Moving, and the bead stash.

Our move is coming along very, very slowly. We actually started (half heartedly) a couple of weeks ago. I sat and looked at my bead stash for a couple of weeks wondering what I was going to do with it all. On the one hand I wanted it to be the last thing we packed up so that I could work on some projects and get some content up on my blog.  We all see how well that worked out for me. :p  The reality of it though was that it became a source of stress for me. Every time I looked at my shelves I felt guilty for not getting any work done. Also, the more I sat looking at my stash, trying to decide if I could squeeze a project in; the less time I actually spent packing. It seemed a decision needed to be made.

We are moving to a temporary location. The kicker is that we don’t know how long we are going to be there. I’m not sure how much space we are going to have for our own personal belongings. This created two issues for me. The first is that nothing sucks more than feeling like a permanent guest in someone else’s home. If we are going to be *living* there, I’d like to feel like it is our own personal space. Two, how in the world am I going to decide what to take with me? Once that thought was in my head I started to get stressed out about what I was going to bring.

The first thought was that I’d pick out a few projects, bring the instructions and then everything I needed to make those projects. Seemed simple enough. Then I started thinking about all the stuff I was just going to throw in to a storage unit somewhere. Like most people, I’ve been building my stash for years. I have a lot of money invested in it, especially in my silver findings and gemstone beads. The man, who was watching me try to wade through this thought process finally laid down a command decision.

“We’re just going to take it all Penelope”.

He pointed out that the craft mates take up very little shelf space and that all of the seed beads can be condensed in to one smaller container, as can the tools. The books and magazines are another problem all together though, so this is what I decided to do.

I weeded through my books and pulled out the ones that I thought I couldn’t live without . . .  even for a few months.  That was easy enough. The bigger *issue* was the three year collection of bead magazines. Initially I thought I’d go through and pull the editions that had the projects I most wanted to make. (There are a lot of those). Then I thought I’d pull out the articles I want to make. The problem with that is that once you start tearing pages out, the magazine starts to fall apart. Ultimately, I decided to go through every stinking magazine that I have, project by project. It took me two days. I condensed about six feet of magazine space in to about a foot and half. I piled them all in to a box. I will have to sort them once we finish moving. That is going to be an even bigger project.

I have to say though, as difficult as it was it was kind of liberating.

My husband and I have been pack rats for years. He’s collected computer stuff, I’ve collected various craft stuff, cookbooks and rocsk. When he moved out he took most of his computer stuff, a few pieces of furniture and left me pretty much everything else. It was very generous of him to do that. On the plus side, once he gets settled some place he can start collecting new furniture that suits his style. So it was a good move on his part. He even left some of the newer pieces of furniture that he bought for himself in the last year.

The man and I are trying to start our new life together. He doesn’t have a lot of stuff. I’d like to create our new home with things that we like together. The reality of the situation though is that we don’t really have the funds to do that right now and the furniture that we do have right now has been serviceable.  This has made for an interesting move. I’m doing almost all of the packing because, well. . . it is mostly my stuff. He is being a real trooper and is taking everything I do pack down to the garage. This move is a bit different for me though because not only am I packing, but I am also sorting through the last 13 years of my life trying to decide what is really important to me. This has pretty much become the post divorce purge and in some ways has been a bit liberating.

There are some things that have been pretty stressful for me. The furniture has probably caused the most internal conflict. It was very generous of my husband to leave almost all of it for me. But, I have to weigh the cost of the furniture against how much bigger of a truck I will need to move it, how much more the extra storage space is going to cost me, how much it will cost me to replace it and how likely it is to make it through the move intact. The answer? It will cost less to replace it and will remove a lot of stress if we let it go now. Of course, we decided this less than a week before we get the rental truck so that doesn’t allow for a lot of time to sell it, and I hate, hate, hate the idea of it ending up in a landfill.

We took apart the Ikea Expedit bookcases, printed out a sheet showing what they are, how much they cost and how to assemble them. We stapled the pages together and taped them to the longer boards and set them out next to the dumpster. Someone started hauling them off before we got all the pieces out there. My neighbor knocked on my door to ask if I had any paper plates. :p Something spoke to me, and I asked her if she wanted my entertainment center. her whole face lit up. 🙂 So, not only did she get the entertainment center she also got two dressers, under the bed storage, unopened rolls of wrapping paper, knick knacks, and several bookcases. She is absolutely over the moon about it. I don’t have to see it thrown away and I get to help someone out. It is about as close as anyone can get to a win-win situation.

