A to Z, 2012-- R is for...

Reading!

I'm an avid reader. I love books-- I love the way they feel, I love to learn, and I love experiencing new worlds and new ideas. My childhood nickname was "Belle"~ as in, the Beauty from "Beauty and the Beast~ the one whose nose is always stuck in a book.

I own over 1,000 novels and books of poetry... even more if you include books from my former classroom and my own childhood, and even more than that if you include reference books and art books.

I'm currently reading two books:

Borrowed from my mother-in-law...

... and this one, purchased by me!

Although the second one is much more applicable to this blog, the first one (and all others by the same author) is DEFINITELY worth a mention on here as a hysterically funny "must-read" book! While it's absolutely worth the purchase, take a click over here to see the website that began it all. The author of the book has graciously left a great deal of the content on his website, so you'll be able to read it before you buy it- Woo-hoo! My favorite is the segment about Aunt Jenny, but the whole thing is AB-SO-LUTELY HY-STERICAL. If you've got an offbeat sense of humor and/or a love of all things food, you will not be able to resist cracking a smile with this book and the others in its series!

I don't want to spend too much time writing today-- suffice to say that the second book is so much fun to read! I'm starting to get into polymer clay, to make my own beads, and this has been an invaluable resource... perfect for me, because I'm not a COMPLETE beginner (I dabbled in it when I was a little girl), but I'm also not ready for those super-fancy inspiring books for experts.

I am WAY BEHIND with my blogging-- as one of my friends said recently, I can't do it all... I can only do what I can do. So here I am, doing what I can. Next up, the letter "S"~

A to Z, 2012-- I is for...

INSPIRATION!

I absolutely love this inspiration board-- pardon the pun, but it's such an inspiration! It's not mine, but you can click on the image to be taken to the original source~

I originally intended to post up a photo of my own inspiration board, from my studio. Unfortunately, my board was one of the casualties of the flood-- it was hung on the wall where the water came from, and is no longer useable. So many of my pretty images are gone-- I'm only glad that my "current project" inspirations are hung immediately above my work station, no where near the water source! I would take a photograph of *that*, but there's only one or two images currently up... nothing truly exciting or inspiring there!

While I'm a huge fan of Pinterest, and the website was a complete game-changer in the way people store images and links, there is way too much to talk about for it to be part of today's post. Since that's a different issue, I'll have to save that discussion for a different day.

As a side note, for those of you who, like me, look for inspiration in the world of color, there's a website out there that lets you create palettes of up to five colors. It's called ColourLovers-- and they have programs that let you pull colors from a photograph, and others that help you turn those colors into patterns. I find myself inspired by at least one thing, every single time I go on the site! But again, the site deserves more of an in-depth look, so I'll have to hold off on this topic as well.

Studio flooding issues and interesting websites aside, in addition to my "Pinspiration" boards as I call them, I have (or had...) bulletin boards. I think I'm going to use this flooding incident as an opportunity to start over in the studio, and get myself a TON of bulletin boards, basically cover a section of the wall with them (akin to the photo above). I use these boards mostly when I'm in the studio, and need more ideas for a project I'm working on. I swivel my chair around, take a look, then spin back and create.

I looooove my spinny-chair!

... Moving along ...

I also have a notebook that I carry around with me, wherever I go. My phone is a camera, so inspiring color combinations are easy to capture for later~ just one click away~ but designs are awfully hard to replicate on a digital sketch via a small screen and clumsy fingers! That is where my book comes in. It's shaped like Harry Potter's book for "Care of Magical Creatures", and it looks absolutely ridiculous:

Rawr!

In addition to being awesome, this notebook has the added bonus of freaking people out when they see me pull it out. Striking terror into the hearts of strangers is apparently my new hobby. SCORE!

How does inspiration play a role in YOUR studio's layout and your creative process?

My Foray Into Earring Production!

So lately I've been on an earring "kick"~

Before this recent development, the one thing that I really struggled with was making earrings. Necklaces come naturally to me, but nothing came together the way I wanted when making those little dangling buggers. I tried online tutorials, common sense, different materials... nothing worked. It was quite frustrating for a perfectionist like me.
Me? Perfectionist with my work? No... never!

(Insert "Sarcasm Font")

Anyway, thanks to an accidental find while at the store, I discovered my own literary superhero:

 

This book has been my best friend and my mentor for the past week. It is exactly what it says it is-- there are enough instructions so you can actually understand the process and what you need to do, but no unnecessary pages of filler. Each of the 101 earrings are truly unique-- not a single one is an exact replica of another. They have differences in form and construction, and not a one is a "twin" disguised with different beads.

And the best part about these easy-to-follow directions? They include directions on how to make the HOOKS. Yes, this means that I can make and personalize the actual hooks that the earrings hang upon!

And as you can see, I did just that in the first photo. They were the first pair that I made using a technique from the book-- I made the ear hooks from "scratch"! I chose to use brass wire, adding spiral ends for aesthetic purposes; the featured bead is a teardrop-shaped onyx stone.

To answer some questions? No, Denise Peck is not paying me to "plug" her book. The earrings are not an exact replica of any earrings from the book; rather, I used some of the techniques found within to create a pair that looked exactly the way I wanted. Yes, this means that they were designed by me.

Next up? Maybe I'll post NOT in the middle of the night... you never know!