Post Hop Recovery

My Bead Soup Blog Hop post is here - go look if you haven't already been there!

 Y'all, I am on eye candy overload!  It took a week of hard, concentrated work (poor me, I know) but I finally made it through all 362 posts of the Bead Soup Blog Hop, and in the spirit of David Letterman's Top Ten, here are a few things I learned:

1) Beaders are incredibly generous.  Generous with their bead soup, generous with their creativity, generous with opinions, encouragement, and kind words.  And anyone who's looking for a home for their blog hop creation can send it on to me.  Anything I can do to help... ;-)

2) These hops are a fabulous way to meet people, find new blogs to follow, get new followers for my blog (THANK YOU!!), and generally find fellow travelers on this beady road.

3) These hops are also a great way to add to my beady bucket list - you know, all those things I want to learn to do, the techniques I want to try, the tools I must buy (don't tell my husband I'm adding to the collection), bead artists I NEED to buy from (again, don't tell my husband), etc, etc...

4) You can sit and stare at a pile of beads for weeks without a single inspiration.  Pressure to meet a deadline, however, can kick that inspiration in the butt and get you moving right quick.

5) There are a heck of a lot of talented people out there.  I mean gobsmackingly, headbangingly, jawdroppingly talented people.  I was humbled and honored to be alongside them in this hop.

6) Even if a particular piece on the hop wasn't entirely to my taste, the care and thought that went into every creation was awesome, and that never failed to blow me away.

7) Photos count.  A lot.  Nothing is more frustrating than to see a picture of something that looks fabulous except that the photo is itty bitty and dark and there's no way to enlarge it.  People, I'm getting old.  Scratch that, I'm not getting old, but my eyes are.  I need bright and big photos, kind of like a two-year-old's picture book.

8) I'm so impressed by people who can incorporate sari silks into their work without making it look like an afterthought or a bandage.  I'm pretty sure any attempt to use ribbon in my work would inspire a full on "bless her heart" from anyone who saw it.

9) If I'm going to spend countless hours staring at a computer screen, being inspired by gorgeous jewelry is a pretty damned good way to do it.  And it makes me miles happier than I am after spending hours staring at excel spreadsheets and budgets.

10) Lori Anderson is a goddess.  Need more proof?  After planning and coordinating an event that makes the Norman invasion pale in logistical comparison, she's already planning the next one.  I hope I'll be lucky enough to be one of the 200 chosen randomly to participate, but even if I'm not, I'll be there hopping around to see everyone's fabulousness (fabulosity? spectacularity?)!

Drunk on Soup

Have you been Bead Soup-ing?

Do you know what Bead Soup is?

If you do, then you know exactly what I mean. I've spent many happy hours over the past week, getting bleary eyed and incredibly inspired, enjoying the beading creativity of 210 artists. The list of blogs I'm following has exploded.

And if you don't know what I'm talking about, get thee to Lori Anderson's Pretty Things blog, http://www.lorianderson.blogspot.com/ and check it out. You'll be glad you did.

What a fabulous idea. What a great way to spend several hours, filling up on eye candy (watch me mix those food metaphors!), reading blogs, finding new artists to enjoy.

It sent me back to the bead table with a renewed sense of fun and possibility. Last night, I tackled a project that's been sitting, partially done and taunting me, for weeks.

So if you were part of the Bead Soup Blog Party, thank you for sharing your artistry, your creativity, and your sense of humor.

And look for me in August, when I hope to be swimming in the soup with everyone else!

Daily Inspiration

Most artists and crafters I've had the privilege of knowing have certain things in common. A drive to create. A sense of fun and discovery, and often, a wicked sense of humor. A wonderful smile that comes over their faces when they think of a new box of 64 Crayola crayons. A stash of unfinished projects, lurking somewhere in their house, waiting for that elusive spare time to be taken back up...

And then there's the love and appreciation of the work of other artists' work.

Eye candy. Food for the creative soul. Recharge of the inspirational battery.

Need a little jolt of your creative juices? Here's a great site I stumbled on a couple of months ago:
Daily Art Muse.

Check it out. You'll be wowed. You'll be excited. You'll be stunned. But you will never be bored. And guaranteed, you'll want to run right to your work table and make something.

Enjoy!

Exhibitionists and Eye Candy

No worries, contrary to the title of the post, this is purely innocent -- I'm just excited because I just sent off works to be included in two exhibitions this fall!

The first is "Kentucky Style: Creative Works from the Kentucky Guild of Artists and Craftsmen" at the Gateway Regional Arts Center in Mt. Sterling, KY. The other is "Window on Kentucky: Members of the Kentucky Guild of Artists and Craftsmen" at the Berea Arts Council in the center of the handcrafted art world in this neck of the woods, Berea KY. The Mt. Sterling show is 9/3 - 10/30, and the Berea show runs 9/7 - 10/30.

Read more about them here www.bereaartscouncil.org and here www.gatewayartscenter.com

Better yet, jump in your car and take a little road trip. Lots of great art in both places, and the leaves ought to have just started coloring up in their autumn glory. It'll be eye candy everywhere you look!

Serendipity

A couple of weeks ago, I was leafing through some of the books on my shelf, looking at eye candy and getting inspiration for new explorations. Leave it to Carol Wilcox Wells and her book, The Art and Elegance of Beadweaving, to spark an idea.

http://schoolofbeadwork.com/theartandeleganceofbeadweaving.aspx

The shape and proportion of the Cellini spiral caught my eye, and I decided to work with the size mix indicated in the pattern, although I wasn't going to make a bracelet. The pattern calls for three different colors of size 15s. My selection of that size is pretty limited, and since it was 10:30 at night, my access to the local bead store for a quick fix was not happening. I pulled out all of the teeny tinies in my collection, and found about seven colors to choose from.

When I found the three (graphite, moss green, and light mauve) that worked best together, it was time to search for other colors and sizes that would play nicely. The result is a color palette that's somewhat outside my norm, but I think that this time, serendipity was my friend.

Oh, and Carol, thanks for the inspirational eye candy!