Jewelry for the Gallery

Here is an intial picture of the jewelry I have made for the gallery in New York. However, I'm not going to send most of it, because I realize that the owner wants to sell the work at a lower price than I suggested to her for most pieces. Actually, I came up with a price based on a formula she shared, but the prices came out shockingly high. That's beadwork for you. It's so time-consuming that you just can't make money selling it. So I have reorganized what I am going to send and taken the more expensive pieces out. I don't have good pictures yet of what I'm substituting, so that will be another day.

If anyone has any thoughts on what you would pay for these pieces, or as a beader, what you would price them at, I'd be happy for you to share them!!!

End of the School Year

Our boys have been sharing an apt. this past academic year, but the lease is up soon, Jason is graduating, Sam is moving to another apt., and we decided to make a trip to start bringing stuff home.

I love getting pictures of my three men together - left to right is Jason, the graduate (math, with honors), Dennis, the aerospace engineer professor, and Sam, the law student.

Beading Areas

When I read Marcia DeCoster's blog this morning, she referred to Bev Herman's blog about what her beading tray looks like. I believe several readers then took pictures of their beading trays, including me! The top photo is the coffee table next to where I sit, and the bottom photo is my beading tray. I'm working on several projects at once and kind of push things into the corner when I'm done or going to work on it soon. I am making a right angle weave/square stitch bracelet with fire polish beads in a quilt-like design. I made one, and then decided there was too much thread showing. This is definitely an influence of my friend Deb, who can't bear the idea of thread showing. She won't even do certain stitches because you can see the thread. It never used to bother me, but now that I have found a thread I like, One-G, I'm getting to like the thread to match the beads more.

What I have been doing all winter

I feel like my blog has gone through a period of drought. But in fact I have been beading more than ever all winter long. I have been making pieces for a gallery that is open for the summer months. I will take pictures the next day we have sun here, hopefully tomorrow!

This is what I have learned. Making jewelry that I think other people will like is very hard. Making jewelry that doesn't have thread showing, or looped over a bead, or cut down to the edge is very hard. For every one piece that I am satisfied with, I have usually made 4 or 5 other pieces. I have worked every day since January and feel I have very little to show for the hours I have devoted to making the jewelry. I don't feel it represents the best work I can do, and I am sure I am overly critical of myself.

In terms of the time and effort I have put into the projects, I will not earn a cent. But I hope the gallery will! In order to do this work, I stopped reading, am behind on my Bead Journal Project, and was unable to complete the most recent round of Use the Muse contest.

However, I really wanted to do this. I wanted to see if I could meet the challenge, really a personal challenge, of committing to something and following through on it. When I post the pictures, I will be curious to see what the feedback is. Until then....

Meeting BJP members

I've had the privilege of meeting two Carol's recently. Above is Carol from Of Beads and Birds, whom I'm sure many of you know because she posts such nice thoughts on our blogs. She lives in Indiana and I was there the other night visiting family. So we arranged to meet, and we had a great visit! Carol is on the left and I am on the right.



A few days earlier I met another Carol, but we didn't take any photos :). I noticed from her blog that she lives in the same community that I do, so I contacted her and we were able to meet. I went to her house and met her two adorable children plus her husband. Carol is incredibly artistic and I was in awe of her talent.



Two Carol's, two great bead journal artist's, and two wonderful people, what more could one ask for?