The Bead Spot

I love my mom’s beadwork. She has never said whether she ever beaded when she was a child, and oddly enough, it never occurred to me to ask until right now as I’m writing this. All I know for certain is that she began beading in earnest about 20 years ago. Back then, three of my four siblings and I had left home, and the youngest, my baby sister, was in high school. Suddenly, Mom had time for pursuing crafty hobbies. She began the way many people do, working from patterns in books she bought at Hobby Lobby and other craft shops. She started with earrings, the dangling kind that you often see in Native American patterns, and gradually branched out into making barrettes, dream catchers and headdresses. And at some point, she began creating her own patterns, and that’s when she really began to wow me. Everything she makes is in the Native American style (we’re Cherokee, my mom is full and I am half) even if she doesn’t use the traditional colors. Recently as I was looking at som...

Deep down, I knew my plan for the silver tube beads was iffy. Once I got all of the pieces for the bracelet I was planning to make — rectangles of beads linked together with the tube beads — I started putting them together, only to see the ratio of beads to tubes was way off. Smaller tubes would’ve worked much, much better. So I started going through some of my stash to see if I had anything that could work in place of the silver tubes. I found short black twisted tube beads I haven’t used in years, and they looked like my best option. Here’s what I wound up with: And that was just the beginning of the issues I had. For some reason, on two of the rectangular pieces, I skipped one silver bead in a corner, and by the time I noticed, I had already cut the thread and tied off the end. So I remade them, only to do the same thing again. I thought I could knock this thing out in about six hours, but instead it took me three days. I told my older sister about what a headache it wa...

In the interest of saving beads, I go through phases in which I deconstruct some of my beadwork.  That's what I’m in the middle of right now. I'd like to turn a few of these bracelets: into three-row (or more) daisy-chain bracelets I've seen in one of my bead books but have never tried. I like the way they look in the book, but I don't have enough of the beads I want to use without taking apart the single daisy chains. So I deconstruct, starting with the blue and white one. I still have a few "daisies" to demolish before I can start putting it back together again, but I'm eager to get going. Do you ever deconstruct your beadwork? Tell me about it in the comments section.

I had big plans to make heart-shaped jewelry to list on my Etsy shop for Valentine’s Day. Now the holiday is only three weeks away, and I have yet to map out a pattern or even to decide if I want to make a bracelet or earrings or a necklace. Instead of taking time on my days off from work to make progress, I’ve been basking in the downtime, and now I kind of regret that. Here’s hoping that the rest of this week is productive enough that I’ll have something to list by Sunday. If not, I might as well just focus on creating something for the next holiday: St. Patrick’s Day. *** Thank you for stopping by. Though I've had a craft-less week, my 6-year-old hasn't. My most recent post on another blog I manage, "Shrinking Carbon Footprint," talks about how my daughter makes crafts of "trash." Find it here .

Screen grab from a Facebook group for seed bead fans. I recently joined a couple of beadwork-related Facebook groups. I love seeing what people make in my feed mixed in along with posts about which of my high school classmates recently became a grandparent. I don't know why it didn't occur to me to look for some FB beading connections sooner. The best part is that I can get feedback fairly quickly. If I'm working on a project and cannot decide between two shades of green, I can post a photo of what I have so far and the two colors, ask for other group members to weigh in, and within a couple of hours, I'll have enough responses to feel like I'm making the best choice. But there is a small downside: Most of the people in the group, I feel, are much more skilled designers than I am, and I cannot help but feel like an amateur compared to them. But I also feel like they inspire me.

Six or seven years ago, my mom, who does beadwork, too, commented that the size 11 Delica seed beads I like to use were way too small for her to see. She works mostly in seed beads, too, but she sticks with size 10s as much as possible. It made no sense to me that one size would make that big of a difference. But now I get it. The last time I did a marathon of seed beading, I realized that I couldn't see the beads well enough to work if I had my glasses on. It seems my distance vision has gotten bad enough that my glasses are too strong to see tiny items (such as words on a page or seed beads in an earring) very well at all. Because I like to watch TV while I do beadwork, I chose shows that I could mostly listen to. I wore my glasses, but pushed them up on top of my head while I stitched beads together, then dropped them back down on my nose if I thought I needed to watch something on the TV screen. I hope my vision doesn't get much worse than it is now, but I'm ...

