Bead & Button Withdrawal Therapy

I was not able to attend Bead & Button this year and I was totally bummed!  Last year I had a super time working with Jeannette Cook of Beady Eyed Women!  It was my first time ever at the show and I was there with a seasoned professional!  What I learned working with her is immeasurable and I am eternally grateful to Jeannette for the experience!  This year I know so many more people at the show...and so I have been watching the fun via the Internet.  But it's just not the same as being there! 

For my B&B Show withdrawal therapy I came up with some unique projects. 

I commemorated my time with Jeannette last year with some great new funky earrings, using her famous Curl technique!  "Mastering the Curl" is a must have technique for your beading repertoire!

Jill Wiseman of Tapestry Beads proposed a Hat & Fascinator Day for Saturday at Bead & Button and of course the beading community loved the idea! Bead & Button is a glorious week of women strutting their stuff, so here was one more exuberant way to do it!  Again, undaunted by my lack of attendance...I participated vicariously.  I up cycled a thrift store hat.  This past Friday afternoon and evening I pretended to be a milliner and decorated my own hat!  You may have seen my profile pic on Face Book...well here is another pic of me with my new hat! 

Can you guess my favorite color??

My local beading guild The Great Lakes Beadworkers Guild is having our annual "Strut Your Stuff" pizza party on June 21.  Guess what we've proposed to our members?? You got it, hats, fascinators and tiaras!! Get 'em out and wear 'em to the meeting!!!  I can't wait to wear this hat, you can't see the mock Bird of Paradise feathers I attached!! I was working on an idea for a fascinator.  Since I came up with this great purple hat my other project may end up as a necklace.  The scale of it is along the lines of one of New York City's most fabulous and outrageous beaders and my friend Suzanne Golden.  It is no where near as fantastic as her work, but I love Suzanne's style and fearless use of color, materials and proportion!

My project idea originated with a class with Carole Horn of The Bead Society of Greater New York. She came to our guild to teach for the first time last year!  When she demoed the class project she used plastic pony beads, etc.  We all loved the resulting piece with those huge beads and it stuck in my head!  Well, I had to make one!  Voila!  I'll have a huge flower to wear as a necklace soon!

I also checked in on my friend Kate McKinnon from time to time the last couple of weeks to see what she and Dustin Wedekind have been doing on their current book collaboration Geometrics.  Needless to say they are up to a lot of interesting things!  I had promised myself for weeks that I would pre-purchase the book, so I did and bought Kate's other self published books before they gone forever. 

This is how I salved my broken beading heart the past couple of weeks.

And now that B&B is over I will stop pouting and start planning for next year!!

Hugs!!

Sigh...no time for beading!

Okay, so for the last two days I've been busy with other things that you really don't want to know about.  It might be funny if I told you, but only if you "know" me.  So let's just say I've been busy. 

Now on to what I can tell you about...



I had an appointment on my calendar for Monday, I was supposed to be in Clarkston at the Independence Township Public Library.  Clarkston is about a 45 minute drive North from my house in Sterling Heights.  Which is in lovely, wait 15 minutes and the weather will change, MICHIGAN!  Yes, I said Clarkston and you know that here in Michigan we all have to drive our cars, no mass transit system, no TRAIN to Clarkston, first middle or last.  So since we had freezing rain and lots of lovely snow Sunday night, Monday morning the roads were a mess.  Our schools were closed, the whole Metro area was an ice skating rink.  My beloved DH text (or is it texted) me at 8AM and told me to stay home.  Who am I to question the authority of my husband, so I rolled over and went back to sleep.  For about 5 minutes!  Remember that appointment?  Well, there was another component of  that appointment that I needed to address pronto! 

I am the Exhibits Chair for the Great Lakes Beadworkers Guild and I have voluntarily scheduled back to back exhibits all over the Detroit Metro area for the next three months straight. Yikes, what was I thinking?  Over achiever...nope maniac! And the Board recently executed a plan to steal away my wonderful Co-Chair and I now have to rely on "volunteer" volunteer help.  (get it?) Don't misunderstand, I have a couple of helpers on the hook already, Valerie G. and Judy D. who are fabulous.  But I had known for weeks they weren't available for this gig.  This is a job that one person CAN do, but it is oh so much more pleasant and much more convenient with TWO people.  Time got away from me and I hadn't recruited another helper.   In desperation I hatched a scheme to call one of my fellow Guild members and beg for a solid.  I would resort to bribery if need be!  So I checked the membership roster for beaders I know in the Clarkston area and I rang up my friend Diane Grecu!  Low and behold she was not only available but she was also willing to come give me a hand.  (heh heh, beaders!)  Hey I love that about beaders, we all seem to be such giving people!  So now, dag nab it I had to get up and call Diane to let her know it wasn't going to happen that morning after all. (my friends know that I really prefer to hug my pillow until at least 9 when I can)  Long story short, it all worked out and we made plans to meet at the Library on Tuesday. 

Diane and I had a lovely afternoon installing the GLBG Exhibit collection into the display case in the Independence Township Public Library.  The library requested a Christmas decoration theme.  The Exhibit collection consists primarily of items loaned to me from the membership and sadly I only had a couple of pieces that could pass as Christmas ornaments.  Undaunted, I displayed all our lovely work and then suspended beaded snowflakes from the top grid of the case.  It was surprisingly lovely.  When we were all done, Diane and I looked at each other with great satisfaction and pleasure.  Several library patrons and staff members had already given us glowing reviews!  Diane and I decided that if we didn't have actual beading time, spending time with a beady friend displaying beadwork was almost as good.  It is very gratifying to share our work, something from which we derive so much pleasure (and frustration), with the community around us!  It is always fun to hear their comments (you gotta have good eyes to do that) and answer their questions (where do you come up with these ideas?).  Diane was surprised at how much work goes into the Exhibit process, but she also told me that she enjoyed it.  Thank you Diane, for giving your time.  I really appreciated your company and your help!  There are more pictures on my FB page.  Click here

If you live in the Clarkston, Michigan area, please be sure and stop by to see the Great Lakes Beadworkers Guild's beadwork on display.   If you would like to know more about the guild....
January 25, 2011 at 7:00 pm I will be giving a presentation about the Great Lakes Beadworkers Guild in the Independence Township Public Library community room!
Please come, bring along your latest projects, we will have beadwork show and tell after the presentation!

Oh my, I still have some newsletter articles to write....sigh ....still no time for beading!
See you in the funny papers!