Chanukah bracelet

I was looking through my photo albums and it appears I didn’t post some of my earlier projects. This is a Chanukah bracelet I made for a young lady that lives down the street from me.  It is a simple daisy chain with blue (dyed) fresh water pearls and a menorah charm.

Sometimes simple is just the way to go!

Jewelry Storage Idea

I have ADHD.  At least my Dr thinks I might, but he won’t write me a prescription until I bring up my pregnenolone levels. He’s never seen a level as low as mine before and apparently the symptoms can also mimic ADD. I suppose you’re wondering what in the world that has to do with beading aren’t you? Well, two things.

One, it’s my quick explanation for where I’ve been and what I haven’t been up to.  My inability to focus and remember things has turned beading in to an extremely frustrating hobby. Add to that that the projects I’ve been working on are all tedious seed bead projects and it becomes nothing more than an exercise in frustration.

Two: I’ve been reading some great books on ADHD, the Edison Gene and even more importantly…organization for the attention deficit. I have a long ongoing love affair with a “lack of attention to detail” and “out of sight, out of mind”.  It’s why they aren’t ruling out ADHD even though my pregnenolone levels are low. I have all this super cute jewelry that I’ve made and I hardly ever wear it because I can’t ever find it, or worse, I forget that I even have it.

I love to make earrings because they tend to be quick projects and these days my necklaces are all yanked on by a cuddly, overly curious toddler that wants me to know just how pretty and irresistible my necklaces are.  Earrings are wearable for me at the moment. It’s great but my earring tree can’t hold them all. As my  organizational book was quick to point out, if I can’t see it I may as well not own it. So, for about twenty dollars, Marathon man installed a new, low tech, highly visible jewelry storage solution.

The down side is that I can’t hang my post earrings on it so those are all on my jewelry tree.  So here it is, my low budget jewelry box.

Budget Jewelry storage

Classy eh?  I originally dragged my kids down to the Container Store looking for ways to store my son’s extensive collection of legos.

Earring storage

Once I saw this earring holder I was sold. I brought it home, put all of my earrings on it and set it on top of my dresser.   It folds up accordion style so that you can tuck it in to a drawer  or it can stand on it’s own. The floor in front of our dresser is a bit springy and every time we walked past it, all the earrings would jingle and it drove Marathon man absolutely nuts. Moving it to the wall was a means of silencing the little bugger.  (the earring rack, not the man.. but it did work for both).

It was a genius idea. All of my dangly, french wire earrings are just sitting on the grooves.   The whole thing is now conveniently located right next to my bathroom sink.  Now, when I’m brushing my teeth I can peruse my collection and grab what I want to wear. At night, it takes all of fifteen seconds to hang them back up. The best part is that it makes it almost impossible for me to forget where I’ve set them. Whoo hoo!

Which brings me to the rest of it.  I went down to Fred Meyers and for $4 a piece I bought two little cafe curtain rods. One for bracelets, and one for necklaces.  Now (almost) everything is where I can find it.  A few pieces don’t hang well (such as my Waves of Pearls Necklace). So those are stored either on a form or in my mostly empty jewelry box.  However, I’m loving my new system. I’m wearing more of my pieces, and I’m getting compliments on them which makes me feel good… and it makes me want to bead again.

I’m taking some great products to help kick start my brain and I’m already feeling much better. So hopefully I’ll be back soon with some new projects.  I’m also super excited to share with you that Marathon Man bought me three new Japanese Beading books last night. One is filled with patterns for little girls.  I can’t wait for them to get here, which I’m guessing should be in about two weeks!.

In the mean time, I’m going to try to do some repairs and finish that Melanie Potter project that has been driving me nuts!

Penelope

Beader’s Block

I believe I might have the beader’s equivalent of Writer’s Block. I have a kit that I’ve been working on for quite a few months now.  I use the term “working on” very loosely.  It’s pretty much been sitting on my desk taunting me. I hate it when that happens. I feel like I’ve completely lost my motivation to finish it. It went something like this…

I finished the first earring and it didn’t look quite right.  I made the second earring and discovered that I didn’t follow the directions carefully for the stamen of the flowers. No worries!! I’ll just make the earring again. Then I discovered that I used the wrong beads, so  four of the six petals on my earring were the wrong color. Sigh, no worries… I’ll just make the earring again. Half way through, I broke the thread. I finally finished them (Yeah!!) and  I think I’ve worn them once. (I’ll take pictures when I find my camera)

The center piece of the necklace is a more ornate version of the earrings. After finishing the earrings I decided I couldn’t make another flower right away, which was really, really stupid on my part. The pattern was fresh in my head and it would have gone much, much faster. Now that it has been a while, I am going to have to go through the pattern again line by line.  Instead I decided that I was going to get started on the chain portion of the necklace, but The baby was not at all cooperative. It was difficult to get in the groove when I only had twenty minutes at a time to work on it.

This has left me in what I feel is a bit of a beading quagmire.  I think that the pattern is very pretty. It makes me happy to look at the project and I know I’ll feel a great sense of accomplishment once I’ve finished. However, I’m very bored with the repetitiveness of the project, especially when it is doubtful that I’d ever actually wear the piece. I’m most of the way done, I’ve got money invested in the kit and I’ll feel like I’m pissing away money if I don’t finish it. (I also worry that I’ll get grief if I order more kits if I don’t finish this one)

I want to bead something new. Christmas is a coming and I’d like to work on some ornaments. I’d rather not bead than work on this particular project at the moment but if I take it off my bead board and work on something else it is unlikely that I will ever get it back out and finish it.

What’s a girl to do???????

Blooming Hearts

The beads for this were from a pattern I picked up in a bead shop in Salt Lake.  I could not make heads or tails of the pattern. So I used some of the beads and a different pattern that I then modified. Now that I have a better understanding of how these things go together I might go back and try to make it the right way.  If I do I’ll make sure I take photos! (I’ll need them if I ever try to make it again!)

I’m not sure what to do with it although I am leaning towards making it in to a hairpin.