Last weekend, my husband, daughter and I visited a fall festival we had never been to before. We went there not expecting much, but left pleasantly surprised — and $50 or so poorer since we spent money we didn't plan on spending at arts-and-crafts vendor tables. The first thing that caught my eye was a deerskin amulet bag, which I really wanted but it cost more than I could pay (It was worth its price tag, though, just out of my price range). The same vendor also had beaded barrettes, which I've never bothered to make because, in my hair and my daughter's hair at least, barrettes tend to pop out easily. My daughter spotted a pair of pink ones with a feather pattern that she really liked. She likes all things pink. Since they were only $5 for the set, I bought them for her despite my reservations about how well they'd hold. Unlike other barrettes though, these were snug and didn't pop out. They stayed in her hair for the rest of the day. I think it has to do...

I often over estimate how fast I can complete a project ... by a lot. This year, I had plans to make earrings featuring witches and ghosts, too, but by the time I got my pumpkin pattern squared away for Halloween, I had enough spare time to make a couple of pairs of those. I didn't have the time to sketch out a pattern for anything else. I mentioned to my husband that the witch and ghost were on my wish list, so when I was busy with other things, he sat down with some graph paper and chipped in by sketching out a bead pattern for a witch hat and a ghost. Here’s what he drew: Pretty cute, huh? I love them, and while I don’t think I’ll use these patterns exactly, he did give me a starting point for next year. Happy Halloween, everyone! We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Top pumpkin is how I'd sketched it; the bottom one is the first one I made with the increase not where I initially planned for it to be. How much experimenting do you do when you bead? I ask because I generally don't like to do much. I want to know when I start a project what each stitch will be. If I accidentally stray from the original plan, aka make an error, I take out stitches and fix it. And when that's done, I move on to another project. Or that's what I typically do. This past week, armed with a twice-redrawn pattern for pumpkin earrings , I sat down to string it up in square stitch, a method that I haven't used much. In row three, I made an error as I was trying to do an increase, making the increase closer to the edge than I had sketched it to be. In the past, I would've backed up to where I had made the mistake and fixed it, but this time, I was curious about how it would look. Maybe my "mistake" would turn out to be be...

Black beads ... check. Orange beads ... check. Plethora of projects for Halloween ... eh, I'm working on it. I'd like to make some earrings in the shapes of jack-o-lanterns, witches, and black cats, but I've never made any of those in earring form before. Hopefully, they'll turn out good. I ordered a few tubes of orange beads from Fire Mountain Gems last week, and already got them in the mail Tuesday. I planned to dive right into beading and make the jack-o-lantern earrings first, but my plans for Tuesday went sideways when my sister asked me to take her to the doctor after her blood pressure spiked into a dangerous range (she's doing well now, thankfully).  So now, all I have on my after-work agenda for Wednesday is making the jack-o-lantern earrings. Hopefully, I'm hard at work making the first set as you read this.

Ten years ago, I took an introductory drawing class with the idea of being able to use the skills later at my job, which called for me to occasionally create a graphic or illustration. I really enjoyed the class, and I learned a lot about creating depth and perspective with shadows. I did some drawing in the months that followed, but eventually, my drawing journal wound up in a drawer amid my craft supplies, and there it's sat for the past eight or nine years. Until this past weekend, that is. An itch to draw again has been following me around over the past few months. I'll see a lamp post or desk or flowers in a vase, and think, "How would I draw that? What would I need to do to show the light? How could I show the reflection on the side?" etc. So on Saturday, I took out my journal, grabbed a charcoal pencil, and attempted to draw my daughter from a photo. I learned two things as I sketched: (1) At the time I drew the stuff that was already in my journal, I...

Time management and crafts (Image by Gratisography/Ryan McGuire/ FreeRangeStock.com )  Do bad time management practices negatively affect your crafts hobby? It does mine. For instance, this week, I took a few days off work to burn some use-it-or-lose-it paid time off I've accrued at work. My plan for those days was to finally cross off a whole lot of tasks that have long been on my to-do list before I begin another crafts project. Here is the list of what I didn't get done: Clear clothes that don't fit out of my daughter's closet. Get rid of toys she hasn't played with in a long time. Gather up the clothes that don't fit me. Take all of that in to a resale shop. Finally finish organizing my crafts supplies. I did manage to get some important things done, and some not-so-important things, during my few days off. But, everything above that didn't get done makes me feel like my house is cluttered, and that makes it hard for me to tackle so...

Seed bead bracelet in progress Lately, I've had a lot of job stress that's made me wish more and more that I had the courage to throw caution to the wind, turn in my notice, and turn my crafts into a business. Here are the biggest reasons why I love making crafts: Reason 1: It's calming ... Eventually When I am in the "what am I going to make phase?" my stress level goes up as I struggle to think of something new to try or to create a new pattern for an old project. But once I know what I'm making and can settle in and work on it, I feel a calmness I don't normally feel during waking hours. It's a peaceful, relaxing way to spend an hour or two ... Eventually. Reason 2: Completing a project feels good Recently, my grandma asked me to make earrings for a woman at her doctor's office. The woman had requested some, knowing that my grandma knows a few people who make authentic Native American jewelry, but she wasn't specific beyo...

