Hearts & Hands

I want to Thank Everyone who contributed to honoring the memory of Hannah Congdon & the 5 "angels" who tragically lost their lives in a terrible car accident 2 years ago by purchasing a specially priced Hannah Heart from me this month! I've roughly sold 40 hearts making my donation to Joining Hearts and Hands a whopping $800.00!! Well, at this moment, I'm just 4 hearts shy of that figure but I know that I'll make it.

This sounds mushy but we only have one life to live and part of having a good life, I believe, is giving and helping others. Simple words but hard to life up to. Its not always easy to be helpful, kind and giving. Sometimes challenging people are put in front of you. But underneath all our issues, I really do believe in the goodness of people.

Next year has a big benchmark to meet! Hope you will be part of my annual month of giving next June :)

Whack Your Head Monday

Last Monday the Whack Your Head card I picked was Rearrange. I'm not sure I lived up to all this card means but I continue to pondered this card and consider how to utilize it. I can say that the focus of my work has been rearranged this month by my focusing on giving. Normally at this time I'm working hard designing new things for my upcoming shows but for the month of June my attention has been on making hearts to support an organization that is very important to me. I frequently donate work to causes but this time I'm much more intentional & have put giving the spot of prime importance. I think this is Rearranging. Do you?

The next card to think about is Believe in Yourself. Also known as, You are what you think you are. A positive attitude and a level of self confidence goes a long way. The question the card asks at the end, is How are you Creative? Lets think about this one for a week :)

Bead of the Week

So, last Saturday I selected Rubino Oro for my Bead of the Week prompt and I did in fact spend a bit of time playing around with this color. I've used Rubino Oro before but I guess it just hasn't sparked anything in me for awhile. To rekindle my interest in this color I purchased Sarah Horniks e-book, Think Pink. Sarah creates beautiful beads and uses this color with great ease in her work. I'm not so sure I learned something I didn't already know about this color but her work and her color combinations were inspiring.

Pictured above are samples of twisted cane I made using Rubino Oro. The pink that was created ranged from a rich raspberry to an eye popping fucshia.

Since I am currently raising money for Hannah's Hope, I decided to put my Bead of the Week color to work for me. Pictured below are a few of the hearts I made using another forgotten technique of raking colors with a pick to make the lines of color move either upward or down....



Well, thats just a little of what I've been up to this week using Rubino Oro. I hope you've given it a try too. If you have anything to show, please let me know & I'd be happy to post it here or provide a link..If you haven't already, I would recommend purchasing Sarah's e-book too. Its filled with great examples and gives well written descriptions.

My next Bead of the Week is Copper Green. I have loads of this color too. A few years ago I was wild about this copper green but then I was once again attracted to brighter things. It was a one time only thing but I actually got it to go copper for me....yes, I did!! Sad to say that hasn't happened again and I don't quite know what I did to achieve this!

Happy Beading! Use some Copper Green this week too!

A Whack on the Head: Rearrange

#23 Rearranging is one of nature's prime methods of creation. The moving plates of the earth's crust form new land masses and surface features. The shuffling of the DNA genetic deck through sex produces new life forms. Similarly, rearranging your resources can create new ideas. Try putting your ending in the middle, or the center on the top, or the inside on the outside, or the left on the right. How can you rearrange things?

Over the next 64 Mondays I'll be pulling a new card from the Creative Whack Pack to help stimulate my thinking....maybe yours too. These cards were produced by Roger von Oech, a leader in stimulating creative thinking, and really make you ponder. Like this one, what does Rearrange mean? How can I use this on my creative path? I'll be thinking....let me know if you come up with something.

Here Comes the Bride

A co-worker is getting married this July and I wanted to make her something special. She is new to our building and I'm not sure of her taste so I felt that a piece of jewelry was not quite right. So I made this cute wedding cake pendant which stands about 2 inches tall. Its not pictured here but I included a silver charm stamped with her wedding date. I love it and I hope she will too.

Saturday Bead of the Week Prompt: Rubino Oro

Over the next few weeks I hope to bring about a bit of a change to my blog. I asked for your help and a bunch of you were nice enough to answer my poll and leave me with your thoughts. I've taken this all to heart and hope to bring you a blog you will visit and respond to frequently.

Creativity and Inspiration were a big topic of interest to all who participated in my poll. Artists of all types need to keep things fresh for themselves so their muse remains happy. In an effort to keep my muse, and hopefully yours too, awake and perky, each Saturday I'll post my "Bead of the Week Prompt". This could be a color I've selected, a new to me technque, a tool...you get the idea right? This will be my focus at the torch thru out the week until the next Saturday when I come up with a new prompt and share my results.

My first Bead of the Week prompt is Rubino Oro. I happen to have a bunch of this sitting around and need to do something with it. Check in next Saturday to see my results.

Circus, circus beads

These are the next phase of my plumb bob beads. They look like long sticks of stripped color. Not a plumb bob look anymore...more like a circus theme bead. We'll see what they end up becoming part of.

How'd you come up with that?

Speaking of "how'd I come up with that?"....here is a short tale of the crazy thing called inspirtion. Its not necessarily whats right in front of you at the moment but what is remembered. I made this bunch of beads to use for a bracelet. A few years back, in a magazine there was this tutorial on making what I remember being called a cacoon bead. At the time, I made a few as instructed but wasn't particularly inspired to do anything with them. The technique of how to stack the colors and how to keep them looking like neat bands was what stayed with me. Thinking back on that article and coming across a strange tomatoe mashing tool I purchased at a house sale, I created the beads pictured above. I refer to them as plumb bob beads. The name I've given them has nothing to do with either sources of inspiration, I know, but that was what they reminded me of. I took the cacoon idea of stacking colors to create a bulbus bead but did it small instead of large like the article and I added other decoration.

I usually keep all my bead magazines so I'll try and see if I can come up with that article so I can give you a comparison but I can't promise I'll find it. After making the beads pictured here, I then did something a little different. I'll show those tomorrow.