In case you missed the link in yesterday's post, the above image is Belen-Gaard, my own personal bat necklace. Hurray! It combines several things that I love: lampwork by my friend Lois, a bat, the color green, indicolite crystals, and sardonyx, which I have only recently decided that I love.
So, last night was our trip to Nightfall. If I could sum it up in one word, it would be "lame." It relied too heavily on strobe lighting and really fake spring-loaded plastic skeletons. Even the supposedly scariest walk-throughs and shows couldn't elicit so much as a jump-scare from us. Now, granted, my friends and I are all pretty jaded, having watched too many horror movies (and in some cases, read too many horror books), but I can say that at the very least I can be startled... and I just wasn't. Everything was too corny. There weren't a lot of actual people working the attractions, and those that were just didn't even seem to care. All in all, it was very disappointing and a waste of money that could have been spent on beads or books.
The night wasn't a total wash, though. We did all have fun hanging out with each other and complaining about how bad things were (especially the vampire show... ugh). One of my guy-friends was wearing an awesome Jedi costume; the other gal and I were Gothed up, and the two other guys, well, they just wore normal clothes, but we let them hang with us anyway ;) There were a few other people in costume, which was nice to see.
I'm waiting to receive some beads for a special project. If they don't arrive today, I'll spend a little time working on some accessories and/or jewelry for the belly dance clothes I want to wear tomorrow. I'd like to do some yarn hair ties, but I dunno if I have enough yarn and ribbon. Have to dig through the beadroom and see what I can come up with.
I'm so happy, I've finally made something with some of Margaret Zinser's beads! I love them, and I've been collecting them for a few years now, but I never use them. The colors are a little difficult to match to seed beads or Czech glass, and I am a stickler for matching. This time I lucked out, and found that Jet Nuit Swarovski crystals went perfectly with the black-and-goldstone coloring of this set. The vintage bronze iris faceted beads pick up the lighter sparkles within the glass, and add a touch of elegance. I call this one Queen of a Forgotten Era.
The image is a result of my continuing effort to get decent pictures of jewelry that's too dark for the black display. The beads photographed reasonably well on this board, but my gosh, is the board itself horrendously ugly! And so the quest continues... This wouldn't be such a problem if I didn't have a strong love for black beads.
I also added two new items to the Gallery today, Belen-Gaard and All Hallow's Sprite.
Last night's Nightfall trip got postponed until today, which means that I have a lot less time to get my usual Monday stuff done than usual. Off I go, more tomorrow!
In an hour or so, we're going to head out with a bunch of friends to go to Old Tucson Studios' "Nightfall" Halloween event. I haven't been since I was a teen, but back then it was a pretty good time... Hokey gory shows, a haunted house or two, and of course, touring the studios themselves. Many movies and TV shows (mostly westerns) were filmed at Old Tucson. Of course, most of the original stuff burnt down about 10 years ago in a fire, and it wasn't quite the same after they rebuilt it... But hopefully we'll have fun tonight.
Don't tell Chris that I'd kind of rather spend the admission fees on beads :P
I had to give up on the Nightmare Eyes project. I might have been able to make it work, but it reached the point where I realized that it would just be more trouble than it was worth. Too bad. In the meantime, I've strung another necklace or two, and started working on something fun for November. Tune in on Thursday the 1st to learn more!
Time to go decide if I want to wear pants or a skirt tonight...
Ok, the header is a little misleading; there are a lot of reasons why I love running Erthe Fae Designs, and I'm only going to talk about two of them in this blog. But if journalists can have inaccurate headlines, then so can I!
One thing that I love about being a jewelry designer is the ability to make things to go with my favorite outfits. Today I made a great black, purple and white necklace to go with a black, purple, and white blouse. They're perfect together and I can't wait for the temps to drop so I can wear the whole ensemble (it also involves a heavy purple stretch velvet skirt).
Another thing that I love is the ability to occasionally barter my products for the products of other Indie business owners. Over the past month I've had the opportunity to do this twice (three times, if you count the writing trade), and the second package just arrived today. I now have a handful of adorable "Cute as a button" hairpins from Gerbera Designs. Not only are they cute and well-made, but the base pins are a lot sturdier than normal bobby pins. If you love awesome hair accessories (and bags, and iPod cases), you should definitely check her site out.