Other than that, we are trucking along with the move. We had hoped to be on the road by Wed afternoon. As it stands now we will probably be heading out early Tuesday Evening. (Yay!) My husband has generously offered to drive the rental truck up for us. We’ve bought him a plane ticket back and it will give him some extra time to spend with our children. That makes me happy. We can all use a mini vacation. Once we get the truck loaded in to storage we will have a couple of days to relax and play. The husband will get to see where we will be living, and hopefully we can make a short trip out to the coast to play on the beach before he has to head back home.

We’ve had some drama with our rental truck. We got a call last week confirming that we are going to pick up the truck on Monday. We ran out of boxes though and made a trip over to the truck place to get some more. That is when we found out that there are no trucks on the lot, they were closed for the day, closed today and will be closed tomorrow (Monday) as well. So I’m not really sure how we were supposed to pick up our phantom truck. So of course we called the company. In addition to being closed on Monday (did I mention we want to be on the road Tuesday?) they had us down as returning the truck in San Jose California. We think we have it all sorted out but keep your fingers crossed for us anyway. :p

Life is interesting.

I’m tossing this up unedited. I’ve really got a lot I need to be doing.

Repair Jobs

While we were in Oregon I picked up two projects from my gracious hostess at the farm.

This was an interesting  necklace. I love the pendant, it is gorgeous. The pendant was in a bag with the oval beads, the two hematite beads and the small silver colored beads. She told me that she would like the oval beads separated by the silver beads. That seemed easy enough.

When I opened up the bag and laid out the beads I noticed two things.  First, there were not enough beads. Second, there was not a clasp. Neither are really a problem as I have a pretty good bead stash to work with. However, I’m not sure that the round beads are silver and all I have are sterling beads. I was hesitant to mix them. I  have a pretty sterling silver toggle clasp, so I decided to use that as well. I don’t see the sense in hanging a spendy gemstone pendant  on a plated clasp.

I laid out the beads that I had been given to work with and it was only about 12 or 13 inches long. I wanted it to be about the same length as the other necklace that she gave me so that meant I was going to have to add quite a few beads..  I ended up pulling out some green pearls, along with a bunch of sterling bead caps that I have been sitting on for a few years.
 
 
 
 

I ended up alternating the oval beads with the green pearls. I placed the sterling bead caps on either side of the pearls. I separated the pearls and oval beads with the smaller silver beads that she had given me. I hope that she likes it. 🙂

The second repair job involved wire wrapping.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The man and I played around with it for a bit and decided that given our options it was best to have the pendant hang freely. So, I made a link to hang the pearl from and connected the pendant underneath it. I liked the look of the smaller bead caps, but he thought that the larger bead cap looked better. It is for his mom, so he got the deciding vote. It is a pretty necklace. I just love the color of the beads. I seem to have a strong preference for green and turquoise stones.

Peek-a-Boo Pearl Ring

This was another fun class. It was the March class at Heart Beads Jewelry.  It was a relatively inexpensive class as well. I picked out the blue collection of beads for myself, but my daughter really liked the pink version. I figured that since the kit was cheap enough, that I could just get both. I wanted to stay for the class, but I knew that the man was only going to be in town for a few weeks. I didn’t want to waste time while he was here attending a bead class. I usually do okay with instructions, so I asked for them. They gave me the instructions and told me to come in if I needed any help. I love this store!

I actually took the kit with me when we went to Oregon in case I had some spare time. (lol..never happens). When we got back I sat down and took a gander at the pattern and I decided that I was going to need a little help with this one. Unfortunately it was pretty close to the end of the month, so time was short. We went back down to the bead shop and asked when they could pencil me in for a class, the following day was the last day of the month. Since I had already paid for two kits, my boyfriend thought it might be fun to take the class with me.

So the next day we showed up, kits in hand to take a bead class together. I have to say, I wasn’t sure how it was going to go. We were a little competitive at first. I made a mistake on the first round and it meant I had to go back and redo it. That put him ahead, and there was plenty of teasing that came with it. I ended up over taking him though. We made it through the instructions with little help. The girl that was helping us seemed pleased that she didn’t have to color in the pattern for us.

