Crafter's Devotional and a Menu

Today I begin another item on my To Do List.
Ack! What am I thinking?

Well, I'm thinking I need a spark. You see, while I was catching up on all the blog reading I missed while I was out-of-town, I stumbled on posts by my friend, Patty at My Life Under the Bus, and by Elisabeth at Beads for Busy Gals. Apparently, their muse has been off her game lately too and Elisabeth had recently found The Crafter's Devotional by Barbara R. Call.

They decided to use this book as a rallying point for a group of "like minded (semi-lost) souls, and host blog hops occasionally to see how everyone is doing." As soon as I saw their posts, I ran out of the house and to the bookstore to grab the book. As well, I've asked to be added to their list of semi-lost souls as I intend to play along. Elisabeth has a link at the top of her blog that will take you to the list of participants and some other information.

One of the first things you notice and learn about the book is that it advocates journaling. (I don't think I'm spoiling anything here. . .it says this on the back cover plain as day.) So I've made sure to gather some supplies to have with me for this part. I actually had a mostly empty journal/sketchbook already, and I took a quick trip up to the store for some colorful pens (SCHOOL SUPPLIES!! They're on sale right now. I have a problem.) and a stick of glue for any collaging desires that possess me.

In addition, I grabbed a cheap pencil case. With a book ring I already had, I've attached my supplies to my journal for easy travel.

I'm all ready to go. . .now to actually DO the prompts and whatnot in the book!!


Beyond that, it's Monday and I'm all ready with a meal plan for my week.

Breakfasts: Breakfast banana split, cereal/oatmeal, raspberry parfaits, muffin cup egg casseroles, muffins, omelets

Lunches: Turkey (leftover) on salad, ham sandwiches, bean burritos, pita pizzas, soup w/grilled cheese, tuna noodles, chicken salad pitas

Dinners: 

Chipotle lime shrimp soft tacos with corn and black bean salsa

Chicken with mustard cream sauce w/cauliflower & salad

Easy vegetable beef soup (sub ground turkey)

Crockpot chicken w/ sweet potatoes & baked zucchini fritters

Chipotle rubbed flank steak w/green beans & potato salad

There's more Menu Plan Monday is at I'm an Organizing Junkie.

These Black Satin Earrings are new in the shop

I've got plenty to hop on today as you can imagine. How's your week looking?

BTW: Using Leftovers

Though I've got a million things running though my head that I want to do and should be doing, one thing is sure; it's Bead Table Wednesday. Gosh darnit I'm making some time for that! ;)

I carved out some time yesterday to sit down and make something from my sketchbook. In fact, I made more than one design from it! Here's all that I got accomplished yesterday.

Now, let me go to into a little detail. I started by staring at this entry (pardon the big X over it. . .that means I did it.)

While thinking about it, I noticed a scrap piece of patina-ed copper wire sitting on the edge of my craft desk. I grabbed it up and set to bending, twisting, and hammering. Before long, I ended up with the two sets of toggle clasps in the above photo. I apologize for not having a closer picture of them, but wasn't having much success with picture-taking today.

Once that was done, I was still itching to get something made. The next sketchbook entry looked like this.

I decided against the embroidery thread when I found a little stash of some colorful silk ribbon. It's a fairly simple bracelet, but looks very teen/tween to me.

Once the bracelet was made, there were a few scraps of the black cord on my desk. I couldn't let them go to waste so they quickly became earrings.

While it wasn't much, I was really happy with my use of 'leftovers' and scraps.

Check out what else is going on this Bead Table Wednesday in the Flickr Group.

I also added a new pair of earrings and placed a necklace on sale in the CraftyHope Etsy Shop.

Exclamation Earrings

Life's Path Necklace *on sale*

Now to get back to some of those million things! What have you got going on today?

Sketch or Forget

If you stopped by here yesterday, you saw my photo for the prompt "Words." I spent a portion of the previous day considering what my subject would be before settling on the canvas I made Pat.

Before making my decision, one of the main subjects that kept coming back to me was my sketchbook.

There are A LOT of words in there. I've found that it's imperative that I have some writing materials near me at all times because ideas will just pop into my brain no matter where I am. And if don't get these ideas written down (play epic disaster music with lots of drums now,) they just FALL OUT OF MY HEAD! It doesn't matter how enthusiastic I am about these ideas/designs or how much I swear I won't forget them, if I don't write it down it's gone. Sigh.

Now don't get me wrong, my book is not just full of jewelry ideas, but marketing ideas, blog topic suggestions (this was one of them), color combinations, craft experiments, poetry, doodles, straight-up journaling, links or websites to remember, lists of supplies, and so much more.

If I don't have my exact sketchbook with me, I'll just draw something out on anything. The other day I was in my car in the bank drive through when an idea came to me. Fortunately, there was a slip of notebook paper in the seat next to me to get the stroke of inspiration written down.

Since I know that I have a horrible memory, I write down just about everything I can. However, sometimes the ideas and memory-jogs that go into the book don't translate as well later. I've got quite a few design ideas that I just can't seem to decipher. It's a shame really because I'm sure I was really excited about those ideas when they came to me.

Right now I'm trying to keep up the momentum of getting all my ideas in the book, no matter how tiny they are or how out of this world. So it's filling up faster than usual. I like that. As well, I'm in the process of going through my sketchbook and attempting to actually make the ideas and designs come to life. I've had some successes as well as some failures.

Many of the successes (or what I consider a success) end up in the shop.

Bubbles Ascending Necklace

Many of the bad ideas never get made, but some have to be tried in order for me to discover what a bad idea it was, like this necklace.

I was going for a waterfall effect, but it just keeps tangling.

As I work through my sketchbook and ideas, I may be sharing some of them with you here. For now, though I'm just going to keep plodding through it.


Today I'm working on one of those inspirations that just HIT. You've probably seen them before, my Shabby Beads. My painted fingers were the perfect subject for today's February Photo A Day Challenge prompt.

Day 3: Hands

Also, there's a few GIVEAWAYS going on that I thought I'd share:

• Pips is offering up some of her Petal and Flower Capped Beads for just leaving a comment. So easy!!
• Over at Second Surf, there's a massive leather giveaway going on with several ways to enter. Get to it! 

What do you do when inspiration strikes? Do you have a sketch/idea book too or do you have other methods? I'd love to know.