Can't wait to be an April fool!

 April is i-cumin' in; loud sing cuckoo....(medieval song)
  And here in Maryland, it's time for black-eyed Susans to start peeping their heads out of the ground for a wonderful season of blooms!  I can't wait!
   My bones feel they NEED the warmth and, yes, even the humidity that come as the seasons move toward summer.  I look out the window in the sunroom where I spend my time when opining here in the blog, and it is greening up so quickly.  Even my chives, sage, oregano and thyme have rebounded and are beckoning to be cut and folded gently into a wonderful omelette or other comestible....the foodie in me beckons far more than the beads..and that's a good thing, since I'm cooking for Passover for the multitudes and transporting it elsewhere to feed them.
     BUT, there's also a show coming up....more in a few days on that.  So I gotta get working....but first, I finish up the editorial work, now that my hip has calmed down enough from an overindulgence in Pilates and body pump classes for me to sit comfortably.....ONWARD!!!!new blog entry

Sing Along...."An-ti-ci-paaaaaa-tion....."

      There's only one thing more disconcerting than receiving a "Thank you for applying; it was a hard decision, but, we're sorry to say..." letter from an event.  At least when you get one of those you KNOW where you stand.
      I just got ANOTHER of those "waiting list" letters!  OY VEY!  It's neither a "yes" nor a "no" and that leaves you....well, nowhere.  So how does one plan?  Simply put, one doesn't.   BUT having been scooped off the waiting list for ACC, I'm hopeful that the One of a Kind show in Chicago (December 2012) will do the same!  After all, I sent along the same pictures and text as I did to ACC....
     And while I wait to hear about this waiting list, I'm also waiting for Craft Boston in the fall (another waiting list!) and whether I'm in or out for a number of OTHER shows beginning Labor Day through the end of the year.
    The GOOD news:  I'll be in Ann Arbor, MI in July for their HUGE four day show.  A series of shows occur simultaneously and totally overrun the University's main campus.  I'll be there!  On State Street, booth 104....YAY
    The even BETTER news is that I've got a wonderful barn finch nesting at the top of the pediment that holds up our porch roof.  It's the second year the pair have graced our home.  I can't wait to see the little ones!  [And I can't wait until they leave and I can clean up the guano, too!]  I also think a duck may be nesting in my holly near the house wall -- if not, they're just visiting my little front yard more often than ever!  I'll try to get a picture.
   EVERYTHING is GREENING!  And that's so very wonderful.  Even my tiny indoor fig tree (sent bare stemmed just 2 weeks ago) has leaves AND a tiny dwarf fig.  So cute....Perhaps I'll do a bead shaped like the fig leaf; so unusual and undulating......
     Keep thinking good thoughts about future shows for me.....I'll think good thoughts for everyone else!!

   

A Teaching Gig! With more to come......stay tuned

I'm going to  be teaching a weekend class--Circling the Stone Times Three--June 30-July 1-- at the Gem Cutters Guild of Baltimore on three ways to create beaded bezels around their freshly cut gems.  If you're in the area and want to participate, check out their website (below) to get more info. And while you're there, check out the other classes on their website (http://www.gemcuttersguild.com/classes.html).


Now the challenge is MAKING THE INSTRUCTION SHEETS!  Any creative ideas? I KNOW I'm going to take some photos to add to the document, but the graphs are the part with which I will struggle! LOL, I'm so good at MAKING the jewelry, just not at drawing diagrams of HOW I make it!   Once I get that worked out, doing the class should be fun.

Now, for your eye candy for the day, I present an additional picture of the famous VW that has been beaded inside and out by the Huichol tribe of Mexico and on exhibit at the National Museum of the American Indian.  There are over 2.27 million seed beads, weighing over 200 pounds that have been set in resin on the "bug." The symbols depict culturally important ceremonies, events and designs.  It too 2 families over 9,000 hours to create!.  SO COOL! SO CREATIVE!  And signed just above the bumper, or so it appears.

 Thanks to my hubby, the docent at the Smithsonian, for taking the pix for me one day when he was "at work."

Soothing the savage etc....

Off to the Baltimore Symphony tonight.   I'm surely hoping that Fanfare for the Common Man (and the colleague Fanfare for the UNcommon WOman) get my creative juices flowing....I NEED to get some energy and brio moving in my veins again! Two writing jobs and I jump back into beads -- and I DO want to be able to jump right in and create what I've wanted to be dreaming about!!!! 