A heart my daughter made for Father's Day. Yesterday, with less than five hours left until Father's Day, my 4-year-old whispered in my ear that she wanted to make a heart out of clay for her daddy and cover it with glitter. We had none of the supplies at home, but, because the idea was hers entirely, I wanted her to be able to make it. We headed off to Hobby Lobby for clay and glitter, making our way to the checkout just as the store closed. When we got home, I settled in to balance my checkbook, while she molded the heart. Every so often, she'd call out, "Mommy, come look!" to show me how it progressed. I'll be honest, it looked a little rough, but she's just 4, and she was proud and so was I. She made the bulk of the heart out of pink clay, adding three purple clay hearts on top. She used up the bulk of the pink clay for the project, I had a feeling that using that much clay would prevent the heart from drying in time, but she was so proud of...

Now that I'm a mother , I find myself enjoying Halloween more than I ever did as a child. Case in point: Halloween 2015 was less than a week past when I began wondering what my daughter will wear next year. On a trip to Walmart, I sought out the Halloween leftovers and sifted through the costumes hoping to get an awesome costume — one that normally costs out of my price range — at half off. But I know two things about my daughter that made looking through those costumes a waste of time: She has growth spurts every few months. I could buy the next size up, but by next Halloween, she might be two sizes taller — or three even. (She's very tall for her age.) Her tastes come and go quickly. In the week since Halloween, she's already told me that next year she wants to be Wonder Woman, then changed her mind and said, "I think I want to be Sofia the First. " Once I realized the perfect 2016 costume wasn't on the rack, I got ambitious. Despite knowing l...

I had no idea so much time had passed since the last time I blogged here. But then, it's been at least August since I've tackled any beading projects, so it's not like I've much to say. Back in August, I made some feather earrings like the ones I made last year, and I started bracelet that ultimately, I unraveled because I had messed up in the middle. I thought I was able to mask it, but once it was complete, I realized I didn't do as well as I had thought. That's about it in a nutshell. My hope, though, is to get back regular beadwork and blog posts.

Happy New Year's Eve! It's been years since I've made resolutions, because without fail, I will break at least one of them before the first day is up. But I've decided to make one this year: To learn to sew. There are lots of things I'd like to be able to make: clothes for my daughter, dolls, quilts. But I have yet to even fire up the sewing machine my mom gave me back in July. So I'm making a resolution this year to relearn how to sew and read patterns. My first project will be a bag my sister-in-law* gave me for my birthday. She also recommended Tilly and the Buttons as a great resource for learning. What craft-related resolutions do you have for this year? *My sister-in-law sews and knits everything from quilts to toys. Her website is Knottygnome.com .

I recently received the sewing machine my mom told me I could have. We still have to attach it to the cabinet, but for the most part, it's just waiting for me to relearn how to use it. My sister-in-law suggested I visit  Tilly and the Buttons to learn. The site, as she said, is very thorough, right down to telling me how to set up the machine. I have plans to make clothes for my daughter as well as tear dresses and dolls, but I know I got to start smaller. Maybe by this time next year, I'll be a pro.

I took home economics* in ninth grade, and for one of our projects, we made shirts. Mine was blue with short sleeves. It didn't turn out too bad. Back then, I wasn't all that interested in hand-making anything, though, so I have not sewn anything (except for mending the occasional errant button) since then. Now, though, I'd like to learn again. My mom is giving me one of her machines, and I can't wait to give it a whirl. Can anyone recommend a good book for learning to sew on a machine? I need to know it all: How to load the bobbin, how to cut a pattern, how to read a pattern sheet, etc. Thanks for any suggestions. *When I was in high school, it was still called home economics, or home ec for short. Younger readers might be more familiar with the name "family and consumer sciences."

Before my daughter was born, I used to set up a tray table in front in front of the couch and work on my beads. For nearly a year after she came along, I was able to continue to bead this way. But when she became mobile, that became harder and harder to do. She would walk up, shake the table and scatter beads everywhere.  So I put the tray table away. Finding time to work on projects has been quite a challenge over the past year or so. But now I think she's old enough -- at age 2 -- to learn to occupy herself within my eyesight while I get some work done. The take tray table is coming back out, and hopefully she'll let me work. Here's hoping.