My other trade was with Jenny at Kristine's Shower. Not only are her products amazing and professionally presented, but they're very well-packaged too. I had almost as much fun opening my package as using the items! Her Shea Butter Body Frosting is to die for -- even Chris likes it, and he's not one for frou-frou bath products. I've also tried the Lava Gloss and Soy Candles and have been universally pleased.
I hope that they both enjoy their jewelry as much as I enjoy my goodies!
Is "nerdery" even a word? Spell-check doesn't think so. I suppose "nerdiness" is more appropriate, but spell-check doesn't like that one either. I've always wondered... Is it a good or bad sign when you make up words? Does it show cleverness, or make you sound stupid, like you're not smart enough to know the real word? I suppose it depends on the context. Oh yes, and Marilee? Squaredelles. Yeesh.
Anyway, yesterday was nice and productive, mainly because I blew off doing my homework. I strung two great necklaces, including my own personal bat necklace. I was going to string a third, but the beads didn't quite work out, gotta come up with something else. I'll probably do that tomorrow. I also came up with another possible way to do the Nightmare Eyes bracelet, which I will work on tomorrow, too. I will not be defeated! Oh, the other necklace has the word Queen in its name, hence the Queens in the title (that and I've been watching Dr. Who, and I just saw an episode about the queen being coroneted, so there you go).
And the nerdery comes from me being a total nerd and spending $10 on a magazine about Guild Wars, my on-line game of choice. I basically spent that money to get the "free" miniature. I mean, sure, the concept art and articles are fun... but mini-pets! I love 'em! Nerdery also comes from reading more Gaiman. I wasn't too impressed by what I read last night. Other People might have been good if I hadn't figured out the central conceit one page into it. Ah well. I'm still holding out hope for more good stories later in the book.
I'm now going to go nerd it up in my video game!
Bleh. It's 80+ degrees today, and windy. My friends in NM have been complaining of wind, too, and I know wind is contributing to the CA fires, so it feels like there's just this huge wind blowing across three states. It could at least have the decency to be cool, and bring some rain with it. It doesn't feel at all like October. I have a feeling that I will not be wearing my cloak for Halloween, which means I have to decide which dance clothes I want to wear instead.
The Nightmare Eyes bracelet project isn't working yet. I may have to come up with some other way to do it. I'm considering trying to come up with a concept that uses these red nailheads that I have... but first I'd have to find said nailheads. I'll probably let the whole idea simmer in my head for a bit and work on something else instead. I'd kind of hoped to have it done before Halloween, since it has a creepy vibe, but then again, nightmares are creepy all year 'round.
Once again, I am not happy with today's picture-taking endeavors. I think I'm going to upgrade my camera soon. The one I'm using now is cool, but I think I want something with a higher mega-pixel-ness to get more detailed shots of beadwork. I'm going to spend some time this week doing a little research to see what models have a good customer satisfaction rating, and then make my decision.
Anyway! The above is my latest necklace, Tainted Love. It's a spiral rope accented with green gold stone, firepolished glass, and of course, lampworked hearts by Joan "Mothwoman" Eckard. Green and black if my favorite color combination. When I first started making jewelry, almost everything that I made was green and/or black. I've since branched out quite a bit, but I do like to return to my roots every now and then. These incredibly attractive heart beads, with their dark sparkly core inside a lime green casing, made it very easy. The rest of the necklace pretty much built itself around them.
The picture I tried to take for the Gallery didn't turn out that great, so nothing new there this week.
I had a fairly busy weekend, as evidenced by the lack of blogging. We spent a few hours visiting my family yesterday, which sort of sparked my new-camera-lust. This week should be pretty busy, too, especially since it's 4pm on a Monday and I haven't done any of my homework which is due tomorrow, or studied for my test. I'd better get cracking!
Well, Friday just totally slipped away from me. I spent the whole day with Chris! I need to have more discipline if he's going to be home, and do my work before I start goofing off with him. Today was a really nice day, though. Early in the afternoon his former co-worker Rene, who also runs our D&D game, called and asked if we wanted to do lunch. So we all went to this new Greek restaurant that opened just down the block. Ohmigosh it was so good! I was stuffed for hours afterwards, and I didn't even get baklava. It took forever for them to bring the food, but otherwise the service was great. We had two servers keeping our drinks full and whisking away empty plates. And our waiter was so tall. It was another one of those trying not to stare situations!