I was very impressed with how well the man did. His ring looked very good, and he did it mostly on his own. It was a fantastic job, the fact that it was his first beading project only made it more impressive. We had to guess on the size though. It ended up being a bit to small for my daughter so he remade the whole ring. . It was very sweet when he gave it to her. I think he earned a lot of points. 🙂

Here is a side shot of the ring that I made.

This is the pink ring that he made for my daughter.

…and the side view of his ring.

We had a lot of fun. When we first talked about resizing it, I suggested we take it back down to the top of the ring. If we trimmed a thread in the  middle of the shank of the ring, we would still have enough thread to tie it off securely. Then he could re-do the shank of the ring from two different fire polish beads.

So this is what I took it back down to. It would have been a good fix and saved time. He wanted it to be perfect though, so he pulled the whole thing apart and remade it from scratch. As soon as he finished it, he started digging through my bag of kits to see which one he could make next! So the night before last, we started making a beaded bracelet. We were up way to late, but we both got them done. It was pretty simple in construction, although looking at another pattern I bought they look very similar. I hope to have that one up either tonight or tomorrow evening. I also worked on two repair jobs for his mom. I took photos of both of those projects as well. So, We’ve gotten quite a bit of beading done this weekend. I just need to get the posts up!

For now though, we are heading out to buy supplies for my son’s egg drop project. I think that is going to make for a very fun afternoon.

How To Make a Wire Wrapped Loop

I actually wrote this post as I was making the charm necklace. I’ve been having serious trouble with my editor though. It seems the more photos I have, the harder it is to make a post come together. It has been a great source of frustration for me. Unfortunately, once I get frustrated and step away it can take me  a while to get back to it. So, today I made a point of fixing this so that I could get it posted.

I finished my beaded ring and I hope to have that one up tomorrow. The class was a ton of fun. I had purchased two kits, so the man came with me. He made his ring for my daughter and he did a fabulous job. We had to guess on her size and it came up a bit too small. I want to post photos of both, so we need to sit down and figure out how to redo the shank of the ring without having to do the whole thing over. It should be fun.

And now for the long overdue post on how to make a wrapped wire loop.

For this project I am using 24 guage, half hard, sterling silver wire.

If you are working with a long piece of wire you will want to start by threading on your bead. I just finished a necklace and I put all of the beads necessary on to the wire coil prior to starting. I put a small bend in the other end of the wire to keep them from falling off.  To start making the loop you want to get a nice sharp 90 degree bend in the wire. I’ll be wrapping the wire around the the wire to give it added security. I’ve done this a couple of times and silver is expensive so I only bend about two inches of wire over. IF this is your first time doing it,  I highly suggest you practice with craft wire until you become more comfortable Also, give yourself a little bit more length to work with.

Take the wire and hold it so that the short end is bent in towards you. Take the round nose pliers and grasp the wire about a quarter inch in from the bend.

Roll the pliers up and away from you.  Imagine that the loop is complete. Stop when the loop is centered over the stem wire. If you keep going you will lose that 90 degree angle that you made, and you don’t want to do that.

Grasp the tail end of the wire and draw it snugly around the pliers so that you complete the loop.  At this point I generally slip the pliers out and take a peek to make sure every thing is lining up and that the loop is straight.

This is the first link in a chain that I am making. I need to attach the chain to my clasp. I’m using a lobster claw clasp with a large jump ring. In this photo I have slipped the jump ring in to my loop. If I were attaching it to a loop that was already made, I would slip in the loop that I am attaching the new link to.

Carefully grasp the loop with your pliers to hold it steady.

Take the tail wire and wrap it snugly around the stem wire.  I am using  half hard wire so i was able to do this fairly easily with my fingers. You can also grasp the end of the tail wire with another set of pliers. I find that this sometimes help me get a better grip when I am using stiffer wire. Once you wrap the wire around it a couple of times you will cut the tail wire off as close as you can get it. BE careful though, you don’t want to cut the finished loop!

One finished wire wrapped loop, attached to a jump ring. Half way there!

Add your bead. Mine were already on the wire, so I just slid one up.

Take the pliers and hold the wire as close as you can to the bead. Then make another 90 degree bend in the wire. I try to keep both of my loops facing the same direction

From this point, you are going to make the loop just like you did on the other end. Grasp the wire with the pliers about a quarter inch from the bend and roll the wire up and away from you. make sure you stop when the loop is half completed and is centered over the stem wire.

Finish it off, just like you did on the other end.

Continue along making wire wrapped loops and in no time at all you will have a pretty little beaded chain.