Now where's that from? Button, button - who's got the button? I can't remember. It's something I've heard for years and years, but I'm not sure where it originated.
Anyway, about buttons.
I have them. Thousands of them. I haven't counted, but I'm sure there are thousands of them. They're in a big box, and within that big box are numerous containers with "sorted" buttons. Even though I have thousands of them, I still can't resist looking at new ones when I visit stores that sell buttons. I try to resist buying, but sometimes I swear they just jump into my cart.
Several months ago, as I was going through all my vintage buttons, I came up with an idea for a simple bracelet. It's an ndebele rope (aka tubular herringbone) with a loop at one end (the herringbone is carried right into the loop) and a button at the other. So I made a BUNCH of them and left them at the Art on Depot Studio and Gallery, in Waynesville, NC. They were pretty popular, so I've been working on some new ones.
Aren't these fun?
I'm going to make some more and list them in my Etsy shop. For now, the black and white Checkerboard one you see in the photo is the only one I have listed; but I'm planning to remedy that soon.
Ready for a GIVEAWAY???
It's been awhile since I've done any kind of giveaway on my blog, so I thought this might be a good time for one.
What do you win? A button bracelet in your choice of bead colors (I'll choose a suitable button from my collection). THREE people will win. Because I have LOTS of buttons. :-)
How do you enter? To enter the drawing for a Button It bracelet, you can do one ore more of the following. Please note that all comments must be left on my blog (not on my Facebook page(s), even though you'll see this post appear there). And you must leave a separate comment for each in order to receive more than one entry into the drawing. If you do all of these, you'll leave FOUR separate comments and have four chances to win!
1 - Leave a comment here telling me your favorite button project. Or, if you're not a "button" person, tell me about your favorite supply and how you've used it.
2 - Blog about this giveaway and post a comment here with a link to your blog post.
3 - Link to this post on Facebook and leave a comment here to let me know you posted.4 - Tweet (Twitter) about this giveaway and leave a comment here. Make sure you include @time2cre8 in your tweet.
Don't forget to leave a way for me to contact you (email, or a link to your Etsy or Artfire shop name). If I don't see a way to contact you, your comment will be deleted and you won't be entered into the drawing. :-(
When will the winners be chosen? All entries/comments must be made by midnight on Friday, April 8. I'll use a random number generator to select the winners on Saturday morning and will announce the winner on this blog later in the day.
Do you ever have times when you forget what day of the week it is? I do. It never used to happen. When I was working, I always knew what day it was and even the date. Now? Nope. Sometimes I forget. Today, for some reason, feels like Saturday. As I typed the "when I was working" phrase, I realize that it's now been FIVE years since I had a real job. Do I miss working? NOT FOR A MINUTE!!!
I know today's Monday, but I had to think about it for a minute. I actually spent my Saturday filling in at the Art On Depot in Waynesville. The ceramic artist (Cathey Bolton-Moore) who owns the studio/gallery just had a baby girl, so I volunteered to work there on Saturdays for a few weeks.
For someone like me, who has no discernible schedule (because getting up and having two lattes every morning does NOT constitute a schedule), it was really strange to go somewhere to "work." I didn't want to be bored, so I took some projects with me. Knowing that the studio has pretty good lighting, I grabbed the box of jewelry I'd finished and never photographed so I could take some long-overdue pictures.
And look! I took pictures of this brand new bracelet, which I named Black and Old Brass. This is a simple design, but I love making these bracelets so I can play with my massive collection of old buttons. This one uses a cool looking antiqued brass four-hole button, so I used brassy-colored delicas and shiny black delicas for the bracelet.
I actually managed to take a few pictures at home, too! This bracelet, an olive and silver version of my Fabric design, was created for the Bead Art Originals color mosaic. You can visit the BAO blog to see past color mosaics, and the one that features dark and light olive will be posted later this week.
Time for my second latte of the day. What a schedule, eh? :-)
I don't do shows very often. And I think I know why. I'm lazy. There's so much involved in preparing to do a show that I usually just avoid them.
I'm doing one this Saturday, though. It wasn't something I really planned, but my newfound friend and ceramic artist Cathey Bolton-Moore talked me into it. She's the curator of a shop called Art on Depot in downtown Waynesville (ok, technically her shop is located in the Frog Level historic district); and since the street right outside her shop is going to be blocked off for The Whole Bloomin' Thing festival this Saturday, she's making it pretty easy for me to participate by loaning me tables, a tent, the use of her cash register, AND her husband (to help set up). How great is that?!?!
Even with all that help, there are still a lot of things for me to do.
I just spent a couple of hours making tags for all the jewelry I'm going to be taking with me. A lot of tags. It's a good thing I have a lot of experience with graphics and printing, or that task alone would have been daunting. You see, since I sell online in my Etsy shop, I don't have to make tags for anything. I do have a spreadsheet with a list of all the pieces I create (well, almost all the pieces -- sometimes I don't get around to entering them, so there are "strays"), so making the tags was pretty easy.
I'd been wanting to incorporate the White Rabbit illustration somehow (I really love those Tenniel illustrations!), so I took this opportunity to make him part of my tags. Why the White Rabbit? And why that particular illustration, even though the Mad Hatter is really my favorite character? Well, because the White Rabbit is holding a watch, and the name of my business is time2cre8. It just makes sense, right?
