An early bloom...

So as of two nights ago, seven of my UFOs (UnFinished Objects, for those who haven't read the last entry) have now become FOs I guess you could say. They are finished and they are GORGEOUS! ...if I do say so myself. Here's a picture of the bunch of them:

 I was able to acquire some black felt that made a perfect backing for my flower broaches... well, for most of them. (Oops, I just realized I didn't take a picture of the backs of any of them.)I have 3 that just won't look right with a black backing and they're going to need white felt. This I should be able to get on Monday. So I decided to take a few pictures of them, but they won't be the pictures I use when I put them online for sale. I'm going to give eBay a try and maybe ArtFire, for these pretties. Here's a few close-ups of some:

This pic has a quarter in it for size reference. These flowers are pretty big.

The official pictures will actually be edited a bit more. Making sure the focus is on point and the lighting does them justice. There also needs a bit of color correction done. The green placemat underneath them should be a brighter green but I'm on my netbook right now and I don't have the tools to fix that and I don't feel like turning on the big laptop. I've been working on this blog entry all day actually. I've been having a lazy Sunday... well it's a bit more complicated than that, due to body aches and pains, etc...

So, as I mentioned in a past entry, I wasn't so sure about doing the backing in the first place but felt maybe they needed to be done. Well, they turned out so nice that it makes me want to make more of the flowers. Besides, I have a lot more different bead colors now than when I first made these flowers, and I feel like I could come up with some very interesting color combinations. On top of it all, I'm so happy that I've been able to make jewelry again after so much time of not really being able to make any. Hell, before the last blog entry I did about jewelry making, the last one was at the end of June of last year. That's far too long.

Late night rambling...

It's 1:05 am and Rob is in bed working on his computer, and since he's on my side, I am at my desk working on some designs that have popped into my head. I've started keeping drawings/sketches in this nice spiral-bound sketch book that I had originally gotten for some other purpose that it never got used for. Then one day I realized that it would be great for holding my jewelry design ideas.

What I really wanted to be doing is working on a few UFOs. For those of you who don't know, in the jewelry making/crafting world, UFO stands for UnFinished Object. The UFOs I wanted to work on are these really beautiful beaded flowers that I want to make into broaches. I have been debating on whether or not I wanted to put a backing on them or just affix the pin backing as is. After discussing it with Rob, I realized that I really do want to add a backing. When I figured out the backing I wanted. I realized that they were probably way in the back of our storage unit and probably won't be seen until we are moved into a new place. So now I have to wait and see if I can find something similar without breaking my ever-so-tiny bank. Hopefully, I'll find something tomorrow as I really want to finish them while I still have the steam in me to do so.

So to take up the time while I'm awake, I decided to go through a folder that had a bunch of tutorials and designs in them, and of course when I do that, I end up with all sorts of neat ideas that hardly have anything to do with what I just looked at. The funny thing is, I always say that I am very bad at visualization. Whenever I read the books on meditation, I would always groan and hate when it got to the part about visualizing the apple, etc. (btw, why do all meditation books have that part about the freaking apple? But I digress...) But when it comes to jewelry, I can always envision it in my mind and “see” it clearly. Maybe I should just meditate on jewelry...

“Close your eyes and visualize the bead... turn the bead around in your mind... with your mental hands, thread your mental needle... pass the needle through the bead...”

Yeah, right.

Christmas in July... ugh

Okay so when I first heard the term “Christmas in July” I thought that it was BS and another way to shove Christmas further up the year’s butt, to put it bluntly. I mean, is the goings on of the rest of the year not important enough that everything has to be “Christmas! Christmas! Christmas!” really?  Is this for people who have no other enjoyment in their lives other than the Holiday season?  And if businesses don’t want to get all bummy about poor sales in the holiday season, then stop trying to force people to buy stuff for Christmas so early in the year. Am I just a cold, evil person who wants to take the little bit of joy out of some people’s lives just because I‘m a premature curmudgeon? (I’m not really. If you like it, go ahead and get all cracked-out with it if that’s your bag, just don‘t expect me to squee about it.)

Well, now I’ve found a way that Christmas in July can benefit me (read: keep me sane) and it will only need one day, two at the most (depending on how elaborate I get with this project). Usually, once December rears it’s ugly head, I try to make handmade cards or get pre-made cards even, and expect to get them sent out before it’s too late only to not even get half of them done and then give up with a dejected look on my face. I figured that this year (and subsequent years if it works out) I can take a couple days out of July to make cards (or write really nice notes in pre-made cards… or something)  so that I can get them over with and not drive myself crazy in December. Don’t think my distaste for “Christmas in July” will result in some jankity thrown together cards. My crafty gene will kick in and recipients will be WOWed!

