Creative Juice

Cathie Filian is posting really adorable Halloween crafts this month - it looks like she's posting something daily all month. So go look, because there's some great costume ideas and also some cute decor ideas.

Amazon bargains

You never know what you're going to find on Amazon, and how much they're going to feel like charging that day. For example, I found a blog post (unfortunately I no longer remember where it was!) that featured a couple of pages from Print & Stamp Lab: 52 Ideas for Handmade, Upcycled Print Tools. So I looked it up on Amazon, and lo and behold, they happened to have it on sale for $5 and change. So I am now the proud owner of that book. It's got some pretty great ideas in it, so it's definitely worth the five bucks. I wish the other two books in the series (Drawing Lab for Mixed-Media Artists: 52 Creative Exercises to Make Drawing Fun and Collage Lab: Experiments, Investigations, and Exploratory Projects) were also on sale, but apparently not. The ways of Amazon are mysterious, as I said.

Aside: aha! here is the excerpt - on Craftside.

I found another thing unexpectedly on sale the other day, and that was the Cuttlebug Machine for Die-Cutting and Embossing with Bonus Tool Kit for $39.99. That's a good price, so if anybody's been waffling, I would recommend grabbing that one because you never know how long that price will last. (Full disclosure: I do theoretically get a small cut of the dough if you buy one though my link, as you probably already know. Since I have yet to actually ever even make the threshhold to get a $10 gift certificate, however, you'll have to forgive me for not taking that part of it very seriously!) Watch what price it gives you, though, because, for example, if you click on this link instead: Cuttlebug Die-Cutting and Embossing Machine - the price jumps over $20. Go figure.

(Added: aaaand as predicted, the price has changed. See below for the latest.)

New books #3: Scrapbooker's Creativity Kit

Now this is not a book you might expect me to purchase if you know me well, because I am not a scrapbooker (as I think I've mentioned):
The Scrapbooker's Creativity Kit: Prompts And Ideas To Jump Start Your Layouts
But I'm taking Claudine's class and it sounded interesting (and I found a good price on a like-new copy!) so I thought I'd try it. And I think, now that I have it, that it's really not just for scrapbookers - or at least, it can be adapted to other things. What this basically is is sort of a prompt tool. It consists of two card sets and a book. One set of cards is colors and the other one is words. You're supposed to pick one word and two colors and brainstorm from that. I certainly think you could use this for collages and maybe for other things - the color part especially I could see using for jewelry, and maybe the words too. The book itself is full of example layouts from a number of different people as well as Claudine - some of them take the word part literally and incorporate it in their layout, and others just use it as a taking-off point. It's really interesting to see how differently different people respond to the same prompt.

I'm always partial to things that help you brainstorm - sometimes I can do my own brainstorming without assistance just fine, but other times a little push in some direction or other is really a lot of help. (Sometimes even if you don't like the results of the brainstorming, it helps, because you say to yourself, No, I don't want to do that! and it helps you clarify what you do want to do. At least that's sometimes what I do.)

New books #2: Custom Cool Jewelry

I think I've linked to this book once before, but that was when I had been perusing it in Barnes & Noble, and I actually own it now.

Custom Cool Jewelry: Create 200+ Personalized Pendants, Charms, and ClaspsThis book is about two years old now, and I suspect that a lot of the mixed-media type of ideas in it have gotten much more mainstream during that time - heck, this book may be the reason I've seen a lot of these ideas around in various guises. I'm glad I got it, but I really can't think of too much else to say about it than that I like it, and it's probably worth getting, if you don't already have it, because it's packed so full of ideas.

(Are you noticing a pattern here? I'm a terrible reviewer, that's the pattern. If I hate something, then I have no trouble ranting about it, but I often have trouble figuring out how to express admiration for the books or movies I really like!)


Aside: this isn't where I bought this book, but but while I'm on bookish subjects, I also have a bit of a recommendation about a good bargain for people who buy a lot of books: BOMC2. I think a lot of people shy away from book clubs, but this is a gigantic improvement over the old-school book clubs. It doesn't do away with automatic shipments; what it does is let you choose what's shipped. What happens is that you make a list of books off of their website, sort of like a wishlist -- or a Netflix queue, only you're buying rather than renting. Once a month, they send you the top book off the list, and what makes it great is that the price for these books is only $9.95 including shipping. That's almost always cheaper than Amazon's price, and far cheaper than the list price. They don't have a gigantic selection like Amazon, of course, but I have been using it for quite a few months now and I have not yet come near running out of things that I want.

