Tangible Tidbits 2011 #36: Hurricane Update & Well-Deserved Down Time!

Hey, all! Well, the tree is still in the street in front of the house, but we reportedly have power back. We also no longer have to boil our water as of Friday evening. I've seen a lot of messages from friends all over the state, and it seems like most of them fared well enough, considering how hard New Jersey was hit. I read on Facebook today that some college friends from the southern portion of Central Jersey had their entire neighborhood flooded out, resulting in lots of mold and mildew everywhere. Thankfully, their friends and neighbors are all pulling together in the clean-up effort. When I told my mother about the flooding, she reminded me that things could always be worse than whatever our own problems are.

Guess what? I rode a Segway again this morning! One rental shop has four of them here in Ocean City. SO MUCH FUN! I'd much prefer to ride a Segway on the Boardwalk than a rental bike. The seats are always so uncomfortable on those bikes. :p

I made a couple of new bracelets from a kit by Linda Gettings this week. She calls them Crazy Easy Bangles. They were a little awkward for me to get started, but once I got going, they weren't too difficult...although I think "crazy easy" is a bit of a stretch for me! LOL I made two variations, and the second one is more complicated...which is, of course, why I messed it up! :p I have to undo a small section (maybe an inch-and-a-half?) are start it from scratch...I tried to salvage that part when it started to unravel due to a loose thread end, but that didn't work out very well. I also have an idea for a simpler variation to use for rings. I will try that when I get a chance. ;)

Spent a lot of this week with my family -- my nieces love playing miniature golf and swimming in the heated outdoor pool. They aren't much for the beach, but I did manage to jump a few waves yesterday. ;) All in all, Ocean City seems to have recovered quickly from Hurricane Irene. It seems that New Jersey is having a much more difficult time of it. :\

Back to the "real world" tomorrow. Luckily, it's a holiday and I won't have to report back to the office until Tuesday. :) Happy Labor Day to those in the U.S.! And I hope everyone has a great week! :)


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Tangible Tidbits 2010 #27: Monday, Monday...

Sorry I missed you all last night. I spent all day at the Innovative Beads Expo at Raritan Center in Edison, NJ taking a workshop. I learned how to embroider around a rivoli, which is a faceted crystal focal piece. Embroidering around a rivoli is tricky because they are not flat like cabochons. I finished the focal piece last night and started the chain, but I don't have any cone findings here to finish it off, unfortunately. I'll order some this week and hopefully have it posted sometime next week. ;)

My pal Meg Fillmore from Bead My Love taught the class I took yesterday -- she also taught the class I took last fall to learn how to add a beaded fringe to a scarf. She works with her mother, Moggie Moyer, and I got a 20 percent discount on anything purchased at their booth for taking the class. I also visited renowned beader Linda Gettings' table quite a bit. I met her at a Bead Society of New Jersey (BSNJ) meeting in the spring, and she's just a wonderful person! So, I bought some jewelry kits from her and got a bunch of free ones as well! :D My beading skills will be exercised and expanded by leaps and bounds in the next few months! :)

I'm hoping to attend Bead My Love's weekend retreat during the first weekend in November. It will be in Rehoboth Beach, DE and should really be a blast! :D

I spent almost ALL DAY on Friday entering data into the Bead Manager Pro software program. It seems that allocating an hour a day isn't working out so well for me. I keep putting it off because of something that is more immediately pressing. I'm probably better off just getting in the groove when I can do it and go for as long as I can before my eyes cross! LOL

We'll be updating the website again toward the end of this week. The new Focal Piece of the Month will be a gift I made a while ago for a friend whose birthday is next week. He's the coworker who passed away a couple of months ago, so I don't think he will mind me posting it before his birthday. I ended up burying it at his grave in early June, so he technically already has it anyway. I put with it a crossword Lottery scratch card, since he used to always have me cash them in for him. Every once in a while, I wonder if I buried a card worth $20,000, which is the grand prize for those cards. Considering my luck with them, it's probably not even worth the $3 I paid for it, so I'm not too concerned about it. LOL I just hope someone who works for the cemetery doesn't find it and find out for themselves how much it is worth! :o

I almost forgot to mention that I am now the #1 jewelry expert on Factoidz! :D I posted a new article last week, but it's not about jewelry-making. It does, however, have to do with part of my motivation behind the mission for this company.

http://factoidz.com/coping-with-loss-a-personal-perspective/

We had a lot of thunder here this morning, but the sun is shining now and no rain in sight. Hope it stays that way! ;)

Have a great week! :D

Tangible Tidbits 2010 #23: Happy Father's Day!

I hope everyone is enjoying their Father's Day.

Mom came with me to the Rings & Things Bead Tour in East Hanover, NJ today. Man, was she blown away! LOL She had no idea what to expect, so seeing a large hotel ballroom set up with rows and rows of tables full of bead strands and findings made her eyes pop out! :p I think she was mildly impressed that I knew what I was doing. I spent way too much money -- but I got a lot of good deals, and I even found some of the stuff that was on my Wish List at their website, so it made the trip worthwhile. ;) They will be back again in September...I'll have to make sure I get there! :D

I also made time this weekend to finally finish my first bead stitching project...the St. Petersburg Medallion piece that I started at Linda Gettings' workshop in March. I decided to undo the medallions and start over again, since my first ones were pretty sloppy. :o What started out as a bracelet turned into a necklace because I had seven medallions and attached them to each other across the top, then realized the bracelet would be too large. So, I used the piece I created as the center of a necklace and sewed a St. Petersburg chain onto each end to finish it. I'm pretty pleased with the result, although I apparently took an unorthodox approach to the project. Apparently, people usually pick one base color and one accent color and use that pattern throughout the piece. In my "dare to be different" mentality, I mixed and matched the combinations, choosing a different pair in each medallion. I also alternated back and forth between the two colors in the attached chain, so I think it balances well. :)

This past week, I had a minor coup when Factoidz accepted my first submitted article! I adapted the Focal Piece of the Month on cuttlebone casting and submitted it as a how-to article. It's gotten a lot of positive feedback and I am now ranked the #3 expert in jewelry-making on Factoidz! LOL I haven't even been doing this for a year and I'm already an expert. Only in America, folks! ;) In case you missed the article, you can find it here: Cuttlebone Casting: A Technique for Jewelry and Sculptures.