Anyway, the cool thing about going to lunch with two programmers who've spent the past couple years working together, is when you make an off-handed comment about maybe switching to a better shopping cart, they come up with tons of ideas on how to improve your site. So assuming Chris doesn't start a new, demanding job right off the bat, there may be some awesome additions to www.erthefae.com soon!
I did finish the necklace I was working on today, which means tomorrow I need something new to make at D&D. I think I'll do a bracelet, a specific bracelet that just popped into my mind. Usually I talk about inspiration after a piece is finished, but tonight I'm going to tell you the inspiration first! The other night I had a very strange dream, where I was in my parents' neighborhood, on the way to their house, and there was a huge storm brewing. The clouds were swirling dark grey, and in the swirls, there were shadowy demonic/ghostly shapes with glowing red eyes. This was not a new thing to me, as in my dream I said "I always get scared when the storm clouds look like that." That image has been in my mind off and on all week, along with other, more disturbing ones that I haven't even wanted to talk about. But the demon-clouds will make for a cool bracelet, I think. And they may pop up in a book someplace, just like the other two vivid dreams I've had in recent months.
I'd like to ramble on more about dream imagery, and the awesome music that played while I blogged (Radio India by Wench. I dance to their Voodoo song all the time, but I forgot that their other stuff is great, too), but it's past 3am so I'd really better get some sleep.
Image: Angry Piranhas
Angry Piranhas! is a necklace that I made some time ago, using this set of really awesome piranha beads by Chase Designs. Piranha beads! How often do you find something like that? My only complaint is that I'm not a huge fan of the brown color of their bodies... But the beads themselves are just too cool. Wicked little fish with giant teeth!
I've been reading my way through Fragile Things. There's nothing like a good short story collection, be it by one author or many, to keep me happy. I can sit down and read whenever I want, but not get sucked into a huge plot that will keep me from getting anything done. So far, A Study In Emerald has been the best, it made me smile the entire time I was reading it. There's just something about stories set in Napoleonic through Victorian era England that I love, and adding Great Old Ones into the mix is a recipe for happiness. So far there have been a lot of ghost stories, too, which is entirely fitting for this time of year.
I love ghost stories. When I was a pre-teen, I had a book called Ghost Words, at least I think that's what it was called. I can't find it in Amazon, so either I've got the name wrong or it's long-since out of print. I can't remember the author's name, it was just some young adult book that I picked up at a used bookstore, and it entranced me. I read it three or four times, and I'd probably read it again if I still had it. Somewhere along the way I lost it, or maybe decided I'd outgrown it. It was a very sad little story about a girl who had been given a name that her mother saw on a tombstone, and the ghost of the girl who had originally had the name. I was captivated by the horror of the ghost's existence; there was some passage where her foot started to fall apart or something like that, and I loved the creepiness of it. It shaped a lot of my current taste in books, to be certain.
I think that the main appeal of ghost stories is that whether the ghost is malicious or benign, there's always a sense that they are a ghost due to some sort of tragedy. I'm very drawn to tragedy in writing and roleplaying (to the point where I mock myself for it), and ghosts fulfill that need perfectly. Not only was their life cut short for some reason (for ghosts are rarely people who simply died of old age), but now the spirit lingers on in life for some reason. It's quite touching.
Someday, I hope to write a really good ghost story, but until then I'll settle for reading the works of better authors.
I'm in a much better mental state today than yesterday. Thanks go out to all my friends and family for their encouragement, thoughts and prayers. I tend to be a real worry-wart, so I appreciate everyone's patience with me freaking out over something which is shaping up to probably actually be a good thing in the long run.
My first priority today was updating erthefae.com. The above image is my most recent lariat, called Snow Angel. I'm really happy with the fringe I designed for it. I'm sure I'm not the first person to do that particular configuration of fringe, but it's new to me. I love how it evokes images of feathers. I want to work it into some other jewelry, probably involving faeries and more crystals, for a decedent Gothic look.
