Animal Instincts

Posted my Animal Instincts piece on Etsy today. It is one of my snake bracelets. I am rather "snaky" at present. Fun to make and always a lot of comments about them. The snake has the clasp in his mouth. I have called this bracelet "Just chasing my tail", which is something I seem to be doing a lot lately. Don't know why it is but all the important exhibitions in Melbourne seem to have deadlines in August, September and October so I have been pretty busy.

Meeting a Kindred Spirit.

Yesterday I spent a lovely day meeting one of the Bead Society members who is down in Melbourne for the Cynthia Rutledge classes. I have had some correspondence with her for a while and we decided it was the ideal time for a meet up. Fiona is definitely a kindred spirit - she loves beads, purple and green colours and we spent the day looking at bead shops, the local gem club Show and sharing some show and tell of our work. It's great to keep in touch with modern communication being so instantaneous, but meeting someone is much better!
Fiona does some amazing and colourful quilts as well as jewellery. You might like to check out her website at Chiatanya Designs.

Another Etsy Sale!

Very pleased to see another sale of one of my crochet instruction patterns on etsy today. This particular item sells very well.

Today I spent a full day beading in a Cynthia Rutledge class - Buttons and Beyond. It is all about making interesting closures and edgings for cabochons etc. It was a fascinating class, but although I beaded ALL DAY, I only completed one thing and managed to try out two other techniques. Had a great deal of fun though.

Etsy Beadweaver Challenge for September

The winner of the EBW Challenge for September has been decided. Here is a link to the EBW site, where there is a picture of the winning entry "Tears of Joy" by beadsandblooms. Very unusual and certainly expresses the them of Complementary Contradictions.

Another EBW member experiencing some success at present is UK beader Kerrie Slade. She has recently announced another two published projects which are available in Bead Magazine. Check out Kerrie's work at www.kerrieslade.blogspot.com

It's All Happening!!

Just checked out the DUST BLOG and discovered that my etsy shop review is the featured article at present. Makes me sound a lot more interesting than I actually feel right now. Jan did a really great job with the article and I hope she gets some visitors to her etsy shop too.
www.janallsopp.etsy.com

Made a Sale at the Embroiderers Guild Exhibition

Yesterday I was on duty at the Embroiderers Guild Vic Spring Fever Exhibition - they had asked me to give a beading demonstration. As I was checking out the exhibition, I discovered one of my pieces was SOLD! A lovely red sticker was on the label. An interesting dilemma - whilst I like selling things, I didn't really want to sell this one so I put what I thought was a fairly high price on it. But it sold anyway. Guess any sale is a good sale though. My stock of beaded necklaces and stuff is overflowing.

Whilst I was demonstrating, who should come past but Marg Mueller our Bead Society Workshop Co-ordinator, with Cynthia Rutledge from the USA. I was not expecting Cynthia, who is here to tutor some workshops for the Bead Society to be inspecting the work I had on the demonstration table. It's all pretty ordinary compared to her fabulous creations. She was very nice and we had an interesting chat about bead addiction.

Almost good news!

Had a great email from the editor of a US magazine who had seen one of my bracelets on Etsy and wanted me to write it up as a project for them. Unfortunately, I had to tell her that it was heavily inspired by a BeadWork project and so I cannot write it up for them. Great to know that people like magazine editors use the Etsy shop to look for projects!
I am waiting impatiently for issue 19 of Beads Etc to come out as another one of my button projects is in it (according to the page in issue 18 which lists the upcoming features).
Its very hard to think of something unique though and I am at a bit of a standstill at present, just coming out of the excitement of the wedding and with a very busy schedule of tutoring. As well there are two Australian Bead exhibitions which have a 12th September Deadline and once again, I haven't quite finished my entries.
Maybe next month!