I'm making headway on the administrative projects I mentioned last week. Breaking down overwhelming tasks into manageable chunks of time definitely takes the stress out of them for me. :)

We're due for website updates later this week, so keep an eye out for a new Focal Piece of the Month. We'll all be surprised, since I haven't decided what it is yet! LOL

Next week, I will be writing from Ocean City, Maryland via my new Acer Notebook. My family goes there during the last week of June every year, and we're leaving on Saturday morning. :)

Have a good week, everyone!

Tangible Tidbits 2010 #14: Busy, busy, busy!

Hey, everyone! I went to an all-day workshop yesterday taught by Linda Gettings and presented by the Bead Society of New Jersey (BSNJ). She's pretty well known in beading circles...her work is published pretty regularly in magazines. I learned how to make St. Petersburg medallions. My background is mostly in wire work, so I'm not familiar with the basic beading stitches like Peyote and St. Petersburg chain. I thought it would be good to get started with this one, since the opportunity presented itself. I still have to finish my bracelet, but you'll see it once I've finished it. Apparently, my brain doesn't work like other people's (not a big surprise to those who know me well! LOL). I made a number of "artistic" choices that Linda herself had never considered! It's nice to know that I can inspire people who have much more experience than I do. :)

Looks like we've FINALLY got the Facebook application up and running again! Many thanks to Jesús J. Ortega Weffe and Omar TheOne for posting instructions on the "My app is not working" thread at the Gift Creator forum! :D

I have three more weeks of classes at MSU, so I'll be under the gun to get my projects finished for the final critique. My cuttlebone casting piece is finished, but the rest are in various stages of "almost there." And I still have to make a container from scratch! :p

Fire Mountain Gems and Beads has a jewelry-making contest for designs featuring gemstones with a May 3 deadline. I've had this on my To Do list for a while, but I didn't realize the deadline was coming up so soon! I hope I can carve out some time to work on a piece for that. I haven't really figured out what I want to do yet... :0

We're scheduled for website updates this week. I didn't bother to change the Focal Piece of the Month in March, since it went up so late due to technical difficulties. Look for a new one by the end of the week...I hope! ;)

Have a great week!

Tangible Tidbits 2010 #13: I Used My Muse!

Hey, all! Tomorrow is the deadline for Artbeads.com's Use The Muse IV contest, so I spent most of today making my piece for it. I decided a while ago what I wanted to do, but I just never got around to it. This morning, I realized today was my last shot if I wanted to enter...and since I paid $40 for the kit, I figured I'd better get my butt in gear and do it! :p

I can't post a photo of my piece until "the big reveal" of the Muse on Artbeads.com in a few weeks, as the muse is supposed to be kept secret. It's a cuff bracelet, but a bit different than what you've seen me do before. The kit contained walnut wood components, Swarovski(R) crystals, Hybrid TOHO™ and other seed beads, brown Tiger's Eye, and blue turquoise Picasso Czech glass roundelle beads, plus I mixed gold-colored aluminum wire with bronze wire and added my own Lava Stone, some faded rose/gold square seed beads, and some large faceted round AB finish black beads. It all came together quite nicely, if I do say so myself! ;)

Aside from that, I've got one school project basically done and two others pretty close to completion. You'll be seeing a sterling silver pendant made from a cuttlebone cast very soon. I just have to decide what to hang it on and find the right bail for it. The silver that leaked out of the bottom of the cast and fused itself to some stones in the pan below will become a pin. It looks pretty kewl...I just have to figure out how to affix a back to it. And I have a brass bangle bracelet that needs some finishing touches added to it. I haven't decided just what they are yet, so that's still "in progress." Two other pendants will be done, hopefully, during next week's class. They have to be cleaned up and have stones set in them. One will have the stone set in a gear steampunk-style. The other will be set in a bezel cup made by me. As I am not such a master with the torch and solder, it's a challenge. :p The last project I am required to complete is to make a container. I've decided to make a brass box with steampunk gears, watch faces, and keys affixed to the outside with rivets. I ordered some watch faces and antique keys from eBay today. :)

Still working on earrings for a coworker and I have a couple of bracelets to do. I've ordered a few DVDs to help me advance my wire-working skills over the summer. In particular, I want to learn wire-wrapping stones, as I have a couple of stones (well, rocks, really!) here a friend sent to me months ago and I've been trying to figure out what to do with them. She said she wasn't in a hurry, but I think I should probably get them back to her before the seasons change again! LOL

BSNJ has its monthly meeting on Thursday and I'm attending an all-day workshop with Linda Gettings on Saturday. I'll be learning how to make a St. Petersburg chain as a circular medallion. I believe there's sewing and seed beads involved. :o LOL

Enjoy the spring weather! I know I am! :D