Sneak Peek

From June:

Here is a new design I created for Bead and Button this year. We've named the bracelet Mambo. We'll have kits for the two colors, or if you want to use your own beads, you will also be able to purchase just the instructions.

Bead and Button - just a few more days! Come see us at booth #1011.

I have a crystal or two

At least once a week I think I'm crazy for having this job. Like when I look at my to-do list a mile long and know there's no way I'll accomplish it all.

At least once a week I think I'm lucky to have this job. Like when I looked at my Bead & Button Show signups today and discovered that I now have seven of eleven classes sold out at the show. I'm so grateful and humbled (and freaking out.)

At least once a week I adore this job (and usually MUCH more than just once!) Like when I have this many Swarovski Crystals delivered to my door. :-D

Guilty pleasures

I started my addiction to magazines at an early age. My babysitting income went to Vogue, Glamour, Bazaar, and Seventeen (along with some trashy romance novels when the income allowed.) I would pour over every little piece of every page - the clothes, the shoes, the jewelry, the hair, the makeup. And at some point I began pulling out the pages I liked. Which in some cases was pretty close to every single page. I had literally thousands of pages stored away that I had to selectively purge when we moved from Wisconsin to Texas when I was 14. It was horrible to have to let them go! I kept the "most important" ones though, and I still have some to this day in a file folder.

While my pulling of pages slowed to a trickle over the years, my magazine obsession has continued, and my list of titles expanded. Over the last 10 years of my jewelry career I've mainly pulled pages for design inspiration, and it's been a very effective way to jump-start my brain when I need a design push.

But we have some new toys these days for visual cues, and while I have learned that I don't like reading magazines online (strange when I have willingly given up physical books for my Kindle) I LOVE the endless sensory overload of Pinterest and Houzz. And pinning things is much like pulling those pages out of magazines again. My life has come full circle.

Hot Shoes

Pinterest has images on pretty much any topic, and Houzz is home/architecture focused. And if I just dropped you down the rabbit hole on these two sites, I'm sorry (ish.) There are some legal copyright problems for the photographers regarding the use of their photos on the sites, which is a bigger issue than I'm willing to spend time pondering and writing about. I'll let the experts sort it all out. But I'm having a blast planning my fantasy wedding, and future DIY projects, buying a whole new wardrobe, and pretending I would actually be able to walk in those Hot Shoes I adore... Oh yeah, and there's a LOT of fabulous jewelry inspiration too!

DIY

 

You can follow me on Pinterest at: http://pinterest.com/jilltwiseman/

Fantasy Wedding

My own worst enemy

So I spent my night's worth of work doing the following:

• Making a new sample for a workshop I'm teaching in Detroit in a 10 days - and as I am halfway through I discover that I've made the rookie mistake of sewing both snaps on upside down so it can not be clasped. AGH! I even was thinking to myself as I was sewing them on that I need to mention that in class as I'm teaching. I often do that...basically teach the class in my head as I'm stitching the project. Too bad I didn't listen to myself. So I ended up having to cut them off and restitch them, which was much more difficult because I'd gone on and done more embellishment after I had sewed them on which caused the angles to be difficult to turn. But it's done.
• Next up I discovered that for the second time in the last year, I had mixed Size 15 seed beads and Size 11 Delicas of the same color in the same container. It was even the SAME COLOR as last time. So then I had to spend a stupid amount of time sorting those bits out. 

Can you imagine how much more productive my time would have been if I hadn't been working against myself? Sheesh. So you see - when you make these sorts of mistakes at home and think you're the only one - you're NOT. All you can do is throw a little hissy fit and fix it.

Preparations continue for both my trip to the Great Lakes Bead Society (Detroit) for a week of fun, and then the iconic Bead & Button Show in Milwaukee. I have only 8 days between getting home from Detroit and leaving for Milwaukee, so I'm having to try to stock up for both events at once. Double the fun. I'm teaching one new class in Detroit and two new ones in Milwaukee so I'm trying to make sure I have all my ducks in a row with the instructions. It's always a little nerve wracking to debut a class. I also have to give a talk to the Great Lakes Bead Society monthly meeting while I'm there, so I'm figuring out what interesting stuff I might have to say there. Any ideas for me?