Fabulous Friday Finds for May 14

What a week! It's been a hectic week of working on house plans, shopping for building materials, getting permits, and with a little bit of beading fit into the schedule. Not quite as much beading as I like, and I actually missed my goal to publish a new peyote cuff last week and this week. I have the designs done, but I haven't beaded them yet; so I'm going to try to catch up on my 2010 goal tomorrow. Or Sunday.

I did manage to track down more Fabulous Friday Finds though. So here, without further ado, are this week's goodies.

I'm a self-confessed bibliophile, so I've been in love with this first Fabulous Friday Find for a long time. It combines a love of books with a love of teeny tiny things. Cuz I also love teeny tiny things.

This incredible necklace is the creation of Margaux of TheBlackSpotBooks.

The thing that amazes me about this necklace is that Margaux made each of these little books from a scrap of leather and 30 sheets of paper. And each little book is only 5/8" tall.

There's one necklace with six books (which I've linked here), but you can also purchase a necklace that has just a single book. One teeny tiny book, for all your teeny tiny secrets.




My next Fabulous Friday Find is this beautiful wooden chain I found on Rings & Things.

I wasn't looking for wooden chain. I was looking for beads. But then I found this chain. And I love it. It reminds me of the wooden chains my grandfather (Papaw) used to carve. He'd take a single piece of wood and then carve it into links.

I have no idea what I would do with wooden chain, but I like it.

There are other styles, including some big flat links and even some heart-shaped links, and right now they're all 15% off.

If you've never shopped at Rings & Things, I can recommend them. I haven't purchased from them online, but I've bought several things from them at the Bead and Button Show, and I've always been happy with their prices and quality.

My third Fabulous Friday Find is a ring called Airy Light Clouds, and I gotta tell you that this ring is just as gorgeous in person as it is in the picture.

How do I know that? Well, because I have one.

Airy Light Clouds is the creation of Ande Cruz, a jewelry designer whose works I'm always ogling. I had this ring in my favorites for sooooooooo long, and when she had a one-day sale a few months ago I immediately made it my own.

And now I wear it every day. It's so comfortable and lightweight, and even with all those holes in it it's quite sturdy. A wonderful ring from a wonderful jewelry artist! What could be better?! :-)

Did I mention that I'm a bibliophile? Books books books, everywhere I looks (okay, I had to make it rhyme).

My fourth Fabulous Friday Find is my newest batch of books... all of which showed up on my doorstep today from Amazon. I've only had time to look through them quickly, but I'm very happy with them all and can hardly wait to spend some quality time going through them from cover to cover.

Embellished Beadweaving, the new beady book by Laura McCabe, is the book that started it all. I went to Amazon to order a copy of it, and there were a bunch of other books on my wishlist. I knew this gorgeous book wouldn't want to travel to me alone, so I gave it some company:
- Totally Twisted, by Kerry Bogert
- Beaded Colorways, by Beverly Gilbert
- Seed Bead Fusion, by Rachel-Nelson Smith
- Polymer Clay Color Inspirations, by Lindly Haunani and Maggie Maggio

I can't tell you how much I enjoy all my beady books. All of the ones that showed up today are wonderful, filled with ideas, techniques, and inspiration galore. I've learned all of my beadweaving techniques from my books, and one of these days I'm going to actually get out my stash of polymer clay and make something from it -- and I'll have plenty of books to guide me on my way. :-)

Well, I had a few more things in mind for the Fabulous Friday Finds, but my internet connection is being a bit uncooperative tonight. So I'm going to publish this while I can!

I hope you enjoy my finds! :-)

Fun in the Mail

I love it when fun things arrive in the mail. Not bills or junk mail, but really fun things. Sometimes they're things I've ordered, since I do a lot of online shopping (I'm so lazy when it comes to visiting stores), and sometimes they're things I'm not even expecting.

