Thoughts on Beading in General

"How has expressing your creativity through beading enriched your life?"

This sounds like a question I'd be asked to answer on an application for design school as a jewelry designer, but it is an interesting thing to think about if difficult to pinpoint.

I learned to bead when I was very young from a friend of my father's and did it for a number of years and then stopped. After graduating from college I found myself in my first non-directly artistic job in the theater. I craved an artistic outlet so I started making beaded lampshades. It was a short lived return, but about three years later I decided to create some beaded Christmas ornaments as presents and rediscovered my love of beading. It was a stressful period in my life and I found that the concentration that beading took was one of the most soothing things I could do with my down time. Beading allowed me to create beautiful finished products in the short periods of free time I had.

Beading has continued to be a source of stress relief, and while I enjoy selling the occasional piece, that aspect has remained the most important to me. It continues to provide me with an artistic outlet that is entirely mine, based on the patterns and designs that are in my head. Unlike other aspects of my life, there is never a need for artistic compromise. I can choose to create anything so long as I have the patience for it. Allowing my artistic energy to funnel into my beadwork helps keep the rest of my life in balance.

Use the Muse Thoughts

The big reveal for the third Use the Muse contest is happening tomorrow and Scarlett Lanson over at The Beader's Muse is doing a number of giveaways in preparation. I'm going to take the next couple of posts to answer them starting with what my favorite part in taking part in Use the Muse is.

For me, Use the Muse is first and foremost an opportunity to experiment with new things. Therefore one of the est things about the contest is the excitement I get when I see the box with the new kit and muse in the mail. It's a chance to work with beads, colors, and materials I might otherwise have ignored in the bead store. The challenge of creating something with new materials helps push me into new styles and techniques. In both the Use the Muse contests I have participated in the focal pieces has been something I never would have considered using. This has allowed me to expand on the types of pieces and styles I create and that is my favorite part of this type of contest.

Etsy Store

At long last I've finally uploaded some things to my Etsy store. Personal website is still to come, but getting there. It's just in time for the holidays too!
Visit my store at Secret Song Designs!

Currently featuring (among others) with more to come:

A day of beading

I worked on finishing up a bunch of pieces that have been hanging around today. Most of them are pieces I'm hoping to put up on Etsy in the next week or so. I spent a good portion of the day searching for clasps that apparently have gone permanently missing in the Great Bed Bug of Event of 2009, so some of the pieces will have to wait until my new order comes in.

New piece for me

I got these cool crescent moon interlocking beads a few months ago and finally used them to make something. I paired them with some greenish teal beads surrounded by seed beads and pale green beads. I'm still trying to come up with a good name for this style. In general I'm having trouble naming jewelry designs. As I'm getting ready to think about selling things more regularly, I figure I need to address that. I think I need to come up with a particular theme and go with that. Maybe Shakespearean? Or maybe something in Hebrew.
I think the camera set up for this one turned out pretty well though and that makes me happy.

More about the muse

I've finished my muse project and am working on taking suitable pictures, but I'd like to post this detail hint. You can't see the actual muse piece, and I'll wait until the big reveal to show the whole thing, but I'm excited to have done something very different than I've done before and that my original vision worked out well.

A couple more things from my personal stock

This was made to match a lavender skirt with a pale blue pattern.

This I made to wear for my birthday a year and a half ago. There's a hair comb that matches, and it must be a lucky one because its one of the few hair combs I've made that I haven't lost the first day I wore it.