Inspiration Boards

I am up early thanks to a monstrous crow. It caw cawed for ten minutes straight until I got out of bed then abruptly flew away. Every one is dressed, teeth brushed, breakfast fed, and waiting for the bus. So now is my little window of quiet morning time before I need to get some chores done and wake up Lauren. This is my blog land time. BUT, today, I find myself on Flickr doing searches on "Inspiration Boards".

Here are a few of the extra fabulous ones... THIS ONE (so right up my color way at the moment), THIS ONE (I love the chaos in it), THIS ONE (what is with me an teal these days?), THIS ONE (color, yum), and THIS ONE (cause it's different, and I love Anna Maria).

So now, I am suddenly obsessed with getting an inspiration board in the studio. I want one, I have to have one, I can't live without, I may not make it through the day unless I get one... I am so desperate to have one that I may wake Lauren up early, deal with her grumpy wrath, and go to JoAnn Fabrics right now to get one.

Here is the thing that is keeping me in my comfy chair though... in my mind, there are two kinds of inspiration boards. A) keeping your soul inspired ones and 2) keeping your ideas inspired ones. The souls ones are daily reminders of why you do what you do. They have pictures of friends and family, favorite quotes... you know, motivational stuff. I had one of those at the old house. It had news paper clippings of family members that had been published, it had pictures from Christmas cards of close friends, it had the receipt from my buying my business license. I tried to hang it in the new studio and it fell off the concrete wall and broke. The second kind of board is the kind I want now.

I am trying to think practically. If I want an inspiration board to cover with ideas that keep my creative juices flowing then I have to have a source for those ideas right? That means I would be pinning up magazine pages/clippings most likely. I don't get any magazines these day!! Would it be a total waste of an idea board if I didn't really have constant sources for ideas? I do pick up some publications here and there... and there are all those lovely paint swatches I covet in the hardware stores... and I could print photos I find inspiring on the internet (though that would mean needing to buy printer ink and put the computer together in the studio). Oh, and I don't have push pins either.

Do any of y'all find this happening to you? You have a compelling urge to do something that is incredibly difficult to ignore or stop thinking about... and yet at the same time, silly practical details keep you from going for it? This usually isn't "me". I always go for it and deal with the wastefulness of my decision down the road. But I am still working on my Lemonade Stand For Art way of thinking. I don't want to buy things I don't need.

Oh what a silly Thursday rambling.

Holiday Recap

Why is it that half the time I don't have a thing to say and the other times I am busting at the seems with things to tell you? And now, I have so many things that I am going to forget things. We'll do a daily recap and see if I hit every thing...

Friday:
The Gushing Contest started and my stars, how fun was that?!? I thought it was great reading all the things that people had on their minds. And I was kinda surprised more of you didn't comment!! I guess y'all like the easier, just-draw-a-name, kid of giveaways. You'll have one of those eventually. Oh, go check out Parallel Crossings!! I finally posted after a month of waiting!! Cassie and I will kick things into high gear once I can get my kids out the door to school.

I also spent Friday recovering from book club the night before. I was a tired lazy bum most of Friday thanks to my girls. LOL. Let's just say... 10 women... 2 1/2 hours... 8 bottles of wine. It was a blast. And for those of you following along with our reading... I picked 5 books for the vote. They were The Red Tent, Walked In Love, Twilight, Tell No One and Catcher In The Rye (I am to lazy today to get links for you, just amazon them, they come right up). The vote was close. It was between Twilight and Catcher In The Rye. Cather In The Rye was the winner.

Saturday:
You know, a minute ago each day of the past 4 days was clear as a bell in my head, now, for the life of me I can't remember a thing. This is why I am convinced that I will suffer from dementia and memory loss as an elderly person.

Oh, I remember, I made beads on Saturday... FOR YOU GALS!! I am thinkin' I'll update the Bead Box on Friday. Stay tuned for that.

We also had friends over on Saturday. It was so much fun. Great friends, great food, great conversations... screaming wild kids roasting s'mores and nearly burning each other... it was a blast.


Sunday: (by far the best day of the holiday weekend)
Even though I was up very late Saturday night, I woke up extra early to hitch a ride with my Mom, Dad and sister out to the Avon Flea Market. It is about a half hour from here. It is a weekend event all summer and fall long. You can find all sorts of junk and antiques (plus really crappy mass produced garbage from China being displayed in banana boxes, you don't want to get me started on that). I loved wandering around the stalls. It was funny though, when with my Mom, Bonnie and I are no longer 28 & 30... we are 4 & 6. We have to go were our Mom tells us with no wandering off. LOL.

