Bling and glitter material

I am not into bling and glitter but I bought some material that enter in that category.

It can pass as a girly material.  I don't know exactly what I will make of them.  For sure, I will make something that may be unexpected.  It will be a nice experimentation.  I don't think I will combine the gems with the glitter.  I hope to have finished projects that isn't too big.

I would like to take a challenge with those items.  I have a few hints on how to work with them.  Nothing definite.  I have to try what is in my mind to see if it will work.  I always like to experiment.

Shopping

I have done some shopping lately.  I got a few interesting pieces.  It is mainly for jewelry making.

I also found earrngs:

The back of the earring is the most interesting:

Baned but do we listen?

Above, there is a not allowed sign.  On there, it is said that phone must shut down.  This directived is to ban the phones in not taking photos of the people.  There is anoter sign that say that children above a certain age must not enter in the opposite sex locker room.  I haven't taken that one.

My beef with it?  People don't always look at those banned regulations.  It is what I learned working with the public.  Putting up a message on a wall or door and people sees it without reading it most of the time.  In addition, even with a person sitting there and seeing to the grain, there can be people with children over the age limit enter in the opposite sex locker room.  It irk me because I feel that the regulation become invalid with those disregard of the regulation.

Having limits can be good in many situations.  When I do some jewelry, I am limited by the supply I have in my stash.  I can also be limited by time, for writing, embroidery or reading.    In the above situation, the regulations that are on the signs have a reason.  The people who don't respect those demands disregards the privacy of other people.  Limits may be small of big but they are there for a reason.  I may not agree with regulations I mentioned but I respect them anyway.  It is the common good in that situation even if the no phone policy is a no brainer.  It is common sense but there are people who don't think about it.

I like having some limits when I come to jewelry making.  It help me to make a choice even if I don't have a whole bin of beads.  There is some structure that can be made.  I have to use some creativity with what I have under my hand.  It is fun to see if some beads will match well together.  It isn't always a success story but at least I had tried.  Limitation can be good in some occasion even if not all.  Common sense is always a good ally and seeing what can be done in those limitation is good too.

Confusion, truth detector and knowledge

Strange how a situation can leave trace of confusion, a will of having an inner truth detector and wishing to know more about an institution.  It gives an after taste of eery fiction melodrama.  I also hate the feeling of being the ping pong ball between two people having different informations.  Who have the best information?  I also feel all weird up.  A few things have been drop up very easily after being push up a bbit hard.

It is where I wish to have a built in truth detector or some serum of knowledge to help me say the right thing at the right moment.  It would leave the confusion out of the equation.  In fiction, most character seems to know where to go, where to go, what to say.  They keep their uncertainty to themselves.  Those who act like idiots usually end up totally screw up, a real fatality.

What will happen from this experience?  I will have to rely on my wit and imagination, do a little bit of research on my own and have the system of taking care of things by myself.  I guess it will be for the better because sometimes, people don't seems to know everything or don't offer everything.  Personal relationship are there for good and bad.  It is great when it goes well and it is terrible when it goes bad.  When it goes bad, most often, there is the problem of  the interpersonal skills.  Some people have it and other don't

Not having a line of product

I am hard a work with many ideas, many projects.  My mind is like an hamster in it's wheel.  I am thinking, along all the ideas, to create some jewelry collection.  It is not just a set of necklace, earring, bracelet.  I would like to create a line where each jewelry pieces fit with each others.  People would be able to stack the bling as much as they like.  Giving power to the people is a good thing.  I know that I can like a piece of an ensemble but not necessarily the rest.

Mix and match, its versatile.  The fashionista will sure love that.  The challenge is to create the various items of the line.  It must be well thought.  Everything must fit together.  Not just with the metal.  If I choose other materials, I have to consider stones, colours, the texture and all that I can forgot.

Having a good stach of beads help.  I also think to take past projects to match with other newer ones.  Ecclectic and including.  It will help to build up quickly the line.  Just have to link the old with the new.  What is the must fun is finding new beads that goes well with what I already have done.  It will help a lot.  I also have to look up with other materials than beads.  Macrame cords is too easy even if I will use it anway.  I may consider adding paracord, leathers and figuring out kumihimo.  I will have to figure out how to incorporate it to the collection.

Orgy of chocolate

It is the time of year where chocolate is king.  Master chocolatier are artists with their material: chocolate.  Chcolate have diverse end results.  Dark, milk, white, combined with other delicacies like almonds, marple, nougat.  It is sweat and tasty.  No wonder the MesoAmerican value the cocoa beans and taking it as currency.

Happy to see that chocolate artisans are busy at this time of the year.  Easter is the chocolate festival by excelance.  Halloween is the festival of all candy, not just chocolate.  It deal more with the fun of collection candies with a costume.  Easter is all about chocolate, easter bunnies and eggs.  I am sure some people get the excuse to have an orgy of chocolate.  I don't blame them.  An orgy, be it candies, chocolate or any other food items can ge liberating once in a while.

Even it is a festive fime of year, even if it is decicated on tasting chocolate samples, seeing decorated eggs (it is fascinating how it can be elaborated), I am still on duty creating.  No holliday for the craft person. no holliday for getting ideas, no rest in having a creative life.  Easter is a creative period of the year, anyway.  It is stringtime.  It is time for the animal kingdom to have mature fun.  In my surrounding, there is a lot of birthdays too.  So, taking no break, I am still hard at work.