Bonus Twilight themed links, because I can't seem to stop once I started: Cleolinda, who I was talking about the other day, did a post that talks about some Twilight jewelry (among other subjects - if you're in a hurry, just scroll down til you see pictures of rings). She also links to this ring, which I really like a lot. -- Well, you know, if I wore rings, which I mostly don't. But still, that doesn't stop me from liking it and it certainly doesn't stop me from linking it. (While I'm at it, I will probably favorite some more Twilight-y stuff on Etsy, if I see something else I like. So check the sidebar.)

New books #1: fabric beads

I have several new books I haven't talked about yet. (I may put them into several posts because more than one Amazon link per entry tends to get wonky.)

Fabulous Fabric Beads: Create Custom Beads and Art Jewelry
Kristal Wick didn't invent fabric beads, but she does seem to have perfected a technique for making them. I have plenty of fabric to play with, so I really should try this. (I kept looking at the pictures and thinking that they were made on some kind of form, because of the black "showing" at the top and the bottom. But it turns out that what the author does to achieve this effect is dip the top and bottom in black paint. See, the things you learn when you actually read the book!)



Bonus link:
If you feel the need for more Twilight jewelry, Alphastamps has a cute Twilight-themed bracelet.

Twisted

I got Kerry Bogert's Totally Twisted: Innovative Wirework & Art Glass Jewelry, and all I can say is, I'm sorry I waited so long to get it. I love wirework and I'm always saying I want to start doing more of it, so maybe if I try a couple of these projects it'll get me kick-started. We'll see. But anyway, this book is beautiful to look at and the projects look great and the only downside I see is that it's making me want to go buy more lampwork beads to use!

Meanwhile the Claudine Hellmuth class starts tomorrow, so I'm excited about that. (I'm still missing some supplies - most notably the Cuttlebug, because nobody ever puts it on sale and I'm playing a waiting game on that. I decided I could probably manage without it, anyway.)

Beader's Color Palette

This isn't a new book and I'm sure y'all know all about it already, but I wandered by Margie Deeb's website and was interested to see that The Beader's Color Palette: 20 Creative Projects and 220 Inspired Combinations for Beaded and Gemstone Jewelry had been chosen as one of Library Journal's Best Books of 2009. It is a really good book.

(I love books about color, anyway, and I suppose I'm sort of a color junkie in general. I'll have to do a post about color one day.)

Barnes & Noble, part 2

You know, I had mostly forgotten about it, but I'm pretty sure my copy of Bead Simple: 150 Designs for Earrings, Necklaces, Bracelets, Embellishments, and More got wet in the hurricane. (I was just discussing with another ex-Galvestonian at Christmas how hard it is to be sure what become of specific items.) Now that I looked at it again tonight, it makes me want to go buy another copy.


I haven't watched Beads Baubles & Jewels lately, because I'm pretty sure I've seen just about every episode of the last five seasons, many of them several times - but looking at Wrap, Stitch, Fold & Rivet: Making Designer Metal Jewelry (Lark Jewelry Book) makes me remember how much I always enjoyed Mary Hettmansperger's segments. It looks like a good book. And I think Margot Potter's Beyond The Bead: Making Jewelry With Unexpected Finds needs to go on my "to buy" list, too.

Barnes & Noble, part 1

So I went to Barnes & Noble to look at mixed-media-type books. I looked at some straight scrapbook kind of stuff too (did you know there are at least two books called The Joy of Scrapbooking?) but here are some things I liked from the jewelry section.

(I'm gonna put the links in in two formats in case the ones with the pictures don't work right.)


Amulets and Talismans: Simple Techniques for Creating Meaningful Jewelry
This one had some good technique information as well as really cool ideas.



Custom Cool Jewelry: Create 200+ Personalized Pendants, Charms, and Clasps
I know this one isn't new or anything (I didn't look at dates, I don't know that any of them are) but I hadn't actually looked at this book in person before, and it has some really good ideas.


