Please help with my addiction!

So, I've been a bad blogger.  No posts for a week.  I have been really busy.  Not making jewellery, listing it and selling it.  Just buying beads.

Not beads, but shells.  Still part of the addiction though!

By now, I must be officially an addict.  Practically my waking thought is 'another day, I could look for some beads'!  It's always been a bit of a problem, but it's got worse recently.

Gemstone chips?  Still beads, really

Partly, I blame the OH who did mention that after April we'll be a bit worse off, so I should 'stock up a bit'.  Then there are the customers.  Every time I have a sale that just encourages me to buy more to make more things.  Also, as it got towards the end of the financial year, and it looked like I'd do slightly less badly than I predicted in last year's tax return.  So, it's all a vicious circle.


So what's the problem?  Well, for one thing, we live in a really small house. Instead of being confined to my beading table, gemstones and findings have spread throughout the living area, and some stray ones were recently even found in the bathroom!  Plus, now I seem to have too much choice.  Just can't decide if I've got the right combination of my vast stash to commit to making something.  And there the normal guilt of spending money, of course.

Even small animals get caught up in the bead obsession!

I've compensated a bit by making and selling more items for charity which is a win-win as far as I'm concerned.  And I know I'm lucky to have the money to indulge my passion - I can still remember the time when we were fishing for pennies down the back of the sofa to scrape together enough for a tin of beans - so it still seems a bit of a wonder that I can afford a hobby at all.





So, what to do?  Any suggestions welcome.  As well as anyone wanting to help form a support group ;-)

Please help with my addiction!

So, I've been a bad blogger.  No posts for a week.  I have been really busy.  Not making jewellery, listing it and selling it.  Just buying beads.

Not beads, but shells.  Still part of the addiction though!

By now, I must be officially an addict.  Practically my waking thought is 'another day, I could look for some beads'!  It's always been a bit of a problem, but it's got worse recently.

Gemstone chips?  Still beads, really

Partly, I blame the OH who did mention that after April we'll be a bit worse off, so I should 'stock up a bit'.  Then there are the customers.  Every time I have a sale that just encourages me to buy more to make more things.  Also, as it got towards the end of the financial year, and it looked like I'd do slightly less badly than I predicted in last year's tax return.  So, it's all a vicious circle.


So what's the problem?  Well, for one thing, we live in a really small house. Instead of being confined to my beading table, gemstones and findings have spread throughout the living area, and some stray ones were recently even found in the bathroom!  Plus, now I seem to have too much choice.  Just can't decide if I've got the right combination of my vast stash to commit to making something.  And there the normal guilt of spending money, of course.

Even small animals get caught up in the bead obsession!

I've compensated a bit by making and selling more items for charity which is a win-win as far as I'm concerned.  And I know I'm lucky to have the money to indulge my passion - I can still remember the time when we were fishing for pennies down the back of the sofa to scrape together enough for a tin of beans - so it still seems a bit of a wonder that I can afford a hobby at all.





So, what to do?  Any suggestions welcome.  As well as anyone wanting to help form a support group ;-)

Happy Holidays

Just back from two weeks away on Anglesey with hubby and Lucca the dog. What a fabulous time we've had!

Pre-dog, the OH and I have been to some amazing places around the world, but I can honestly say that this holiday has been one of the best for us.

Lucca relaxes in the garden after some swimming

Hubby is pretty dedicated to his music, so each day needs to accommodate his minimum of four hours practice a day. This gives me (and the dog!) chance to relax - for me, it's been beading and reading, for Lucca there's been sniffing round the gardens and dozing in the sun. Weather was fantastic and for the couple of cooler and damper days, we just transferred to indoors.

We had booked two very different cottages, one in a fishing village and the other a converted traditional Welsh 'long' house. Both had everything we needed and swooping half way through gave us a bit of variety.

The rest of the time we spent touring the island, walking Lucca on some spectacular beaches, lovely countryside and woodlands and consuming (too much!) food at various cafes and pubs!