If ANYONE can get me hopping up and down, it's Marin Alsop, one of the few women conductors in the world and a wonderful one, too!!



I'll let you all know if the music stirs the muse!!!

Cover Girl!!

I just learned that the Circle the Stone necklace that graces the front of my website (www.theafine.com) is the cover picture for a beading group--Beads and More (BAM)--on Yahoo.  It's a group of several hundred bead artists of varying experience who exchange knowledge, share solutions, and undertake bulk purchases to realize economies of scale.  While now a "closed" group due to the large membership, my selection and the kind words about my work were quite the honor (albeit, something about which I was unaware until I went to look at something on the site!)  By the way, the cabochon focal around which that piece is based is by Marsha Neal whose porcelain cabs and earrings and pendants are absolutely bodacious!!!

Yes, this blog entry features a DIFFERENT piece in the Circle the Stone line,  -a hidden-front-closure piece that features a wonderful apatitie cabochon and stones. I barely got a photo of it. No sooner did I finish it than it found another home during the ACC show. I hope my client wears it well and with great joy, since I had a blast creating it!

I show it  because I'll be teaching a weekend class--Circling the Stone Times Three--June 30-July 1-- at the Gem Cutters Guild of Baltimore on three ways to create beaded bezels around their freshly cut gems.  In the area and want to participate and get more info?  Check it out, and check out the other classes, too, on their website (http://www.gemcuttersguild.com/classes.html) and check it out.

FOG

It is dark, and it is foggy, much like my brain this morning.  It is also unlike the beautiful fog in the picture taken on the Rhone during our Provence trip last summer. 
I've been at a loss for creativity, blocked, hitting a wall. Colors won't come; the field of new project ideas lies fallow. Even my half-sewn beading projects languish, despite the fact that they require the less than average use of arty grey matter.  


The ennui extends to other aspects of my life. I've been reading and re-reading all of the  scientific articles that I need to understand and explain in plain English in a press release.  The result?  Poorly conceived drafts in need of reworking.


It happens to all of us: the muse evades us for a while.  What to do about it?  Surround yourself in visual, auditory, tactile and taste-worthy sensations.....And that's precisely what I plan to do today.  The music will be ON (probably classical or folk of some ilk); the beads will be OUT on the counters to be put away in vials (seeing the colors touching the colors helps), the knitting will be picked up as will the artisan bread baking habit.  All of this contributes to a mindfulness about my actions, whether kneading bread, sorting beads, finishing the baby sweater I'm knitting for a friend's new grandbaby, or even just closing my eyes and listening to music.

AND WITH LUCK, the Muse will return to touch my art and creative spirit again very soon.
Keep your fingers crossed for me! LOL

One Down....Two to Go!

SPRING IS HERE (or so the calendar says).  And so do my plants!  Check out the budding out of my climbing hydrangea in the back yard! May we be protected from a hard freeze before the end of the month.

The good news is that the newsletter is finito:  signed, sealed and delivered.  In fact, it was posted to the organization's membership by the exec director literally by return mail! Huzzah!!Now on to the press release and the "think" piece.

They should be done in a few days and THEN I can get back to the joy of beading (not to be confused with the joy of cooking, something in which I also take great pleasure, as you can tell from my blogroll!)  In fact, today is a day to begin the process of macaron-making.  Yes! I'm talking about those glorious French macarons, not the coconut ones that are so prevalent this time of the year (manufactured for wheatless consumption during Passover).  Turns out the FRENCH macarons are also flourless -- they use ALMONDS not flour and nuts are ok to eat.  So, today, I begin the process by giving the eggwhites involved a few days to "rest."  Not exactly heavy lifting, but a necessary element in the 32-step process used by Pierre Herme (add accent over the second "e," s'il vous plait), the GOD of French patisserie.

Looking at the pictures in his book, my eyes are feasting on color combinations that could be right up the beading alley!  In fact, I think I'll create some macaron-inspired pieces as soon s I finish up the editorial work -- and attend to what my girlfriend Gail calls "administrivia."  And she has THAT right!

Glorious day!!

I'm not sure where winter went, but spring, even early summer, is upon us.  The sky doesn't have a cloud; a warm breeze is blowing through the screen in the sunroom where I'm working right now.
Today isn't a day for work, it SHOULD be a day for play, for soaking up colors that can be translated into bead design...