Anyway, there are the tags. At least the tags for all the pieces that are in my spreadsheet inventory. After I round up all the jewelry and attach the tags, I'll have the strays all sitting in front of me and will be able to add them to the inventory also. I cringe to think how many of those strays there are. More than there should be, that's for sure.
Since I finally managed to incorporate the White Rabbit somehow, and since I was sitting at the computer fiddling with graphics anyway, I decided to redo my Etsy shop banner. My old banner was created by another Etsy seller, and it was never really "me". I'm pretty happy with this one... it has an image of one of my early peyote designs, Little Vine; my shop name and info in my favorite font, Occidental; and the White Rabbit hanging out over there on the right side, letting people know that custom orders are welcome! :-)
Now it's time to get back to preparations for that festival on Saturday. Two days left to have everything ready. I think I can do it. I'm making a list of all the things I need to take with me. You just never know what you're going to need at one of these things.
I just hope there's enough time for me to get everything ready and still manage to get a new peyote cuff design done for this week! I'm bound and determined to keep that New Year's resolution I made.
I don't know about you, but I'm amazed at how fast the time is going this year. Isn't it going faster than normal? Are there really 24 hours in EVERY day?
While I'm marveling at how quickly the time is passing, I'm also marveling at the fact that I'm managing to keep up with my goal to create a new peyote design every week. This is week #7, and I have design #7. Oddly enough, this one began with the beads rather than with a specific design in mind. (I still have a whole sketchbook filled with ideas for other designs.)
I was sorting my collection of Delicas (did you know there are more than 800 colors and finishes of these little beauties?!?!), and I had containers of crystal, white, black, and red that wanted to be put away... until I saw how great they all looked together and decided I wanted to make a simple pattern using those colors. I'd been thinking about a pattern with stripes, but I wanted the stripes to be going from side to side on the cuff rather than from end to end, and I didn't want "regular" stripes. So I just sat down and started doodling, and this is what I created: Curved
As you can see, the stripes go from side to side. And they curve slightly. And overlap in a couple of places. There are seven colors in all, and no matter how many Delica colors are available, I think my favorites will always be black and white. :-)
Speaking of black and white, my other new creation is a caterpillar bracelet: Bennie the Black and White Caterpillar. These are so much FUN to make, even though they take several hours and LOTS of beads. Bennie is really special because of the way I made the fringes. Starting with a base done in single peyote, I added hundreds of fringes to create Bennie's "fur". The fringes alternate between black and white... five white size 11 beads, a black-lined size 5 triangle bead, and one white size 11 bead at the tip... five black size 11 beads, a white-lined size 5 triangle bead, and one black size 11 bead at the tip. A perfect blend of black and white.
Oh, and check out the Etsy listing for this guy. I thought Bennie deserved a poem.
While you're visiting Etsy, I thought you might want to stop by a shop I discovered recently. While I've "discovered" many a shop while browsing on the internet, I came across this one IN PERSON when I was visiting the Frog Level section of Waynesville about a month ago. We went into a pottery shop and studio, and I immediately fell in love with some of the creations made by Cathey Bolton, the owner and artist. The name of the studio is Art on Depot (click that link and visit the Gallery for a little virtual tour) and Cathey's Etsy shop goes by the same name (ArtOnDepot), so it's easy to find.
Cathey has some pottery pieces that feature her "signature" handles. I think these look like seahorses, but she says other people have seen all sorts of things in them. Fiddle ferns maybe? Something kind of industrial? Whatever you see, I think they're cool!
One of my favorite things about Cathey's pottery is her colors. While I can appreciate the earth tones in a lot of pottery, it's really fun to see something in an unexpected color, like... RED!
This set of two mugs is in Cathey's Etsy shop. If you drink coffee or tea in the morning to help wake you up, the color of these will add a little kick.
She has other cool colors, too... bright yellow, a beautiful shade of turquoise blue, lime green.
...
But, as much fun as Cathey's pottery is, I was (not surprisingly) drawn immediately to the pieces she made for jewelry. She has a bunch of her own jewelry creations in the gallery: big, bold pieces in every color and shape imaginable. And she has some big belt buckles that feature oversized oval ceramic pieces with all sorts of colors and textures.
It wasn't until after I'd spent more time in the gallery (I forgot to mention here that right after that first visit I signed up for one of her classes: Four Pounds for Fun, and just last week I went to pick up my creations. I made all jewelry components. Well. That's what I tried to make. Some turned out to be little mutants. But that's a whole other story.)... okay, where was I? Oh yeah. It wasn't until after I'd spent more time in the gallery that I convinced Cathey she should list some of her jewelry components in her Etsy shop.
She has cabochons, buttons, and pendants galore (after all, what ceramic artist has enough time to create jewelry components AND turn them all into jewelry herself?!); and you can see a small selection in her Etsy shop. I'm the lucky one, though... I got to prowl through some boxes and bags and pick out pieces for myself. There are distinct advantages to being able to visit a studio in person, you know. One of my favorite pieces (of course, I grabbed a couple of these for myself) is this red heart pendant.
Doesn't it look like it has dandelion fluff on it? And isn't that neat? :-)
Okay, it's time for me to get out of my chair and get some pictures. Maybe I'll get around to taking pictures of some of my mutant clay pieces today...
Happy Wednesday! Don't forget, all my peyote cuff patterns are still on sale this month: purchase two patterns and receive a third pattern of equal or lesser value FREE (just leave the name of the third pattern in the Notes to Seller when you check out).