The long house - originally home to the family and their cattle!

I spent some time before we left to put together a bag of tricks - some pieces I needed to finish or think about, together with some loose beads and the basic tools I thought I'd need.  Not only did I finish every piece I'd brought, I designed some new ones, decided on the ones that needed modifying and filled literally pages in my ideas book!

I think having the whole two weeks, together with the calmness of the island, the spectacular scenery and everyone being happy and content really combined to boost my creativity. It's been quite a challenging year with a variety of close family illnesses, so we were definitely ready for a break and a refresh.

You can really appreciate why so many people choose to retire to the island. Many of the things that occupy your mind with worry on a day-to-day basis just seem very far away and quite unimportant there.  There's definitely some good karma around!

Inspiring too. This beautiful heather on the mountains set off an idea for combining some deep amethyst and lush green malachite beads. Nature is so clever at colour combinations.


I guess if we were all on holiday all the time it would get boring, so I ought to be grateful to be back to the day job!  And at least we have some great memories and can start planning for next year...

Happy Holidays

Just back from two weeks away on Anglesey with hubby and Lucca the dog. What a fabulous time we've had!

Pre-dog, the OH and I have been to some amazing places around the world, but I can honestly say that this holiday has been one of the best for us.

Lucca relaxes in the garden after some swimming

Hubby is pretty dedicated to his music, so each day needs to accommodate his minimum of four hours practice a day. This gives me (and the dog!) chance to relax - for me, it's been beading and reading, for Lucca there's been sniffing round the gardens and dozing in the sun. Weather was fantastic and for the couple of cooler and damper days, we just transferred to indoors.

We had booked two very different cottages, one in a fishing village and the other a converted traditional Welsh 'long' house. Both had everything we needed and swooping half way through gave us a bit of variety.

The rest of the time we spent touring the island, walking Lucca on some spectacular beaches, lovely countryside and woodlands and consuming (too much!) food at various cafes and pubs!

The long house - originally home to the family and their cattle!

I spent some time before we left to put together a bag of tricks - some pieces I needed to finish or think about, together with some loose beads and the basic tools I thought I'd need.  Not only did I finish every piece I'd brought, I designed some new ones, decided on the ones that needed modifying and filled literally pages in my ideas book!

I think having the whole two weeks, together with the calmness of the island, the spectacular scenery and everyone being happy and content really combined to boost my creativity. It's been quite a challenging year with a variety of close family illnesses, so we were definitely ready for a break and a refresh.

You can really appreciate why so many people choose to retire to the island. Many of the things that occupy your mind with worry on a day-to-day basis just seem very far away and quite unimportant there.  There's definitely some good karma around!

Inspiring too. This beautiful heather on the mountains set off an idea for combining some deep amethyst and lush green malachite beads. Nature is so clever at colour combinations.


I guess if we were all on holiday all the time it would get boring, so I ought to be grateful to be back to the day job!  And at least we have some great memories and can start planning for next year...

Still Here, Still Kicking

I just wanted to update my blog, and update all of you who actually read this thing as to why I've been absent!

Those of you who know me fairly well know that I've been fighting a long battle over the last two years. For anyone who's just getting to know me....the short story is that about two years ago my asthma attacks (which have been severe for years) grew drastically worse. The doctors have tried all sorts of medication and treatment, but they haven't been able to get it under control.

As a part of trying to treat my asthma, I've been on steroids for the last two years. They have kept me alive, kept me out of the hospital, but being on steroids is NOT the ideal situation! Since we are finally getting my asthma under control (that's a long story too), we are working to at the least reduce my steroid levels, and at best get me completely off them!

The only problem with getting me off the steroids is that I get to go through withdrawals, just like a druggy, as we go through the process. The good news is that I'm not having any super serious asthma attacks, the bad news is that I'm exhausted and dealing with about 5 different side effects.