Now if you know you’re on the card list and you don’t get one this year, just know that this project somehow went horribly wrong and that’s all I’m gonna say about that…

A poem I wrote today

(This was originally a note I added to my personal facebook page but I figured it would make a good blog post as well) So I was writing down some thoughts and stuff today and here's a little something that spewed forth from my noggin:

Oubliette

I feel like I've been thrown off course...
Led away by my willingness
to throw myself listlessly
into the nearest hole
and languidly wallow in the murky darkness
of idle time-wasting.

It calls to me like a siren and
I, the drunken sailor,
follow and fall,
mindless.

I make it my bed,
wrap the darkness about me
like a blanket.
I rest my head on a fluffy pillow
of empty thoughts

This isn't the darkness of chaos
from which all things spring from
It's the thick black stillness
into which things are thrown to be
forgotten.

An oubliette
that calls my name;
the only thing it never forgets.

epilogue:

So this wasn't a poem when I started writing it, but by the time I finished it, it sounded like one to me. I've made the most minimal changes to what I wrote straight out of my head and into my morning pages. The only real difference is the poetic formatting I put it into here as opposed to it just looking like a paragraph on the page as I first wrote it. I thought about ending this on a happy note, but it just didn't feel right to do so.

Leo Carillo Beach

My husband and I visited Leo Carillo Beach a couple of weeks ago and I'm just getting around to sharing some of the pictures.


It's a really beautiful beach

  

The beach has gorgeous rock formations.



It was a beautiful day but very cold, which is why Rob is dressed that way



The cave. One of Rob's favorite things about the beach.
That and that there's camping nearby

  

If I could swim, I'd totally try that!



Before we went to the beach, Rob and I drove around the campsite to check out which sites looked pretty nice. We hope to camp there next year. Apparently, this year is all booked up. Hopefully we'll get a good spot when we go. It would be fun to get some friends to join us as well.

Despite the cold, it was a fun day at the beach. I wish we could go more often.

On commission...

Can you believe what they are doing with watermelons these days?

There is a pair of watermelon hairsticks that I've had a hard time finishing because I'm not quite feeling the color  combination and I'm itching to start new color combos that I've been wanting to try, also, I couldn't find my thread. Despite those feelings, I will still complete them with care and make them of the same fine quality as all the others. The funny thing is, I'm sitting here thinking that they might turn out to be the first hairsticks that I sell. There's this person out there who will love them and right now, and from the time I started them, they have been thinking, "I would LOVE some watermelon colored hairsticks and YOU, April Bell, you will make them for me! I don't know you but the universe has put you in charge of making my hairsticks! Do it now!" I really feel like that, or something similar must be the case. Why else would I keep working on them when I'm really not that into them and ensuring that they are made just as well as all the others? (I have a policy of not making things that I wouldn't wear myself)

I've decided that I will take this attitude with everything I make from now on; that there is someone out there who will LOVE what I am making and the universe has put me in charge of making it for that person. From now on, I'm not just making jewelry because it is a sublime joy for me to make it, though that is a great reason in itself, but now I will also work as if I am being commissioned by the universe. Sounds a bit grandiose? Well, it's the universe so of course it's grandiose.


I now see my course laid before me and I am confident that I can do what I need to do. The way I see it is, the universe likes to get its way and that being said, why would it contract someone who couldn't get the job done? I just need to stop fighting it and get out of my own way.

keeping it low key...

So today is April 1^st, the beginning of my namesake/birthday month and I usually go on pseudo-narcissistic rant about how it’s “the month of me!” and that I have free reign to make it all about me for an entire month; how I get to celebrate the entire month instead of just the day of my birthday. A month long celebration of me! …blah, blah, blah. I’m just not feeling it this year. Maybe it’s because I’m resigned to the fact that I’m the only one celebrating, or maybe it’s because it’s been quite a long time since I’ve been able to keep up the excitement past a few days. Either way, this year is going to be low key.

            On another note… since I’ve decided to do the whole Pantone Spring color challenge that I put on myself, I looked at the most recent earrings and realized that without trying, I used one of the colors. It looks to match Blue Curacao to me. I’ve been made hyperaware of this season’s colors after following a link that a friend sent me for a video hosting site. It had nothing to do with fashion or anything but in the middle of the screen there were these squares that were many of this season’s colors(not all of them though, each square was for a different category or something of stuff on the site and I guess they didn’t have enough categories to need each color). The squares were even rounded like when you go see them on the Pantone site. So after that, I’ve been paying attention to how and where I see the colors. I had no idea that these color forecasts were so important but I guess they must be because they’re popping up all over the place. 

            So now that Spring Break is here, maybe I’ll get a chance to work on some more colors …if I catch up to all of my homework. *Fingers crossed!*