But ALAS, I'm on deadline for a newsletter AND for a press release. ...so, no beading today; it's a "fingers on the keyboard, butt to the chair" kind of day....but I WILL be getting out for a walk before the weather turns cloudy as expected tomorrow.  Pictures of the neighborhood's glorious daffodils coming in the next blog. In the meantime, enjoy the flowers from France.

---

Getting Noticed vs Staying Under the Rock

She got noticed! Running up and down the stairs in Lyon, France

So, how DOES one drive people to one's facebook page AND website? Seems that I'm writing for me and a few friends....which is ok, since I love to write. BUT the purpose IS to promote the business and, more important, the jewelry itself.....Any ideas?

Back to the gym=sore body

So after days of procrastinating, I went back to the gym. And, yes, it hurt as much as I thought it would! Buy I'm back! Tomorrow, Pilates!!!

Beading proceeds slowly. Waiting on a few shipments, and starting to put together a few sets of instructions for kits and for the bezel around your cut stone weekend class I will be teaching...If you are interested, drop me a note for info on either.

Now off to make dinner.....

Monday, Monday......again

And the weeks go around and around...It seems as if I just finished the ACC show, but, no, it's already been two weeks!  The creative juices are flowing...at last!  AND the desire to sit and bead coincides with the flowing of the creative sap in my veins....No pressure to create; just the free flow of ideas to try and test. No pressure to be done with something; just the relaxation of one bead following another in a new pattern or a new design or a new color combination.

The best part, the RELAXATION of beading is back.  As a real type A personality, I've found beading to be my zen, my substitute for repeating a mantra over and over....but the pressure of the shows tends to change my outlook, making beading as much a chore as a joy....How wonderful to be back in the realm of the joy of beading.  The next show is local--Sugarloaf in April--so far less pressure than occurs when doing a NEW show in a NEW location.

BY THE WAY, I'm in booth 107 (upstairs in the first building!)  So come visit the booth.

Other than the wrinkled purple drapery on the left, whaddya think of the booth?  Yes, my name is missing on the banner -- needed to do that for future show applications to keep the slide truly "blind"....

I'm absolutely thrilled by my new pix....Think they're large enough?  LOL

Be careful when you "spring forward"

Well, we sprang forward -- and I'm about to fall on my face!  I shouldn't be tired, but tired I am!
The day was spent staring at (and working on) text I have to revise into a brief newsletter AND articles I need to summarize into a press release.  It's that OTHER part of my life, intruding on the beady part....LOL

an asymmetric vision in black and red--no
pastels here!!!

Only now have I gotten my beads out and begun to finish up a replacement bead reef necklace or two for the stack I like to keep around.  I'm looking at some yummy pastels at this point, since they're showing pastels for the spring, summer and fall of 2013.....Paired with strong colors, I can manage to work with them; on their own, however, in a word, they're "meh."

This coming week should be a busy one...AND I get to head back to the gym at last.  My ennui got the better of me, but it's time to get back in the saddle and back to pumping iron and treading on the treadmill and crunching those abs in Pilates!!  So, off into the new week we shall go.....with dreams of wonderful new bead projects dancing in my head (and, I hope, soon, on my beading mats!!)
Anon, all......

What a magnificent day

Not a cloud in the sky, but a chilly morning.  Wrapped up with a mug of wonderful green tea in the sunroom and my beads, I plan to lose myself in them today.  It's "clean up" day for the existing projects.  The two orders I just completed went out the door yesterday, along with a repair job.

So now, it's on to the "finish them up" projects.  Necklaces, a few "kepah keepers" (picture appended), and a bodacious couple of pin/pendant combos.  THEN I get to play with my Judaica line as planned AND to start visualizing the Victoriana line.....I've got a few pieces already, part of the circle the stone collection, and want to do more -- perhaps with some jet and pearl....perhaps some garnet and gold.....The color combinations are dancing in my brain.....Creativity abounds.....

But on a down-to-earth note, I DO have to get a newsletter out this week and start a press release for my two remaining editorial clients.  I'm disinclined to give them up -- the work is fun, challenging my creativity in a different sort of way.  Loving it all....

For those of you in the US, don't forget to "spring forward" tonight!  Yeah, that hour we gained in the fall is going back to the great  "time repository" in the sky! LOL...