Combine that with having a busy week, and I just didn't have the energy (mental or physical) to blog this week! I haven't really gotten much done crafty wise either. I do have lots of ideas on the table though, and I'm hoping to get to spend some time beading and catching up on watching things tonight :)

I Cleaned!

Ok - before I forget! Happy 4th of July! I hope you have a great day and have lots of fun! We're hoping to go hang out with my evil twin tonight if I'm feeling good enough!

So last night I got ambitious and decided to clean! Now if I was smart I would have taken a "before" picture. But I wasn't smart. I wasn't thinking about blogging when I started cleaning. Just about cleaning!

My work space is a table that I share with my hubby for our computers, and then a card table next to it with all my beady stuff. I do try to put things away when I'm done with them, I really do, but I'm, um, very distractable. Especially when I have new ideas! (which is most of the time) So things tend to pile up and every once in awhile I'm forced to make myself clean so that I can keep working without completely losing my mind (which is mostly gone to begin with).

Part of the problem with my work space was that I had stuff that I do need to have around, and I do use, but there was really no place to put it. So it was just piled up on the table, and I tried to work around it. Well, I realized that I do have drawers I cold put them into, I just had to get rid of the junk that was in the drawers!

Did I mention I'm also a compulsive hoarder? I'm getting better since I've moved so many times in the last year, but it's still hard to get rid of anything that I could possibly find a use for. And since I'm such a creative person, I can think of ideas for just about anything! But last night I cleaned out a couple of drawers and reorganized so I could the mess in them. Ok, so honestly, some of it got shuffled to a box to that went in the closet, but I DID get rid of some stuff!

Next I cleaned off my workspace. I started that project last night, but ran out of energy so I finished it this morning. That meant putting things in the drawers I cleaned out last night, and putting away the detritus from many recent projects! Especially cleaning off my planning board.

My planning board is actually what started all of this. I have a custom order that I can't do with out laying it out - and my board was covered in the remains of old projects and pieces I want to use in upcoming projects! That's all taken care of now. Not only is my planning board clean (completely for once), but I can also see my desk! I even took a Lisol wipe to the top of it to clean off the dust and spare beads :)

Want to see my beady collection? I just have a few... 18 boxes of beads and 3 of findings and pendants...

Can you believe I'd love to have MORE??? I'm addicted...

And because this post wouldn't be complete with out showing off my lap top (his name is Jack)! See the blue in front of it? That's a bead mat. Yes, I generally bead in front of my laptop. It gets shifted around so I can work, but most of it takes place right here folks!

Crafting on the Road

I was in Arizona this last weekend visiting my husbands family, and I thought I'd bring some crafty stuff with me. After all, I bead in the car when we're driving long distances, so why not when flying or lounging around at the hotel? It was a good theory. Especially once I discovered that current TSA laws allow for scissors under 4 inches! So I packed up my little sewing bag with a project to start, and threw a box of beads in the suitcase in case I had time to start another project.

I knew I wasn't likely to get any crafting one the first morning of our trip - I had to get up at 3:30 in the morning! So I left my craft stuff in the suitcase and just dozed and read in the airport and on the plane. I never ended up pulling it out for the rest of the day either because I was so tired.

Saturday started out bad. I didn't have a super-serious asthma attack, but it was bad enough to completely wear me out and leave me hurting. So plans for the day got shifted around and I went to bed as soon as I could breath again. Woke up, hubby and I walked a few blocks to TGIFriday's for lunch, and then I slept for another hour!

That was the afternoon we went to the bead museum. Fortunately the two naps left me strong enough to walk around again! I'll be blogging more about it later this week sometime.

That evening was the only time I actually managed to bead! I started a bracelet that I've since put down because I've decided I need to get a different color combination. Always frustrating.

Sunday I never beaded because, well, I had a real bad day asthma-wise. Getting through the airports and flying home was real "fun" because of it. I had to use a wheel-chair to get through the airports :( I hated it, but my husband loved the fact that it meant we didn't have to wait in any lines! So oh well, some things are hard, but they can have their upsides right?