when I was 15 and have been going ever since!  I mainly did it as a hobby to try something new and to keep myself busy.  In the last few years I've really gotten into it much more and have now started going to craft shows and expos to sell my pretty things. :)

This is where I'll be leaving updated pictures of my newest pieces before they're ever on my site.  I'm trying to simply use the mobile upload feature from my phone to Facebook right now but it's not working very well for 2 simple reasons: 1- my phone takes terrible pictures 2- I can only upload to my regular personal profile and not my business page.

Anyway, this is me saying hello and to keep an eye out for future posts and pictures since I'm off to sleep, since I've now been up for way to long today since it's 6am and I'm still awake (apparently I'm a night owl now.)