.Hope you'll check out my Website regularly

Exhausted at the end of the week (Well, it almost the end of the week!)
Successfully got all the applications for show sent in, but for one that requires a cd. Digging in for a three-day bead frenzy....Victorian is where I'm heading. Off to the library to read and soak up the look of the different periods...yum!!!

The best news is that last night I had a good night's sleep, dreaming  of beads and good friends at a wonderful music festival on the great ocean road in Oz!

Picking up the jewelry that was on loan to an exhibit at the Baltimore Visitors' Center. Owned by one of my clients; gotta get it all back to her! But what a thrill to have an "exhibit" of my work!!!!


AND I'm finishing up some more "almost done" work today.

Getting ready to create kids of the "sea anemone" bracelet -- probably in the $95-100 range per kit...It'll go up on the website once I get the directions writ.
To see more and to stay in touch,  be sure to "like" thea fine, beading design on facebook and go to my website www.theafine.com....

APRIL AT SUGARLOAF..next show

FOR THOSE IN THE MARYLAND/DC/VA AREA:

I'll be in booth 107 (indoors, upstairs main building) at the Sugarloaf show at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds (Gaithersburg) April 13-15. Come visit; come buy. I'd love to see you!!!

Worth Celebrating!!

Today is "super Tuesday" according to the pundits.  They say it's the make-it-or-break-it day for the Republican presidential wanna-bes.  But I think it's super Tuesday for a very different reason, and a reason for which we all can and should celebrate.....

Can you guess what makes it a super Tuesday?

Think small, round, white surrounded by two brown bits of cookie.....YES YES YES!  100 years ago today, Oreo cookies were put on the shelves for the first time in history.  And it was in (gasp) NEW JERSEY!  Yes, my childhood home gave us more than Tony Soprano (and his real-time ilk); awful odors around Elizabeth from the refineries; and the ubiquitous NJ Turnpike. ["What exit do you live at?"] It gave us OREOs!

So, whether you're a dunker or a twist-and-lick-er, today is a day for a celebration.  Pour yourself a big glass of REAL milk and enjoy the 100th birthday of one of the best cookies on the face of the earth!!!

Can one remove the sinus cavity??

Bleugh! (with apologies to Charles Schultz an Peanuts). That epithet captures precisely how I feel today. Eyes are runny, nose is runny, throat is ....well, you get the picture.
BUT, nothing will stop me from getting on with the work I need to do.  Beading awaits. Finishing up  projects in the works--and a fix for a client.

  Once we're through with the "to do" list, we'll move on to the "oooh this will be fun to do" list....the NEW STUFF!  Stay tuned!!!

I'll stay cloistered for a few days to ensure YOU don't get what I've got....BLEUGH, indeed!

Send chicken soup!  Better yet, become a follower of my facebook page!  

http://www.facebook.com/theafinebeadingdesign

The weekend has been a whirlwind of cleaning.  The foregoing picture suggests the status of the studio when I started.

I even took the vacuum, covered the intake with pantyhose and vacuumed up the entire studio rug.  Anyone want to guess how many beads I "saved" in that pantyhose sieve?  Let me assure you, it was quite the bead soup assortment!

So, now I can BEGIN to work again....but first, I've got to do a two-day editorial activity, providing input and participating at a legislative meeting of a small behavioral health association down in Washington DC.....SIGH...two days away from the bench...NOT GOOD!

With luck, I'll be able to jump right into work when I'm done.  Judaica awaits, as do a few "finish me up" projects....I'm ready to dive in....

Wonder WHO actually wound up buying the Munch piece "The Scream" when it was on the auction block last month...Anyone know? 

It's been a productive day; cleaned the studio.  Now I can actually see a few tabletops and small bits of carpet.  Back to it tomorrow to do a stash and burn....

 The aim is to get it neat enough to get moving on the Judaica line.  I have one of the three elements in prototype already.  Above find a "kepah keeper" to hold a head scarf or skull cap on a woman.  It also is good for church, too.  This is the first; many more will follow.  Two other elements are "on the bench" (aka, somewhere under the mess on the tables!) Stay tuned.

Other bracelets are in the design stage, AND I'm researching Victorian jewelry to and designs to help me create my "homage to Downton Abbey" (and the Brontes and Jane Austin) line.  Off to the library tomorrow for inspiration......

But, tonight,  first a break to celebrate Aaron's engagement to Pamela!  My baby is going to get married!!   I'm so lucky to have two great sons; and I'll have not one but two great daughters-in-law!   Can't wait to have grandkids to teach to bead!!!