Just a bit...........

.........of a run of test beads for a customer before we leave for the Holiday.  We are headed out to spend Christmas with my son.  Yeah! Only problem is I am sick, really, really, sick.  I went to the Dr. Wednesday and she said I just needed some antibiotics and I swear they made it all much worse.  Before I had a sore throat but now I have a head cold from the devils pit.  Any way onward I have lots left to do before we drive.

New Beads

 New beads are tagged and priced and ready for my spring shows.  Believe it or not my first show for 2013 is in just 2 months.  I love these red ones with the black metallic glass it does some really neat stuff that looks like Racu Pottery to me. 

And I always love etched beads until it comes to trying to photograph them.  There is nothing that I can find that makes them look as soft and pretty as they are in person. 

Work table...........

...............Saturday.  I have to say that there was nothing much on my work table all week but I have been working.  Making lots of beads.  I have to get this pile tied into sets and packaged for kits.  There is a bunch still wet because there was no place to dump them out on the towel yesterday. 

It has turned very nasty here. We had our first real snow for the winter last weekend and this weekend it seems to be raining ice.  Such lovely weather. 

Journal Update

 This is just a little update on my Art Journaling adventure.  I realized the reason I am having so much fun with this the past couple of weeks is because it is just messy creative play.  Making beads right now (kit beads mean allot of the same beads over and over) is frankly a little boring.  Yet they must be made.  I have always loved playing with paint and mixed media and the last few years have not made time for it.  I am just having a grand time and I have even been doodling boldly with a permanent marker, no pencil!  All that's left on the pages above it to journal in my list of goals for the next year.

 This is going to be an ongoing set of pages.  The little round bubbles have the books I have read and the date in them and so I will be adding more.  I actually finished 5 books last month, which is not really a lot, I just haven't been making time for reading either.  Now if  I could just stay off the computer I would get so much more done.

 I got the cover to my junk inspiration journal finished.......

........and I used the credit card scraping method of moving paint around that I saw on many YouTube video's to start the backgrounds on a few pages.

Color Ideas

I have been working allot on beads for kits.  That means lots of the same kind of beads which can get very boring, at the same time coming up with new color combinations is fun for me.  I can usually grab a few rods and be happy with the combination.  Sometimes I make up a sample bead or two the day before making a set just to see how the colors behave with one another.  Every once in a while I get stumped.  I keep the book "The Beader's Color Palette by Margie Deeb in my studio so I can page through it when that happens.

 Recently though I was somewhere on the Internet and started noticing pictures that had color swatches beside them.  That really intrigued me and I went hunting for a way to do this with my photos.  What I found was that Sherwin-Williams has this fantastic tool called Chip It! You can get the paint colors and then print out your photo.  What fun to break down the colors.
The above photo is of a building near the Space Needle in Seattle.  I loved the way the mirrored surface of the building seemed to change from pink to blue.

This photo is kind of dull and I was surprised how well that the tool pulled out colors.  I just love the mountain on the horizon though.

If all else fails though I can always go back and work for a while in one of my favorite combos. Red and Black.  These are a couple of great big lentils that I finished up the other day using some fun black metallic glass.

Work Table Wednesday

 I have to tell you that my table has gotten a little messy again.  I am still trying to organize my stuff, one so I can find it, but more importantly so I can put it away.  It was so nice when I wanted peanut beads to know right were they were, even though I now have two boxes of shaped seed beads. 

I made these two little necklaces to show off my new leaf sets.  I also got a kiln full of beads made so it was a pretty productive day.