Snow Angel is the light counterpart to a previous lariat, Fire Dancer. I bought both sets of Robert Jennik's spiral beads at the same time, with the intention of making lariats. It can be really hard to find paired artist beads of the right size to be lariat ends -- usually they're smaller, intended for earrings. I really love how these flat spirals look at the end of a highly textured spiral rope lariat.
I also posted Angry Piranhas! in the gallery. I'll talk more about that tomorrow, though.
Today my husband was told that he's being laid off from the job he's held for 9 years. They still want him through December, and there's a severance package involved, so we're in no financial danger. Nonetheless, change is always hard so we're both very stressed out. I spent the first half of today worrying about whether or not he was going to lose his job, and the second half dealing with my feelings over it actually happening. And hey! Now I have to go take a Chinese test. Must focus...
Due to this, the website update has been postponed. I couldn't settle down enough to break out the photography equipment today. I should hopefully be able to tomorrow, but I won't make any promises. I do have to say that I'm really, really happy with the lariat that I'll be posting. Still trying to decide what I want to add to the gallery, though.
My night owl traits are back in force, as evidenced by the fact that I'm here blogging it up at 2am. I haven't done this for a while. Today was an atypical day, however. Chris was home from work, but I had a lot of work to do so we didn't goof off much. This was the first day of my new effort to stay on a schedule, and I have to say that I got a lot done. I did an insane amount of Chinese homework, lots of housework, finished one necklace and made significant progress on another. All this, and we went out to dinner with a friend and spent 1 1/2 hours at the restaurant.
What I haven't done yet is read Fragile Things. It's still sitting there, in the Barnes and Noble bag, tempting me to say to heck with sleep and stay up all night reading. If I didn't have a test tomorrow, I'd probably give in.
Anyway, the good news is that it will only take me about 5-15 minutes to finish my homework tomorrow, and then study a bit for my test (the tests are easy, so it won't be much studying). I should have plenty of time to update the site. Hurrah!
It's been a very interesting weekend so far, so I have a lot of little things that I want to talk about. Let's go over them in no particular order.
Today Chris and I went back to Barnes and Noble, which had a much more reasonable Sunday afternoon crowd. He picked up his science book, and I bought Fragile Things, by Neil Gaiman. I'm so happy that this book is finally in paperback! Granted, I've already read a few of the stories, but the vast majority are new to me. I'm really looking forward to reading them, especially since I know at least one of them has a Lovecraftian vibe (I read the first page of it one time when I was stranded at B&N, but then I got un-stranded right after I started it). Oh, and I'm really hoping that the creepiest story that I ever read is in there, so I can make Chris read it.
Afterwards we took a trip to Target for boring necessities, and I decided to look for clothes. It is almost time to put away my Summer clothes, so I need some Autumn stuff. I didn't see much that grabbed me, though. To be quite honest, a lot of the clothing that's being marketed at my demographic is downright ugly. Not just ugly, but so unflattering in cut that it's destined to make me look ugly. However, they had some blouses that looked nice enough, and this one line by some designer named Alice something, which had a really nice Victorian/Edwardian Gothic feel to it. There was this gorgeous black blouse with lace and ruffles and a high neck... and of course, they didn't have it in my size! I WILL own that blouse before the end of the month, and I WILL wear it with my elegant black velveteen skirt, and I WILL look smashing.
Oh yes! And this morning, when I woke up, I had the pleasant surprise of seeing Night Shift at the top of Art Bead Scene. This humble little blog got a shout-out in their "As The Bead Turns" blog post about blogs. So yes, I am blogging about how another blog blogged about me blogging about bat necklaces last week. Anyone want to blog about me blogging about this? :P
Anyway, Art Bead Scene has really been inspiring me to use up more of my stash of art beads. Yesterday I worked on a really cool Gothy green necklace, but the tiny lampworked hearts that I'm using didn't want to hang straight. I'm hoping that I can find a way to make them play nice, because honestly, I don't think I have anything else that matches the rest of the necklace... whoops! More on this story as it unfolds.