One of the coolest things that showed up recently is a print of an illustration by the very talented Athena Workman, the artist who created Miss Millificent's World - and a wonderful world it is! Athena recently held a giveaway on her blog, and I entered. Her art is so whimsical and spooky at the same time that I couldn't resist. I don't really enter very many giveaways, so the odds of my winning one are probably pretty slim. Well, I won. And a few days after I won, I received this print in the mail.
Isn't that cool?!?!? The print is entitled Mistaken for a Real Fish, and if you think it looks neat in the image here, you should see the full size (8.5" x 11") print. It's such fun!! Check out Athena's blog to see her newest illustrations that feature lemurs. They're adorable!!!

The other neat stuff that showed up in the mail is my order from Amazon. I love books. I have hundreds of them (you can check out a small listing of them on the Shelfari graphic at the bottom of this page), and I read all the time. I use books and magazines to teach myself how to do things. I'm much more comfortable sitting down and reading a set of well-written instructions than I am sitting through a class. I've learned how to knit, crochet, beadweave, and all sorts of other things from books. They're truly an addiction.

I don't know right now how many books I have on beading, but it's a lot. That didn't stop me from ordering new ones though. Books are a constant source of inspiration for me. They're like my friends. :-)

Wanna see which ones I just received in the mail?
This one: Bead International 2008 & Beyond Basketry
And boy, is it filled with inspiration!!! It almost makes me want to take up basketweaving in addition to beadweaving, but I'm going to resist.

And this one: Creative Beading, Vol. 3: The Best Projects from a Year of Bead&Button Magazine
Even though I have a subscription to the magazine, it's kind of nice having a bunch of projects in a single book.


And finally, this one: Masters: Beadweaving: Major Works by Leading Artists (Masters (Lark Books))
This one, as you'd expect from reading the title, is filled with unbelievably beautiful beadwoven projects. If you're ever looking for inspiration, pick up a copy of this. You won't believe your eyes. In fact, if you're ever looking for an inspirational book in arts and crafts, check out the Lark Books. They're all wonderful (I own quite a few of them, and I'm even going to have something published in one that's due out this fall!).
Time to look through my new books!
:-)

Beadwork Magazine, by Interweave Press, is one of my favorite beading publications, and now I think I like them even more. I don't typically enter contests for beadweaving. It's not for lack of ideas, but I just never quite get around to working on those projects because I'm doing so many other things.

The magazine is having a new competition, though, and I just know I'm going to have to enter something in this one! Why?

It's about books!!! I have thousands of books. Seriously. I know this because I'm currently logging them all into a spreadsheet (and for those of you who know me, spreadsheets are NOT a disease). I read every day, and I absolutely love love love books. I recently discovered, though a fellow Etsy person, a site called BookMooch that I've been frequenting so I can trade some of the books I don't want to keep in my collection for books I'd like to read and own.


This contest was announced in Beading Daily (if you're a beader or beadweaver and don't subscribe to Beading Daily, you really should!). As soon as I read it the ideas started swirling around in my head. The entry period is far enough in the future (August 1-December 18, 2008) that I'll have time to work on some of those ideas. The toughest part will be deciding exactly what to create.

In case you want to check it out for yourself, here are The Rules.

I have lots and lots and lots of books. As much as I'd love to keep all of them, I know I won't read some of them again. I've traded them, I've donated them, and I still have piles of them sitting around.

At the suggestion of Kara, a really friendly Etsy customer of mine, I just signed up on a site called BookMooch. I listed some of my books on there, and already three of them have been "mooched"! I get points for listing books, and I get points for sending books to moochers. I can use the points to mooch books for myself, and so I've just requested No Second Chance, by Harlan Coben.

Okay, so I'm not really reducing the number of books I have in my house. I'm just giving some other books a chance to live in my crowded house.

If you have a lot of books, or even if you only have a few books, and you're looking for books to trade... check out BookMooch. You can find me on there. Maybe we'll trade books.
:-)

Happy birthday to me... happy birthday to me... happy birthday... Well, you get the idea. I'm a year older. It was painless, and I even got to pick out the restaurant for my birthday meal -- Red Lobster fit the bill just fine, and I snarfed down a platefull of lobster, crablegs, and shrimp. Yum yum.