I scored some great treasures at the flea market. I found two, really cool, white and turquoise Hager pottery pieces (only one shown in photo). I got a fantastic brass door knob. I am actually starting a door knob collection. I want to mount them on cool face plates and make coat hooks out of them (to which my sister replied "why do you have to have so many good ideas?"). I also bought a neat piece of milk glass, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (copyright 1966, beautiful illustrations) and an old oak table. Wanna know how much I spent? Pottery: $6 Knob: $3 Book: $1 Table:$8 Milk Glass: $3... acquisitions editing for $21 ROCKS!!

Saturday afternoon was Jacob's first football game of the season. All I can say is Sudden. Death. Overtime. The kids were awesome. It was the most exciting game I have ever been to. And the Warriors won in OT... 12-6! YOO HOOO!!!!


Monday:
We have a Labor Day tradition of going to the last Rochester Red Wings game of the year downtown. The kids love it. We eat tons of junk food and watch a ballgame. It's great. But before that... I got acquainted with Ron's bench top grinder. I spent most of the morning before the game and most of the evening after the game working on that grinder. I am not ready to show you that project yet. I think it deserves a whole post to itself. I'll give you this hint though... it's something for the kitchen.

And now you are caught up.

Tomorrow is the first day of school and I am jumping out of my skin with excitement. I can't wait to get back to my normal work routine of 3 hours at the torch every afternoon in peace and quiet. I will miss my quiet mornings though with the kids sleeping in until 9:30 - 10:00. That will be replaced with 3 different bus pick ups. Jacob leaves at 8am, Andrew at 8:20 and Lauren at Noon. ugh. But we'll find a good groove.

Today will be spent doing some last minute back to school things. Andrew could use some new sneakers, Jacob's locker still needs setting up and he has homework he didn't do yet, and Miss Lauren needs to pick out an outfit for tomorrow.

Message In A Bead

(Kinda Like a Message In A Bottle, LOL)
You can purchase the jewelry (ALL SOLD!! THANKS!!) and ACEO shown HERE (and some not shown) in this post on my website!

Drum roll please.... are you ready for the big reveal?!?!






The new Zoozii's tool is WORD PLATES!!

This tool has been so much fun to work with. But I'll get to the ease-of-use-infomercial stuff in a minute. First.... AAAHHHH!!! How COOL is that? I got to test a tool!! I was so excited to be asked. Amy O, the owner/creator, of Zoozii's sent me a convo on Esty way back when my "Growing Glass No4" piece was on the front page. She said that she loved the new stuff I was doing and that she had a new tool she thought might lend itself to my new art. (Be sure to click the pics so you can see better close ups of these new beads!)

I was so excited and totally honored to be asked. I just finished up another post for Watch Me Create about getting to test this tool. One of the things I said was that "in the back of my tortured-in-high-school-always-picked-some-where-in-the-middle-for-dodge-ball mind I always wanted to be "good enough" to test something." I couldn't be more thrilled that the thing I am testing is a Zoozii's tool, because frankly, I am a Zoozii's press whore. I love them, I have at least 10! No other tools will do. And the fact I was sworn to secrecy just put me over top... I love a good secret and all the teasing leading to the surprise of it.

Amy had me pick a few words I wanted to play with. I asked for LOVE, CALM, CREATE, JOY, and DREAM. I picked words that spoke to me. LOVE is obvious, it is a must have... CALM because I like blue and greens in my artwork and I think they make for CALM feelings... CREATE, well duh, I CREATE everyday so it is a must have word... JOY because I think it is a highly under rated word, we should all find reasons to use it more often and because it is my sister's middle name... and finally DREAM, just because. DREAM was still in the testing stages in the Zoozii's studio so I haven't received it yet, but I see it is already to go on the website!!


For my lampworkers out there... here is what you need to use the tool: Texture Press Base, Shape Plates, and Words. It really is so easy to use... you pick your word, slide it on to the base, slide the shape plate on top of that, then screw it down... then you do the same to the top portion of the press... pick word (or no word), slide on the other half of the shape, screw down and you are ready to press. It is easy to change the words in and out. And you can also turn the words so they can either be parallel with the mandrel line or perpendicular (except for really long words). You'll need one more tool for these new flat back clasps I have made. That is the Cabochon Mandrel. It gives you a base to build up glass with no hole in the middle. I ended up buying 5 of them... they are that awesome. With the word press, I just worked up a dollop of glass on to the mandrel then pressed it into the word press. Easy.

For my beady people out there... these new beads turn out just like any other lampwork glass bead! The hole sizes are the same... the bead sizes are the same... only now, you can say things in your jewelry!! I love the long rectangular bead for pendants. Amy and I talked about it and she is going to make vertical words as well so they read top to bottom for pendants like this. I will definitely be adding word beads to Bead Box bead sets!! And if you have suggestions for other words you would like to see me use... leave a comment and let me know!

So there you have it... my secret project has been revealed!! Let me hear what you think!! And if you are lampworker... you better go get one before they are all gone!!

Edited to add:

A before and after cleaning of beads made on the Cab Mandrel ~