In other weekend news, and continuing with the largely overwhelming theme of things Gothic and/or Lovecraftian, the excellent people over at the HP Lovecraft Historical Society have just posted a teaser trailer for their next movie: The Whisperer in Darkness. While that's honestly not one of my favorite Lovecraft stories (honestly, I think the main two characters were kind of stupid and set the standard for characters in horror movies making dumb mistakes), I'm excited to see the movie. Note that while Call of Cthulhu was silent, this production is one of those new-fangled talkies. Clearly, this is so they can attempt to portray the eerie buzzing voice that forms a central part of the plot... I've not decided yet, based on the trailer, whether it would have been better to leave it the imagination. What I have decided is that I like the starkness of the title/logo.
In completely unrelated rambling, I saw a simply gorgeous woman at the grocery store today. She was middle-aged, with tan/olive skin and dark hair, slender. Though her looks were not what most people would consider exceptional, I was very struck by how she was dressed and how she carried herself. She had a long sage-green skirt with darker green trim along the bottom. Her top was a dark forest-y green with a touch of olive, sleeveless and low-cut. This deep neckline was largely taken up by a bib necklace of disks of paua shell that reflected the green of her clothes. I find that Trader Joe's is a great place to see women with stunning fashion sense, and today was just one of the many days when I've found myself envious of how beautiful and put-together someone looks!
One final thing: my weekly website update will probably be this Tuesday, not Monday. Chris is off of work tomorrow, so I'll be hanging out with him instead of doing photography. I may possibly have to push it all the way back to Wednesday, but only if my homework takes longer than I expect it to.
For whatever reason (probably has something to do with our insatiable bibliomania), Chris and I always end up going to Barnes and Noble whenever we have some sort of special occasion. As tonight was his birthday, we headed off in search of books after dinner. Upon arriving there, we found the parking lot packed. At first we attributed this to it being 7:30pm on a Friday, and there being two popular restaurants who share their parking lots with B&N. That was before we noticed the gigantic Laura Ingraham bus and the van and canopy and such from a local political news radio station.
I'm not a fan of crowds, and I am a fan of being able to actually browse the shelves in the bookstore, so I said "Hey, let's just drive across town to the other B&N." But no, Chris was not having any of that. He boldly declared "Laura Ingraham is not going to prevent me from buying a nerd book on my birthday!" Please note two things: Neither of us have any idea who Laura Ingraham is, nor did we have any opinion of her prior to this night. Also, Chris likes to buy and read non-fiction science books, which I affectionately call "nerd books" or "geek books."
When we got inside, we found that the store was packed with Laura Ingraham fans, and the store had some sort of thing going where you had different colored tickets, and you couldn't get in line to get your book signed until your color was up, and oh hey, hope you weren't looking for video game magazines, because we put a big radio station banner over them and have the author standing in the magazine section. PHEH! Oh, and of course, if you're not in line, feel free to stand in the "New Releases" section of the Sci-Fi/Fantasy category, because it's not like any fan girls might be looking to see if Gaiman's "Fragile Things" is out in paperback yet.
I quickly got frustrated at my inability to look at things that I might want to buy, so I wandered over to join Chris in nerd land (I did find that "The Ladies of Grace Adieu" by Susanna Clarke was in paperback, and I decided maybe I would buy it if Chris bought anything). The only people in his aisle were actually looking at books, but the end of the aisle was blocked by the signing line. He found a book on the brain's ability to read (see, nerdy) and decided that's what he wanted, but he also wanted to look at religious books for some reason. Hey, guess where the line was? That's right! Right through the Religion section!
And that was when we decided that enough was enough. Chris put his nerd book back, and we left without even looking at the bargain books. The place was just too much of a zoo. Honestly, I do not think our B&N is big enough to handle such a large book signing... When you have to place the author in the middle of the magazine section and wend the line through the aisles, something's wrong. And when your customers can't get in to look at the books that they would very much like to buy, something's wrong. The whole situation left me feeling very disappointed, as we hadn't been on a book shopping trip in forever, and I really wanted some new reading material. I guess we'll just hit the store again sometime later this weekend.
Otherwise, everything is peachy-keen and I'm looking forward to spending my Saturday gaming and beading!
My current bead project is moving right along, and will definitely be done in time for next week's update. It's all light colors, as opposed to the dark hues I've been working on so much lately. It's good to change things up every now and then. Not sure what I'll do next after this, except that I need to string a necklace to go with a specific cool-weather top. I've had the beads picked out for a while and just haven't taken the time to put it together. I also want to come up with one or two more things for the Art Bead Scene contest. Naturally, I've already entered Baby Bat and Night Shift.
Chris came home sick from work today, so naturally our Wednesday night game is off, but I'll probably bead just as much if not more than I would have if I was gaming tonight. Chris is very low-maintenance when he's sick, mostly he just sleeps. It's so much easier for me to take care of him than for him to take care of me; I always have him going to the store for cold meds, more Kleenex, and foods that are easy on my pooooor ravaged throat. Heaven only knows why he puts up with me!
In the spirit of the season, I've made a couple of bat necklaces. The first is Night Shift, pictured above. It features a pewter bat by Green Girl as the focal. The second is Baby Bat, which has a lampworked bat and accent beads made by Joan "Mothwoman" Eckard. In both cases my goal was to make a nice, Gothy bat necklace that wasn't in stereotypical Halloween colors. After all, loving bats doesn't mean that you also automatically love orange! I'm very happy with both necklaces and feel a strong desire to wear them all over the town for the rest of the month. I think I'll have to make myself a bat necklace now!
I tried something new with the pictures, zooming in so that only part of the necklace stand is in the image. It seemed like a better idea in my head than it turned out to be in actuality. I'm starting to develop a strong loathing for that particular necklace board. I like the black velvet-y one much better, but neither of these necklaces would have looked good on it.
In honor of today's batty necklaces, I have to share these socks. Knee highs with bats on them! How cool is that? I plan to make a Sock Dreams order sometime this month, now that it's about time to put the sandals away for the year... The hard part is going to be not going overboard.
Ahhh, I'm loving this beautiful Autumn weather! Last night I actually had to break out a blanket for the bed. My girl cat Lira likes to get under blankets; when I still lived with my parents, I had a waterbed, which was of course nice and warm. During the Winter, Lira would spend pretty much every night under the covers with me, curled up right between my knees. Now she contents herself to spend a few minutes snuggled up against my chest before moving on to her usual nighttime haunts; but for those few minutes, she purrs like a motor-boat! So sure enough, last night I wasn't in bed for more than 10 minutes when there she was, pawing at the blanket to get me to let her in.
Another great thing about cool weather is that it's perfect for hot drinks. We had some delicious tea last night, and I'm sure we'll have more tonight. It's also about time to buy hot chocolate again! Mmmm. Chris makes coconut rice for me sometimes, and it doesn't quite use a whole can of coconut milk, so I love to mix the remainder into hot cocoa for a creamy treat.
The other great thing is that when it's not too hot in the kitchen, Chris cooks his delicious marinara sauce. Just tonight he made a huge batch of it and we had our neighbor over for a big pasta dinner. I am SO stuffed.
I tell you these things now, because in a couple of months I'll just be grousing about the cold and how much I hate it. This is my proof that I'm not always negative!
Yesterday's take-along project turned out to be a lovely new spiral lariat. I don't know if I'll finish it in time for tomorrow's update, but it's unlikely. It will definitely be ready for next week, though!
Wow, I woke up today and found out that it is gorgeous outside! Makes me want to ditch gaming and go hang out in the park with my beads. I mean, gaming is fun and all, but we play in a CAVE. There's not a single window in that back room. It's supposed to go back into the 90s during the week, so hopefully I'll be able to enjoy this beautiful weather a bit tomorrow.
Last night the laws of physics and I had a disagreement as to how the beads should hang in the pendant I was working on. Since physics won again (I'm pretty sure they cheat!), I'm setting the pendant aside and working on something else for the weekend. I just haven't decided what that is yet, so I need to go into the beadroom and cook up something cool.
Today I finally get to all of the things that I've wanted to post about, but have been too busy to collect my thoughts on.
First! Isn't the above Greenman awesome? My equally awesome mother made him for me a couple of weeks ago, and I keep forgetting to post a picture. He's made out of polymer clay, with a dusting of mica powder on the face. Eventually I'm going to hang him on the wall, but for now he's sitting on my desk, guarding one of the many stacks of books.
Second! As you may already know, I love to write. My work to date includes assorted novels and short stories (all of them unpublished, sadly); roleplaying gaming columns; reviews of movies, comic books, books, and whatever else that I feel I can get away with reviewing; some of the text on the LL-BFAC site; bios and artist statements for several of my beading pals; and of course, all of the text on my site and this blog. Armed with all of that experience, I've branched out into the world of writing website text and such for others. My first client is Hollyrose Aromatherapy! I had a lot of fun re-writing her product descriptions. Oh, and by the way, I highly recommend the Patchouli Woods scent if you decide to order anything.
Third! Art Bead Scene's challenge theme this month is "Gothic Queen." Needless to say, this theme appeals to me a lot, and of course, it's perfect for October. I am all kinds of jazzed. So far I've entered Dark Lady of the Depths and Devil Duckies! Be sure to look at the other entries, there's some great stuff up already and the month has only just begun.
Fourth! I am working on two other exciting things that I will post about as they develop.
Things are going well in my world right now. I'm keeping very busy with beading, side projects, and class. I haven't had much time for writing, but that's okay, if the inspiration gets too strong, I'll make time. There are a few things I'd like to talk about here on the blog, but they involve hunting down links and writing long paragraphs, and I only have a couple of minutes... So I'll get to them tomorrow, when my evening is pretty much open.
For now I'd just like to say that I have one awesome necklace ready for Monday's update, and one more in the works, and other ideas percolating in the back of my head. Percolating is a fun word, by the way. I don't drink coffee, but I still like to say "percolating."
As I mentioned yesterday, it's high time that I turned some attention to the Gallery section of my website. For the longest time, it was empty. Then I put my 2007 LL-BFAC project in there. And ever since then, it's been untouched. Well, no longer! My new goal is to add at least one item a week to the Gallery, whether it's something new that I've beaded, or an old treasure that deserves to be shown off.
Today's additions are things that you may have already seen, if you've been reading the blog for a while. My 2008 LL-BFAC project, Flaming Teeth; Beautiful Brown Birthday Bauble; Lady Aerelin's Prize-Winning Flower Garden. Next week I plan to photograph some more of my collection to share, unless I've made something new and cool. You just never know!
That's all for today! Right now I've got to go finish the necklace I've been working on, and study for Chinese class tonight.
It's hard to believe that it's October. I can't exactly say that time is flying, because honestly, now that I've been busy with homework and side projects and ad tracking and whatnot, the weeks have felt a lot longer. But it still doesn't feel like it should be October already. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I love October! The weather cools down a bit, which means I can start to bake again. The stores are full of candy. And at the end of the month, I'll have another convenient excuse to wear a costume. All in all, it's a great month.
And today certainly feels like the start of October. Outside it's grey, with sporadic drizzles of rain. It's that perfect temperature where you can walk outside in a t-shirt and not feel hot or cold (that's Fall weather for a desert dweller like me). Of course, all of our trees are still green. My neighborhood is full of palm trees, pines of various types, eucalyptus, mesquite and palo verde, none of which lose their leaves. There are a few varieties of tree in Tucson that shed their leaves, but most of them turn yellow and drop rather quickly. We have none of the beautiful, dramatic colors of the Eastern states. But hey, did I mention... t-shirt weather?!?
In other news, my site and e-mail are once again behaving as they should, and all is right in the world. I don't have any new jewelry for today, so I think I'll update the sadly neglected Gallery instead. Tune in tomorrow for more on that.
Not sure what is up this time, but I haven't been able to get into my e-mail for at least the past couple hours, and my website also seems to be down. If it's not up when I get up in the morning, I'll definitely be rattling my host's cage. In the meantime, I guess I can be glad that all the ads I had running expired today, so it's not like I'm missing out on any click-throughs from them ;)
Sorry to have been so quiet lately, been kind of busy. More about that throughout the week. Right now I'm pretty tired.
In case you missed the link in yesterday's post, the above image is Belen-Gaard, my own personal bat necklace. Hurray! It combines several things that I love: lampwork by my friend Lois, a bat, the color green, indicolite crystals, and sardonyx, which I have only recently decided that I love.