I've been hanging out in the Etsy forums reading posts by a bunch of angry shopkeepers after the publication of the new Etsy Constitution. The biggest bones of contention are the elimination of the Vintage category, the limitations placed on selling Commercial Supplies, limitations placed on selling prints of artwork and/or digital images, and copying. The stance they initially took on copying was that it was 'okay' for one person to copy another's work as long as they didn't list more than three of the copied items and they gave credit to the originator. Good grief. Copyright lawyers were scrambling for their class-action lawsuit forms. The sellers of Vintage are all left out in the cold, and many of them mentioned that they had specifically contacted Etsy admin as recently as January and were told that selling vintage on the site was acceptable. Sellers of Commercial Supplies have been told they can only de-stash... but the number of listings per seller is now 100... personally, I could de-stash and list a few thousand items. Wonder how they're going to police that? It's just a sad state of affairs.

All that being said, I'm pretty heavily vested in the site now, with it on my business cards and all. And I just don't have the time or energy to try to move somewhere else. I've started to list a few things on eCrater (www.time2cre8.ecrater.com), but I'm not sure how much I'll move over there. One of the best things about eCrater is that there are NO FEES!!! And Google Checkout (the PayPal alternative) is free through the end of the year. So that's a nice way to experiment. I have a feeling they'll be getting a bunch of new business this week.

I've still been making some stuff. Specifically, some more little books. This time I decided to use some of the paper coasters I've filched from restaurants over the years and turn them into little accordian books. I think they're fun. Maybe not as much fun as the pointy-head guy, but fun nevertheless.

The pointy headed guy on the soda carton... When I saw the guy on the carton, I just had to figure out something to create that would incorporate his image. I'm no good at collages, but I'm REALLY good at making lists. The ends of the cartons lent themselves easily to creating little books that would be just perfect for lists!!! It was fate.

With that idea in mind, I dug up some vintage linen-textured paper that had been stashed in a box I received from my grandmother. I couldn't use just any old paper for these little books. Then I went through my stash of ribbons, embroidery floss, etc., to find something with which to bind this little book. Nothing seemed quite right until I happened upon a ball of parcel twine.

Now I don't know a lot about bookmaking. I looked on the internet to find instructions, but ultimately I just kind of invented my own little technique. I punched all the holes in the paper with a hole punch (jabbing a needle through there just seemed like a disaster waiting to happen) and then threaded the parcel twine through the holes in the signatures (I learned that on the internet) and through holes I punched in the soda carton.

I had no idea, however, what to do with the ends of the twine. Four pieces of string just sat there staring at me and taunting me. Luckily, I know how to four-braid (most people only know how to braid with three strands, but my grandfather taught me how to braid with four). That's why there's a little 'tail' at the top of the spine of the book.

The last thing I had to figure out was the closure. While I could have just chosen to stick a rubber band on this little book and call the project 'done,' that just didn't seem like the way to treat the pointy-headed guy. So I opted to add a couple of little metal eyelets and make one of those wraparound closures you see on envelopes for interoffice mail. It's much better than an old rubber band.

So there you have it. Hours of pondering and staring at the soda carton to figure out what to do with it. The end result is a little journal with 28 tall, skinny pages. Great for making lists. I'm famous for lists. I also like the number 28. It's part of my internet persona (time2cre8), and it's my birthday. :-) It's fate. Or kismet. Or something.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! It's officially 2007. I managed to stay up until midnight, primarily because I'm reading a good book and I was totally engrossed in it (it's Promise Me by Harlan Coben). I'm still not finished with the book, but I'm sure I'll finish it today.

I just made a bunch of little envelopes with cards, using an old (1971) atlas of the United States for the envelopes. They're the coolest little things. I've listed one set on Etsy and have a few more sets when those are gone.

I also have some new ideas for glass magnets, so it's going to be a busy day today and probably a bit smelly. That adhesive is stinky. I'm trying out some new stuff today, so maybe it will be less smelly.

Off to create some fun stuff!