The Final Mystery

The other day, I sat down to finally make a bracelet that my sister had sketched for me, to use the special Sphinx gold bead from Green Girl Studios (I have a bit of a problem designing with Special Beads, which Green Girl beads always are). I dutifully pulled out the bag she'd put together containing all the beads required (gold bead, black lava coins, topaz crystal rondelles), and began to string theprescribed pattern of gold bead on the end, then alternating lava and crystal rondelles paired with tiny silver spacers.

But I found I didn't want to make a simple bracelet. Then inspiration hit me--I strung a topaz/gold Scooplet beaded bead in between the last two lava coins, and the necklace snowballed from there. I went on up the side of what I realized was fast becoming a necklace, stringing my remaining topaz crystal rondelles between silver spacers and gold seed beads, finishing with a flourish--a long loop of gold seed beads back down the strand. The other side would be a single strand, so to balance the lighter but double strand of the first side,  I pulled out some darker topaz/amber pressed and faceted glass, ending again with a loop of seed beads connecting with the first loop. A gold filigree navette clasp near the sphinx bead completed the necklace.

The sphinx bead reads 'the final mystery is oneself'.

Three of my earring designs set to be published in BeadStyle magazine!

http://bright-circle.deviantart.com/art/Earrings-Sherbet-rectangle-169066751Oh man I'm super-excited once again! A few weeks after getting back from the Bead & Button show, I heard back from sister publication BeadStyle, who wants to publish THREE of my earring designs!

I had an especially good feeling that the last pair would get in--something fascinating about those silver spacer bars, plus it uses the same technique as my Armor in Moonlight spacer bar bracelet published in the May issue of BeadStyle.

This is the month I'm just going to USE MY BEADS

You know the feeling--you see beads, you HAVE to have them, but you're not sure what you'll use them for. It doesn't matter, it FEELS right to buy them and so you do. And the beads sit in your bead stash, waiting for 'that perfect project' to be used. Nothing but the best will do for those beads, no sir.

Or perhaps you buy the beads with a design in mind, but when you sit down to make the design, it doesn't come out the way you thought, so you unstring the half-finished necklace and put your beads away, waiting for the next strike of inspiration.

Months pass, perhaps even years, and all the while you're accumulating more and more beads, faster than you're using them. Before you know it, your bead stash is out of control and your creativity is suffering from second-guessing design decisions as you try to make every single necklace, bracelet, or pair of earrings a museum-worthy masterpiece of form, function and creative vision!

You can't live like that. Can't design like that. The 'great' traditional artists we all know didn't live like that (at least, not all of them); they made little 'throwaway' sketches or 'boring' drawings that didn't quite turn out. And it was ok.
Great artists know that just as they have great art inside them, they have a lot of boring/'bad' art.

What should we take away from this? That we MUST let the less-than-museum-worthy art out of ourselves right alongside the great designs that keep us up until 1:23 am. Trying to keep every non-great design suppressed will only lead to a creativity traffic jam.

It took me a long time to understand this and let my simpler designs take form, but this month, I'm going to do it! I will use up those beads in my drawer in nice-looking jewelry, but I will not pressure myself into making every single piece a show-stopper! At the end of the month I will have a creative collection of classy jewelry, more toned-down than my usual style, but still bearing my unique vision. Because if I make it and design it--it has part of me in it, and isn't self-expression what art is all about?