An old forgotten project

How strange!  I just looked up some old photos.  I found an old project, well, more of an experiment and I found the photos of the result.  It was little round mirrors where I put some pepeo vitrail on it.  The end result look like this:

It was an experiement at the time.  I was doing it without really knowing about the end result.  I must admit that I like the end result.  It doesn't look like very well thought out.  No pattern.  It is what I like the most: a project that is patternless.  It change of what I am usually doing.  I am tempted to repeat this experiement, knowing very well that I won't have the same result.

I should look more into my older photos.  I seems to have forgotten some projects along the way.  The only thing that I see out of this project are the little bubbles.  It look some bubbles to me.

It look botched but it is practice

I find it sad.  I wanted to practice embroidery but the result look like botched.  As seen above, it is the back of a present embridery project.  It look rushed but it is not.  It makes me feel that I wasn't careful enough.  It is a practice and I need it.  I just wanted the project to look a bit more decent than that.  Looking at it, I found it is really sloppy on my part.  I will continue this project but only to try and see if I will get better along the way and hoping it will look more decent at the end.

The ultimate goal with it is to be able to do something free hand and with an expert end looking product.  I guess it will take some time before I achieve that level.  I know understand now the professional artists.  They are perfectionists and I feel that pull too, especially looking at the photo.  It is far of what I wanted to have.  I know that everybody need to start somewhere.  My expectation was to be able to pick up this craft a little bit faster than other people.  I say faster than other people because I use a lot my hands, so I should be quicker to handle any handy crafts.  I may expect a little too much of myself but I am what I am...  I am sure to stay obstinate and hoping for a less sloppy job.

Great time to learn mythology

It is a good moment to learn mythology.  There are many ressources that explain mythology.  The first one I had stumbled on is George O'Connor serie on Greek Mythology.  It is going on and the nest god getting the treatment is Hermes:
https://www.amazon.ca/Zeus-King-Gods-George-OConnor/dp/1596434317/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1491777672&sr=1-6
https://www.amazon.ca/Hermes-Tales-Trickster-George-OConnor/dp/162672525X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1491778064&sr=1-1
I still follow up that serie.  I think there will be 12 books in total, so, it is near the end.  I only say it is a good introduction to Greek mythology.

Another good introduction to the realm of mythology is Crash Course.  They had started one on mythology:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRCVcuA6yZQ
The link lead to the preview.  They covered a brief into, creation myths and they just entered pantheon.  They cover a lot of various mythologies.  It is good to have an overview of mythology,  It had expanded the mythologies that I was a bit less knowledgeable.

what would be nice is to have more infos on less known mythologies like Japan.  It is one place I would like to learn more.  The mythology I know more is the Greek/Roman one.  I know a little bit less Norse mythology, some bits on the MesoAmerican and Indian ones.  I know very little of the pantheons found in Asia.  I don't know if there is an introduction to less known mythology but it would worht the effort.

New Pieces of Resin

I have done a few new pieces of resin.  I am happy about the result.  They are not sticky.  They look good and I think I will use them for new projects.  I don't intend to use them on barrettes.  I know that the rose looking one will go on earring.  I will have to find a way to connect them with a French hook.

For the other ones, I was thinking to bead around them.  I was thinking of using the square ones:

I also have some feather's components, still unwrapped:

I don't know what I will do with them.  Earring would be a good start.  I fid those a good representation of air and light weight.  There is only some colour missing.

I didn't knew

I am an strip cartoon fan.  There are a few strip cartoon that I follow on a regular basis.  There is one of them where I have the whole up to date collection (except the compilation ones):
https://www.amazon.ca/Yoko-Tsuno-Vol-7-Curious-2012-07-05/dp/B019TM9CC6/ref=sr_1_86?ie=UTF8&qid=1491243596&sr=8-86&keywords=yoko+tsuno
What I didn't knew was there is a English translation.  I think it is a plus because this particuliar strip cartoon have some interesting points.  The whole space travel/space adventures are quite unconventional.  The earth adventures are pretty much realism to them with some small spices sprincled in, just to get things out of the ordinary.

The author/illustrator have a nice evolution during this serie.  The faces and body are getting better during the whole serie.  He also had done two book: one with his main female character from the strip cartoon (https://www.amazon.ca/%C3%89CUME-LAUBE-99-100-101-LELOUP-ROGER/dp/2203562994/ref=sr_1_201?ie=UTF8&qid=1491245125&sr=8-201&keywords=roger+leloup).  There is also an book on a totally unrelated character (https://www.amazon.ca/PIC-TENEBRES-88-89-90-LELOUP-ROGER/dp/2203562889/ref=sr_1_83?ie=UTF8&qid=1491245001&sr=8-83&keywords=roger+leloup)

I like when people get outside of the box.  They go outside their confort zone and create unexpecting new material.  It inspire me to go out and create.  Not every strip cartoon author would be at ease writing a book or two and vice versa.  Well, I think it takes courage to fo from one to the other.

Bracelet or hearring?

I had bought, separately a focus bead for a pendant and some beads.  I find that both are well suited for each other.  My problem is with the beads.  I don't know if I will make a bracelet or hearring.  I could do both because I think I have enough for both.  On the other hand, I don't want to do something too much of a supercharged ensemble.

Having a choice is a bit puzzling fomr me.  It is choosing what is best for the project, what will end up looking best.  This one is a bit tought to choose.  Others can be an easier choice.  What this makes me think is an Indian influence.  So, I guess I could go for the bracelet and earring plus the pendant.  India is a bit extreme when it comes to jewelry.  It is not into my taste.  Too much is sometimes too much.  I think it will be too much for this project but I guess it may turn out well, depending on how I make it.  I may end up just using those beads, whith the hooks and claps.  A bigger simpler ensemble.

Usually, looking at all my beads, I see those how match as seen those above.  But I do have some that the connection between them are not that evident as shose: