Today was supposed to be Inspiration from my Closet, Part 2. As those of you who "get" me know, I am a total procrastinator...it is my mantra: "why do something today, that you can put off until tomorrow? or the next day?" So, while I do have something simmering for that post, today, I wanted to talk to you about jumping on the opportunity to create when it presents itself.
A few weeks ago, I signed up to show my jewelry at my 12 year old son's middle school Fall Bazaar. I knew I needed to create some things that would be at a different price point than I normally sell at, which meant I had to re-think some of my design strategies.
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| A little Czech glass earring collection! |
I had some ideas, and wanted to get into production mode and was doing pretty good...had a bunch of my Czech glass out and was cranking out some of the earrings pictured. My mind and eye kept wandering to other things on my table, though. While my hands were wiring together Czech glass beads into colorful, fun combinations, I kept looking at pretty beaded beads that our own Kristen Stevens sent me a while back.
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| Kristen's amazing beaded beads! |
I had been wiring some of my Czech glass bead flowers for another project and saw a bracelet in my head with creamy ivory, butterscotch and deep chocolate brown. But, Melissa, you are supposed to be working on things for the Bazaar, or your COM piece, or your unfinished Day of the Dead piece, or twenty other unfinished things!!
Yes, I was supposed to be doing that, but I decided I should strike while the proverbial iron was hot! Here is what I came up with...
I really love what happened when I gave myself permission to stop worrying about what I needed to do and let my heart do what it wanted to do. As luck would have it, I had a few other AJE member artisan beads to add to the mix! There is Kristen's beaded bead, right next to Sue Kennedy's raku frit lampwork bead, and across the way is a chocolate brown ceramic bead by Karen Totten. Other beads in the mix are my Czech glass flower, a bronzeite rondelle, faceted agate of some sort, and some other stone beads that I can't identify, but love! The lampwork leaf was from a set of headpins I got from Karen Leonardo at a beadshow a couple of years ago.
The cool thing? After finishing this, I had some of Karen's leaves left and thought...hmmm, these would be cute as a charm-type pendant. I also loved the wire-wrapped circles I made, so I made a couple more of those and they sort of morphed into sweet, simple necklaces that I know I will make more of!
I still had time to crank out some copper swirl rings (which were a big hit!).
So, the moral of this story is, don't be afraid to get sidetracked...sometimes doing what you want to do, instead of what you need to do is a positive thing!
Have fun getting sidetracked!!
Melissa Meman
