Yesterday I planned to catch up on the housework and other personal tasks that were ignored as I worked on my muffin tin jewelry, but what really happened was. . .well. . .not much.
Between having the nieces over the weekend and the challenge, I didn't really have much of a weekend. So yesterday, I rested.
And today, well, today I'm trying to catch up.
Therefore, on my bead table is a long and growing To Do list
And some of the items to do (finished jewelry pieces that need pictures, descriptions, and to be listed)
Considering it's almost 4pm, I have a feeling most of this work will bleed into my schedule tomorrow as well. At least I have lots of completed jewelry now!!
While I'm here, I've been meaning to show off the beautiful Treasury Shannon from For My Sweet Daughter designed. In it she included a bunch of fantastic jewelry, bead, and component artists' work. . and somehow I ended up in that mix. I'm so very honored. (Please click on the link to see the whole treasury.)
My mind is spinning this morning.
I have so many ideas, so many tasks I want to accomplish, so many directions I want to take. The problem is, when I have this many options I tend to avoid ALL of them and do something else entirely. Yeah, I can be scattered like that.
This picture has nothing to do with the blog post, I just like it! :)
So, what are these options that have me so bewildered? Well, if you must ask. . .
** I want to do another giveaway, but first I need to finish making the item(s) to give away.
** I need some more pictures for this blog
** I have some thrifty purchases and revamps that I want to highlight here
** There are some designs in my head that I want to play around with
** NINE of the items in my shop will be expiring at the end of the month, and I don't know how I want to handle that. . mark down? renew? try another venue?
** I need to take some more pictures of the items I do have completed
** My feed reader is out of control
** There are so many more that it's pointless to waste time and list them all here
Now. . . where do I start? I want to take pictures, create, write blog posts, research options, etc. My typical response to having to make a directional decision is to go shopping. Yep, avoidance!!! But. . . I think I'm going to face the music today and really try to bust out the work.
I guess that means I need to finish up this blog post in a hurry.
Let's see. . .since I blogged last, I listed two new items in the shop
*~Crafty Links~*
The 'theme' for today is JEWELRY!!!
Craft Gossip's Needlework section shares some images of Smocked necklaces. I know nothing about smocking, but these are definitely inspiring!
The folks at Whip Up have a fab tutorial on making a layered felt flower brooch. The possibilities with this are endless!
If you've been hanging here long enough, you know how much I love to incorporate buttons into my jewelry. This layered button necklace as shared by Martha Stewart's niece is pretty cool too.
While I don't buy fabric for sewing, I do buy it for trying out projects like this one. Intended as a way to recycle fabric scraps, these braided necklaces are just too cute for me to wait for SCRAPS!! I don't sew near enough for that!
Before I head out, here's some fun stuff for your Friday!
Check out this funny church sign. Oh, it's not the message that's funny, it's the name of the church!
Lastly is this video. I like movies where dancing is involved (at least older ones: Footloose, Dirty Dancing, old musicals, etc. . not the Step it Ups of today) In any case, this video is pretty rad!
Time to hop on that to do list like it's a grenade!
Happy Friday ALL!!
Have I mentioned that ever since I started cleaning and organizing the craft room, the rest of the house has been completely neglected. There are several reasons for this: 1- I was completely focused on getting that room in order, 2- since that is the cleanest room in the house, it's the room I want to spend my time in, and 3- since the room is actually clean, I'm ready to be creative and be in there knocking out all the cool stuff I can. In any case, I realize what the rest of my house looks like and it's starting to get to me. So, this week I'm gonna try to focus on one room of the house each day. My reward (other than a clean room) will be spending some time crafting. I know it will take me longer than a week, but it'll be a start. Yet, I couldn't bring myself to get started today. Instead, LOML* and I went to play at the beach. He did his thing and I did mine
I also want to show y'all what I got accomplished from the craft-to do box this week. (Clicking on the mosaics below will take you to them on Flickr if you want a better description of these pieces.) And what I made for myself (not in the box.) Plus my finished artwork from the beach. This is a whole sheet of shrink plastic that was in the craft-to-do box. It still constitutes 'to-d0' since I need to decide what to do with it now. Jewelry of course, but how? I'll get to that later, so it's back in the box for that project.
I hope you had a GREAT weekend. I guess it's back to the grind tomorrow and a start on the house. I'm being a bit ambitious.