(Hmm, I can't tell what's going on with the formatting, maybe I'll break this up into a couple of separate posts so it won't be completely confusing.)

Ornamentea and steampunk

Remember back before Christmas when I said I was going to post pictures of the stuff I got from Ornamentea, and then I didn't? I never got around to taking the pictures at the time, but I finally did this week. I knew if I waited any longer it was going to get scattered all over the place.

Here is the contents of the Amazing Glaze kit:

Besides the jar of glaze itself (which is sort of a crystally powder) and the instructions, the kit had several bezels, the assorted colors of cord, and an assortment of stamps. After looking at the instructions, I have some fun ideas for what to do with this - some layered things with objects in them, maybe? We'll see what I come up with.

This next picture is part stuff from Ornamentea and part stuff from Loew's. I think you can guess which is which, really.

(Hint: the Ornamentea stuff is at the bottom.) The little round tin - which includes what seem to be shell casings - was the kit that came with a pre-order of the Steampunk book, and since the book has been released, I guess that means the little kit is no longer available. I really like the book, by the way. I was very impressed because a lot of people seem to use the term "steampunk" without really knowing what it means, and if you read through this book you'll come out of it with a pretty good idea, I think. Jean did her homework. (Which is what an author ought to do, yes, but unfortunately you can't always entirely count on it happening.) There's some great jewelry in here, but in between, there are short pieces about steampunk books - which is the original origin - as well as steampunk art, steampunk clothing, and more. It's really interesting, and I really think it's something that anybody trying to make anything that they're going to call steampunk ought to know.

I went to JoAnn's this week and bought alcohol ink, because I knew it was supposed to work on metal, and I got this idea that I would try to color the washers I bought at Loew's. I tried it last night, and the results so far are fairly encouraging, although I haven't taken pictures yet. (And actually the lid of the Amazing Glaze, seen in the picture above, got used as an experiment, too. It's no longer white!)

Blogs, blogging and other people's blogs

I don't usually get tired of talking about myself all that easily, but tonight I'm having trouble thinking of something to say about myself and my jewelry. So I went looking through other people's blogs for inspiration.

Aside: here's a question: how do you define the word "blog"? My friend Col, who I play WoW with, hates the word and won't touch it with a barge-pole. I sort of agree with him in the sense that it's really sort of an ugly, ungainly word, but I use it anyway because it's become part of the language and well, what else am I going to call this thing that I write all the time. But anyway, that's not exactly what I meant, even. Here's the real question - is a "blog" the site as a whole or a single entry, to you? Because there seems to be some disagreement on that point. My opinion is that the blog is the whole "site" - or subsite, in this case, i.e., deliciousbeads.blogspot.com. It's all of my entries considered as a whole. But increasingly you see people using it to mean what I would call a "blog post" - one single piece of writing within that site. People say "my blog that I wrote tonight" or "so-and-so wrote a blog about this subject" and it sounds odd and wrong to me. Is that just me?

Anyway, getting back to the subject of other people's entries, one thing that I noticed in jewelry-blog-land in the last week or so is several reviews (including this one) of this book:


As a matter of fact the book is in my little Amazon store also: Enchanted Adornments. I haven't actually seen it for myself yet, though, so I'm not actually telling you to go buy it! I'm just noting that I have seen several extremely positive reviews and so clearly it's worth checking out. (I might try to get in a side-trip to B&N or somewhere tomorrow, to see if they have it so I can check it out in person.)

Shifting to another kind of jewelry: I have very geeky friends and I know some of them would love to have this pendant of Melissa's with 8 digits of pi. One of these days I may have to have a go at perfecting my metal-stamping, just so I can stamp geeky things like that on metal. I suspect they'd sell extremely well among what my mother used to call "those internet people of yours" (she never did know what to make of my online friends).

Etsy goodness:

• I really like this sterling scrabble tile pendant. And of course there's the ones made from actual Scrabble tiles, too! (I have one of the latter - not that design, though. Mine's a little owl.)
• In a autumnal color scheme, here's some great copper and jasper hoops. Ooh, I like these crystal and copper ones, too.

(This is making me want to go make jewelry, which is a good thing. Yay!)