Tins

This is the current tin at work, with the project from previous post in it. I like using tins for my beading. I love to pick up the bead, and have the smooth metal surface under my needle to help me. I started beading using plastic or plastic-ish beading trays, and that just doesn't work for me. When I read in a beading magazine about people using a ceramic watercolor dish, I had to get one. The dish has no lid, so you have to keep in something like a gun case. My beading store, hip to the magazine, started carrying the ceramic dish and the gun case. Yes, I own a gun case, and yes it bugs me. But a tin like this one is so perfect for a project. The whole project can fit inside, though I keep my scissors in a separate container. I have probably 15-20 tins, in many different sizes and shapes, most with projects partly finished inside. This tin is one of my favorites. I look for appropriate tins anywhere I go, but especially thrift stores and garage sales. This one came to me in the sale isle right after Valentine's Day one year, complete with candy, for about a buck. Can't beat that!

Current Project at Work

Like many folks, I get two 15 minute breaks at work. When I started this position just over a year ago, I decided to make a new habit, and use my breaks for arts-n-crafts. Beading works well, since it can be so portable, and easy to do a little at a time. The Marti Gras bag from the previous post, was designed and made completely from my breaks at work, I never worked on it at home. A couple other gourd (peyote) stitch projects have been started at work, but now I have switched to a bead weaving project I started many years ago. The base is a soft cloth teardrop shape, I think it's going to be a switch-pull (like for a celing fan) or a window decoration. Click the picture to see it bigger.

Marti Gras Fringe

Along with the Marti Gras bag, I want to show you a little technique I use. When I'm deciding what kind of fringe to put on a bead-woven kind of project, I make several 'test' fringes, in the different styles I would consider. I do this on a small strip of plastic needlepoint canvas, one big sheet costs less than a dollar, and I can cut plenty little strips (plus, there are a few beading projects I might use the rest in). When I have a few ideas there in string and glass, I can compare them easily, and hold them up to the project to see what works best. If I have enough beads that I can spare the fringe strip, I save it. I'll have to find the 3-5 that I still have and take a picture of them all together.

Marti Gras Amulet Bag

I've made a few amulet bag necklaces with the gourd (peyote) stitch, beading of all sorts is probably my favorite 'craft' to design and do. This one I started relatively soon after hurricane Katrina, after I heard there was a relief effort in the form of fund raising being done by a group called Crafters United, selling their things on Etsy. I designed the bag using Marti Gras colors to celebrate what the hurricane had taken away.
I'm embarrassed to say that due to several reasons, I did not get the bag submitted to the group before they stopped taking donations. I guess partly I thought they wouldn't have an end date to the donations, but of course, they had to.
Anyway, I'm left with something I made specifically to be donated, and I didn't want to keep it myself, or give it, or sell it. Then came the time for my church's silent auction. Perfect. Donating something I made to raise money for a good cause. And I've always wanted to make something to sell at our church auction, so I've met that goal, too. I'm working on designs for next year's auction.

Computer Art: Tree

I purchased a Wacom graphic pad a few years back (so far back, that their website doesn't show my ruby colored one, it's already outdated). I experimented a lot with the different 'mediums' the first year I had it, and did a series of 'chalk' on 'colored paper' including this tree. I haven't done much with the pad the last year or so, I need to get the computer it's connected to ready to roll.

Door Project Final

Door Project Part 3

Deciding who I was making the door for, and coming up with the quote happened simultaniously. I remembered there was a good quote I had heard about opening doors, so I looked that up and came up with this one:
"When you follow your bliss, doors will open where you would not have thought there would be doors, and where there wouldn't be a door for anyone else." --Joesph Campbell

Door Project Part 2

The shadow box without the door. Still waiting to be finished.

Door Project Part 1

First Project to show on this show-and-tell blog, is a door wall hanging I made for my friend J.
I purchased this shadow box thing a long time ago, with the intention of painting it, I think to hang in the bathroom. When I got around finally to painting it, I decided I didn't want the little swinging door, so I cut off the little dowels that were holding it into place.
When I first cut it off, I just thought I was fixing the shadow box, but I realized it looked like an actual door, and that gave me an idea...