More Inspirations

Inspiration #7: Mary Darwall. I could get lost in her website for hours. Gorgeous.

Inspiration #8: Laurel Burch.
Her life and her art were and are a great inspiration to me. A wonderful spirit and a gifted artist, her absence will be felt by many, and for many years.I will always remember her sense of play, of color and her unquenchable fire of creativity, and forever treasure my few pieces of LB jewelry. Wish I still had my cat mugs . . .

Inspiration #9: Van Gogh. Especially the work he produced while in Arles. Color! He makes me absolutely vibrate from the top of my head right down through the soles of my feet - he is the master of color.Willows at Sunset. This just leaves me gasping.

I have a lot of ground to cover between now and the end of the year if I'm going to make it to a list of 52. Next year will be easier - I'll list one a week then! The nice thing is, this world is FULL of things to inspire you.

Dragging My Feet

I don't know why, but the past few days I've been alternating between working on a dozen projects at once or hiding from all of them. *sigh* The two extremes actually amount to the same thing, don't they. Avoidance. I can't seem to settle on any one thing and give it all I have. I feel scattered to the winds.

For lack of any meaningful progress reporting, here's Inspiration #6:


I put this on my Amazon wish list this morning. I love nearly all of the "500" books in the Lark Books series - there's a whole lotta brain sparks to be found in them.

I mentioned a few posts ago that I was finishing up a lot of older projects. After three months, I did manage to finish making an eyeglass case out of the Sunrise I beaded back when, but it sold before I could take a new scan of the finished work - it sold today, actually.

Posted this on Etsy this evening - I call it "Crazy Quilt 2":



I should do a flat scan of the entire piece to show off all the embroidery at once. I'll try to remember to do that before I open the store tomorrow (just in case lightning strikes twice.)

EDIT:


Heehee. I remembered!

Madness, Illness, & An Anniversary

My October page, completed, and titled Water/The Undine. I've been slowly catching up on projects too long neglected. And possessed of a certain madness, started a few more. I came up with some designs for gothic Yule jewelry and I couldn't rest until I got some of them pulled together.

In spite of my best intentions NOT to get sick this year, I came down with a monster cold. Along with half the population of the country, it seems. After almost ten days, I finally got my voice back yesterday.

Which was great timing. Friday, Saturday and today we celebrated our ten-year anniversary of running our bookstore. We filled the place with helium balloons and set out a tray of cookies - we gave away the tote bags I made and visited with a lot of old friends and sold a lot of books. My favorite part of these celebrations is always the balloons. Just looking at them makes me feel happy.

To get back to the subject of madness, I really am glad I reopened my Etsy shop, but now I'm having second thoughts about the destash shop. There's just this overwhelming amount of work that needs doing - I thought I might start slow with it by listing all the craft books I'm weeding out, but even that will take a huge chunk of time.

I'm looking at my schedule for next week and I'm exhausted just thinking about what's ahead.

I gotta get more sleep.

There And Back Again

I'm fairly recuperated from my trip; coming home was like hitting the deck running - I've been working at the bookstore 10 hours a day for the last four days, catching up on all my chores and odder jobs. It was a great visit - Charlie is, naturally, the Most Beautiful Child Evar. Even with his face full of plum.



In addition to drooling all over him, I also spent a great deal of time at my daughter's place of employment - The International Bead Market in Omaha.



Spent just enough time and waaaaaay too much money there, I can tell ya. This year I learned how to do pearl knotting. I always learn something new by taking one of my daughter's classes. Last year it was Ndebele stitch.

At any rate, overloading my carry-on bags with the more precious acquisitions and stuffing the rest into mailers made me realize I've got to destash again. I did this 2 1/2 years ago - I had a beady indoor yard sale, then put the rest up on FeeBay. Cleared out about 30 pounds of beads that time. Looks like I've got that much and more yet again, but this time my daughter's convinced me to open a destash store at Etsy, in addition to my shop of finished pieces.

I've been stockpiling stuff for a show at the end of November, but I have serious doubts about doing it. I've re-opened my Etsy shop and I'll be listing (and relisting) things as I can,


like my medicine bags.

I may have to start drinking coffee in the late afternoon just so I can stay up long enough in the evening to work on NaNoWriMo AND all the beadwork I've got lined up.

Inspiration #5: The Lauritzen Gardens in Omaha.



I must have taken 100 pictures there (and not all of them with a baby in the middle). The main indoor exhibit is the Chrysanthemum Walk and it wowed me completely. The spider mums were breathtaking. It was heaven, being surrounded by so much color and texture.

I love to travel, but I love to come home. Now back to the beading . . .