Crap-ity, Crap! That's what I feel like right now. I started feeling icky yesterday, and it's still with me today. So, I'm at home 'resting.' Again, it's one of those all-in-my-head things. I'm tired, achy, dizzy, and nauseous. There's also some pain in the back of my head and neck. Hopefully, it's just sinuses and will go away soon as I've taken some sinus headache medicine.
Where can I start? I really got some crafting done over the weekend and felt quite proud of myself for getting some done from the craft-to-do box. See. . .These are some necklaces I finally got restrung. They needed it for different reasons.
These are two bracelets and a memory wire necklace that I started long ago and never finished. Here they are finished and looking pretty!
Lastly, these are some beads I had started making and left completely unfinished. With some paint and decorating, I think they're awesome. I even had time to turn some of them into a necklace (left).
I've been thinking quite a bit about the format of my blog. As I'm sure I've said before; this is the CRAFTY Hope blog and I feel that I may not include enough craftiness. As such, I may want to make some changes. I have several options of what I am thinking about doing and do want YOUR input. However, just because the vote goes a certain way does NOT mean that's how I will change. I just want some ideas basically. As such, I've created a poll (see sidebar to the right) of ways I may change the blog. Let me say that I use excel, delicious.com, and a feed reader to save sites and blog posts that I find interesting and may want to use or refer to. Most of these are craft blogs or pertain to creativity, but others are just some interesting links like I already post here. I want to start sharing these in some way and my blog seems the best option. Yet, I want your help to decide how or if I should do this. Take my poll, these are your options:
First option - include more craft links in another blog. I've signed up for another blog name, but have yet to do anything with it. I'm trying to decide. I could just make that my more 'crafty' blog.
Second, I could just post more craft stuff here. This would include all the other blogs and sites I find daily.
Third, I can decrease the other links I share on a semi-daily basis and save these for just one or two days a week. This option includes removing some of the 'themes' I currently use.
Forth, I can blog more about what goes on in my day-to-day life, more like a journal than I am now. This is mostly for those friends of mine who are visiting.
Lastly, I can make NO changes and just keep going
I can also make a combination of these changes.
Overall, I just want to know if you like the format I am using now and if you would be opposed to adding some more of the links that I actually save for myself, as this is my blog.
I have one more item for today - RANDOM ITEM!! LOML* and I were watching 'Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" last night and recognized the Innkeeper at the Leaky Cauldron. We (HE) realized that it is Jim Tavare, one of the finalists on "Last Comic Standing." We thought that was pretty cool.
Anyway, TAKE MY POLL and give me some feedback. The poll will only be open through the month of August.
The pregnancy fairy STILL has not visited me. Instead, the emotional, bloating, painful, bleeding, hateful demon of menstruation is visiting for a few days. Am I am lucky or what? Perhaps the sarcasm fairy is visiting as well. Gimmie a minute and that one will flit away as the trio of self-loathing, doubt, and crying-fit fairies land with a thud on my windowsill. They're so graceful, and pretty too!! Eh - I guess sarcasm's staying for a while.
On a happier note, I was able to get something done from my crafts-to-do box last night. This was accomplished while watching Project Runway and staying out of the way as LOML* installed the new flat screen TV in the bedroom. We then proceeded to start up a movie, snuggle in bed, and promptly fall asleep. That TV is AWESOME!
For "Thrifty Thursday," I promised I'd share my weekend haul with you. I was able to hit up an estate sale and three garage sales. The bulk of my purchases came from the estate sale.
These are what I'm calling the 'household goods' - they're basically decorative elements (forks and vintage pillowcase included!)
This box of sewing notions was all together. It included lots of buttons, some old embroidery hoops and thread, lots of sewing machine needles, embroidery needles, seam rippers, and misc. notions. These were my favorites in the box - button cards and some kind of old-fashioned needle threader. I also scored on the craft supplies with a box of old photos, broken jewelry, greeting cards, some plastic easter figures, playing cards, and a stack of scrapbooking paper. There were TONS of craft books at the estate sale. I also found some neat kids books. This alphabet one was my favorite. Elves rock (esp when they look like Orlando Bloom) Here is one of the pages in the Elf book. In addition to the caption, there are dominoes, a dalmatian, a duck, daisies, and a dragonfly in the picture. Too cute!!
All of that for just $18 total! Talk about thrifty!! In addition, here are some links for you to make your life more thrifty too:
