Posted in ETSY on March 31, 2017|
Let’s get right to it. Click HERE to get to my shop, or on the thumnails for each item.
Summer Blue Mini Spikes:
Stars & Stripes Ball Buttons:
Lavender Fields Lava Lite Trios & Pals:
Off Kilter Cubes (NEW!):
Royal Mint Sampler:
Neon Harvest Floopy Flower Bracelet (or necklace):
So that’s that. I hope you like! These are my favorites this week:
I’m gonna get dressed and go hang with the BFF this evening. She has new perfumes I’m excited to sample. Thanks for checking in!
Posted in blah blah blah on March 30, 2017| 4 Comments »
IT’S CANDY SEASON! I mean, it’s almost Easter. This is what I’m lovin’ this year:
BUT. They still haven’t brought back the orange crème eggs and for that they should be flogged. FLOGGED!
Dad brought me an easter basket every year, and it was always full of plastic grass, fillable plastic eggs, jelly beans, a chocolate bunny, a metric ass-ton of Peeps and a little stuffed animal. Like, until just a few years ago, when I was probably waaay too old for an easter basket. I could never figure out why he put SO MANY PEEPS in there. But I never said anything because he put the baskets together himself. That was really sweet of him. I think I miss him most this time of year. Candy was sort of our thing. Funny thing, candy hurt his teeth, but when he got falsies we went ape from there.
I’ve been eyeballin’ my seed beads again. You may or may not know seed beads were my first bead-love. Yep… eyeballin’ those seed beads, trying to figure out how in the world I’m gonna fit seed beads into my schedule. Between gawking at cowboy boots on ebay (new obsession, but likely to be short-lived), making jewelry, melting beads, jazzercising/walking off my mini eggs and trying to find something interesting to eat for dinner every day… Hmm. Can I give up sleep or my frequent hot baths in exchange for calculating the circumference of wooden beads while taking into account how many size 15 miyukis (vs matsunos or tohos) or size 11 Czech seed beads will wrap around said circumference? And then going ahead and stitching these beads, who are the size of little specks, one at a time until I start to see double, while Bates Motel and Grace & Frankie drone on in the background…? Meanwhile, I think I forgot how to peyote stitch anyway. Whatever. I think what I really need is a vacation from my brain.
bebeadeds of yesteryear
I could barely believe it, someone wanted to buy the garnet/raspberry quartz necklace I showed you last week. So I sold it. But then I was suddenly missing a garnet/pink themed thing. What’s a girl to do? Make another one, of course… but since that cleaned me out of garnet rondells and raspberry quartz, I had to get creative.
I made this one with Czech glass rondells in garnet (a truer red than the slightly more wine hued garnets), amethysts in three different shapes/cuts, garnets in two different shapes/cuts, and of course, little foiled lampwork rondells in fuschia pink. Sorry guys, I’m keeping this one. For now.
But the best thing is the beads this week! Working puts me in a very good mood… (and also, there’s a bottle of Yves Saint Laurent’s Kouros waiting for me – it’s allegedly one of the stinkiest man perfumes in history, and if in fact that’s the case, it’s sure to lift my mood even higher.) I’ve been preparing a good many new experiments and old favorites for your bead-related hankerings… So here’s what I’m gonna do: I’ll put my listings together this evening, have everything ready to list so that when I finally drag myself out of bed, which is likely to be early-mid Friday afternoon, all I’ll need to do is click on a few things and there they’ll be. I’ll post here again when everything is good to go. Here’s a look at what’s coming up:
z-beads week of march 27th – that’s a bracelet (or necklace) up top, which will be finished before tomorrow, barring any unforeseen sparkly distractions
Thanks for checking in, guys… I’ll see you again tomorrow!
And here they are!
Click HERE to get to my shop, or on the thumbnails below to get right to each item.
ColorBlast BubbleComb Village:
Joyous Hearts:
Beauty Chunky Bracelet:
Merlot Boro Necklace:
Wild English Garden Colorblock Bracelet (or necklace):
Wild English Garden Umbrella Rondells:
I hope you like! Now it’s time for Jazzercise, food and more jewelry and glass. Someone posted a different Jazzercise routine on youtube at some point and about 12 minutes of it caused me to sweat profusely and rendered me immobile for the next couple of days. You know what they say, that means it’s working. I should probably do it again. But I dunno… I think I’ll stick with my Tight n Toned 1986 until I recover.
Thanks so much for checking in!
Posted in blah blah blah on March 20, 2017| 2 Comments »
I know you guys enjoy a quick peek at what’s to come, and I completely spaced it in my last post. So here you go! In about an hour or two, this is what will be in my shop:
z-beads etsy, week of march 20th
I’ll post here again with the links as soon as they’re live!
Meanwhile, I made this over the weekend, a slight nod at “fine” strung jewelry – a verrry long rhodolite (?) garnet, raspberry quartz, my favorite little garnet Japanese seed beads and thai silver necklace:
I suppose I could six it up and wear it as a bracelet:
But I’ve been wearing it long and tied in a knot:
It was strung on softflex and the clasp secured with crimps in 4 different spots. I’ve come to distrust silk cord for anything but pearls…
Anyway, I’ll be back in a jiff with the etsy stuff.
Posted in blah blah blah on March 20, 2017|
I’m a bit behind… I’ve been trying to make one more set, one more bead, one more whatever, for the amount of effort required for listing things on etsy. Which probably isn’t much for a responsible person. But me, I’m not so good at doing un-fun stuff. Like opening mail. I’m terrible about opening mail when I get it. If it doesn’t look like a bill I just set it down somewhere. When/if I finally clean, I gather up all the offending mail from its various spots and put it on my desk and I still don’t open it. So today, before I could even get to my keyboard, I had to eliminate an enormous pile of papers that turned out to be 95% pointless and a gratuitous waste of trees. The other 5% were bills. Before anyone suggests that I switch to paperless billing, I should mention that I need paper bills because I’ll forget to pay them otherwise. Typical me. “Gimme only the paper that I want and none of the paper I don’t want.”
nelson!
I’ve had many distractions these days, some chosen, some not. I used to be so good at making beads all the time! I was better at staying ahead of things. Now… sometimes I miss the silence, the days and days without leaving the house or speaking to anyone on the phone… but mostly I don’t. Lately, I’ve been pretty good, though – about both trying new things and about writing my bead/jewelry ideas down as they come to me. (I actually made a cheese spread. 5 years ago I would have made a gaggy face at the mere suggestion of it.) But finding the thrill in turning the kiln on to warm up some nights is overcome by my appetite for other things – mainly jewelry making. Which may not be a bad thing, but to me, it feels more like rebellion than anything else. I feel like I’m shirking my duties as head glass melter around here, and the cats aren’t gonna fill in for me. My previously reliable muse is leading me somewhere else. Astray? Or exactly where I need to go?
Should you follow your muse into the dark and creepy woods if that is where Muse is obviously headed? What if Muse ducks into a truck stop restroom? Or buys a one-way to Denver? Muse isn’t putting its hand on a spinning saw blade or jumping in front of a bus. These are simply unknown destinations; the unknown isn’t as fraught with danger or as blindingly, boringly mountainous as long as I don’t overthink and make assumptions of danger and boredom. Maybe Muse should be followed faithfully wherever it goes, even if only out of curiosity, with the fact in mind that I can turn around and go home whenever I want. You’ll see a few of the results of my curiosity on Etsy later today. Fingers crossed I don’t end up in Denver.
See you guys later today!
Posted in blah blah blah on March 15, 2017| 5 Comments »
Business as usual.
MAN STUFF I wear proudly: Aramis JHL, Guerlain Heritage, Opium for Men, L’instant de Guerlain Extreme EDP
And some leather.
leather studded bracelets
I haven’t worked with leather in many years. I dated a guy who worked at Tandy in the late 90’s, so I caught a little swag in the form of odd scraps and beads and other leather goodies purchased with the help of his employee discount. I recently found a humongous bag full of leather studs and those funky concho thingees at a thrift store for something ridiculous like $6, so I dug the leather out from the back of my closet and got busy for an evening. The studs alone are worth hundreds of dollars – those things were not cheap 20 years ago, I can’t imagine how pricey they are now.
ugh. I have so many of these now.
If memory serves, the concho things were popular with the line dancing/pseudo rancher crowd in the latter part of the 20th century, along with lace-up cowboy boots adorned with fringe and, of course, Glamour Shots. Just think, if we could convince those hipsters with skinny jeans and gawdawful neckbeards to lace their floopy scarves into these concho things, we could bring back Ranch Fabulous in an amazing way. And I could make a mint selling them on etsy – seriously, look at what the hipsters did to bacon prices. It couldn’t be that difficult, most of them already think the unkempt truck-driver look is the tippity-top of fashion. I’ll be glad when that fad has passed and clean shaven men (or at least manicured beards) are back in favor.
moonlighting
And some Moonlighting. Ever watch this series? It was on in the late 1980’s and it starred Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd. My step-dad Bruce absolutely could not miss Moonlighting, and I hated it. As a 7 or 8 year old, I found Bruce Willis to be old with a receding hairline, Cybill Shepherd to be old and matronly and Allyce Beasley to be adorably charming. I didn’t get any of the quirk or hilarity, and even the vaudevillian perp chases were lost on me. As an adult, I love this show. I find Bruce Willis as David Addison to be absolutely hunkerriffic, Cybill Shepherd as Maddie Hayes to be astoundingly gorgeous (her clothes, though – not exactly) and Agnes Dipesto’s character to be quite annoying. Funny how things change as you get older. TV totally blows chunks now. Change isn’t always so good.
mmm, that five o’clock shadow makes me weak in the knees… neckbeard hipsters should try this look instead.
In other news, I pay way too much for crappy cable. I’m sure everybody does, but that isn’t my point. In this crappy cable package I get channels 1-24, almost all of which suck, plus some other random stuff somewhere between channels 25-2000. On the latter end of the dial are several music channels. No music videos, mind you, but songs are played while photos of the band members and trivia and occasional ads flash across the screen. Even MTV doesn’t show music videos anymore, just rehashes of whatever new absurdity popped up on YouTube that day. (There you have it: the cheapening of everything in one prime example.) You can have your pick from R&B, reggae, oldies, “alternative” and loads of other genres. Today’s alternative is not the same as it was 20 years ago; for that type of “alternative” you have to tune in to the “indie” channel. I don’t like most of what’s on there either, but every once in a while they play something good.
Kim Gordon’s “Murdered Out” from 2016
As a long-time Sonic Youth listener, I’m thrilled. I can’t wait to hear more from Kim Gordon solo. I never quite knew what to think of Kim Gordon when I was younger, in the pre-internet era. I tried to imagine her face while smoking cigarettes in dim light with my friends as “Kool Thing” droned out of my old boom box. In the few photos I saw of her she seemed older than most of the people making that kind of music at that time, and I wondered what her story was. Now that I have internet, I can finally know. Turns out she’s just a dedicated artist and musician and is my mother’s age. However old you are, you’re never too old to noisily rock out.
Iggy Pop: Post Pop Depression (2016)
So, it’s 2016. What’s an elderly punk star to do? Release an album, duh, and prance around shirtless with the energy of a 30 year old on the stage of Austin City Limits. My first awareness of Iggy Pop was the song “Candy” featuring Kate Pierson (from the B-52’s) in the early 1990’s. Later on that decade, it was “Lust For Life” featured in the movie Trainspotting. In other words, I’ve never been a die-hard Iggy Pop fan, but always had respect. I was surprised and pleased to hear something a bit different from Iggy Pop late one evening when I tuned into the indie channel. Something titled “Sunday”: something a bit Saturday night fever kinda funky that ended with a fancy orchestral ensemble. I had to hear more, so off to Google Play Music I went. Why was I not surprised to find Josh Homme’s name in the credits? Josh Homme is my favorite rock star, probably because he isn’t just a rock star surrounded by parties and babes. He’s a serious musician who turns every project he touches into solid gold rock. Post Pop Depression is no exception, even considering Pop’s signature (in my opinion, a bit awkward) lyrical style. I need to check out the other guys who contributed to this album.
Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band: Take Me To The Land Of Hell (2013)
If you know anything about Yoko Ono at all, you know she’s pretty weird. Considering the misogynistic and racist BS she endured as John Lennon’s wife, it’s understandable… but really, though, I think she was already weird. And that’s okay! Some folks might not be aware that Double Fantasy was not the extent of her musical career. Yoko is still getting down like a kicked chihuahua with her son Sean and just about any other established musician who feels like throwing their hat in. My favorite one from this album is Cheshire Cat Cry, as it has a distinctly post-punk feel to it. By the way, I didn’t hear this one on the indie channel – I heard it on my favorite local radio station, 91.7 The Spy.
And then there was a song by Ty Segall, and I heard only enough of it to be curious so I googled him and found a mention of him making a video about something called “emotional mugging”. Instead of going straight to that video, I just googled emotional mugging and stumbled onto the website of one Martha Beck. The first few sentences of Beck’s Emotional Mugging article showed in the google search results, and the cynic in me thought “here we go… I know I’ll feel like posting something like “is this a joke?” in the comments section, but won’t, since I’m not that much of a cynical jerk. Or an emotional mugger, as it were.”
Martha Beck
But in keeping with my vow to give everything (and everyone) a chance to prove itself worthy of serious consideration, I clicked on the link and read it. Then I read several of her other articles. I have to say, for a self-help type of person, Martha Beck is somewhat atypical. Her message is very easy to grasp, probably because her writing style is conversational and humorous. She’s quite likeable, you probably won’t feel like she’s telling you what to do. I haven’t noticed her using words like “narcissist” or “sociopath”, which, in my humbly unprofessional opinion, are inappropriately bandied about too frequently these days. The more of Martha Beck I read, the more I like her. I feel like she’s giving practical advice, ways to deal with people as they are, rather than diagnosing anyone or encouraging people to drag their loved ones to therapy. And hey, it turns out my vague, esoteric blog posts about my emotions and lot in life are actually a healthy way of dealing. Yes, it’s probably a bit unconventional, but I know for sure it’s preferable to attacking or blaming or grabbing a captive ear and yammering endlessly. And the beauty is, I’m not making anyone read anything. There’s that back button at the top of the browser and everyone can feel free to use it at any time. And don’t feel badly about it, please. Live and let live.
Oh, and beads:
bracelets for a friend
I made the blue leather and color block bracelet for my stylist… they even kind of match her tattoos.
I’ve been busy with that sort of thing, and I’m working on some stuff for Etsy. Hopefully I’ll have everything together and ready to go by the weekend. I’ll check back in soon and give you an update. If you like anything posted above, give me a holler and we’ll see what we can do.
Thanks for reading!
Here they are! Click HERE to get to my shop, or on the thumbnails below for each item.
Dayglo Part 2 Shimmer Spikes:
Fancy Glimmer Pills:
Experimental Ornaments in Lapis:
Spring Bloom Happy Tabs:
Sublime Southwest Super Stripey Triple Toggles:
Wintermint:
So there’s that. I hope you like! I must get on with my other duties; some cats need to be bothered. Thanks for checking in!
Posted in blah blah blah on March 2, 2017|
It has taken me longer than planned, as things often do these days, but the good news is my butt has been glued to the seat for more hours than I care to count, and later today, most likely in the afternoon/early evening, the beads will land on Etsy! Wow that was one long sentence. As is this many hours of photo editing. No complaints. Not really. My legs are just numb.
Meanwhile, here’s something from a long time ago to look at, just for fun.
See you later today!
the z-beads blog 