I am catching up...

...with the rest of the internet world. I have my blog. Now I have finally opened a Flickr account. Now I just need to open my Etsy store, get a Facebook account, and for some reason, tell everyone everything I am doing on Twitter. But for now, here is the link for my Flickr account: http://flickr.com/photos/beadsofjoy For those of you who are even farther behind than me, Flickr is a picture hosting site. People post pics of anything and everything. It is actually pretty fun. Just type a search word in and you will get literally thousands of pics to look at. So far I really only have pics of work you can see either here on my blog or on http://www.bead-patterns.com/ where I sell my patterns. There are a few other pics, if you care to check them out. And over time I plan to put pics of lots more stuff I make (not just bead related) and more.

And speaking of selling my patterns... within the next week I plan to have it set up here on the blog that you can purchase my bead patterns directly from me. The benefits to this, you ask? I don't have to give the above mentioned site 45% of what I make. And the drawbacks? On Bead-Patterns.com you can download your patterns right away and get right to beading. If you buy from me you will have to be patient and wait until I e-mail them to you (until I get a better system set up in the future.) But to compensate you for the inconvenience I plan to offer the patterns at a discounted rate if you buy them from me (I guess that is another benefit! Yeah!) Turn around time will be no longer than 24 hours.

And just for fun, here is an early piece I made. It is a brooch made with bead embroidery with a ceramic cab. I made it for and wore it on my wedding day. My Mom gave me the cab. I just love the two birds. So romantic.

Catalogs and Sunshine... two of my favorite things

I have joined a blog catalog, http://www.blogcatalog.com/ A website where you can search for blogs specifically. You'll see off to the right on this page a small button asking you to rate this blog. Please do. You won't be taken from this page. Just choose a number (5 is the highest) and press "Go". The more ratings I get, the easier it is for people to find me on the catalog. If you click on the "rate my blog" you will be taken to BlogCatalog's homepage, which will make my rank rise even more as well as give you access to thousands of blogs. You can always press your browser's "Back" button to return here. Thanks!

Here is another of my beaded figures. I made it for my friend Dave for Christmas a few years ago. He loves orange. I called it "Butterfly Sunshine". Those are glass butterflies flying around the body. I also used various sizes of seed beads and sequins. The back was hard to capture as I was using a scanner. On the rear end is my signature bead. It is hard to see but there are two H's on it. I thought I'd share this doll, as I am craving sunshine. It has been dreary and rainy here in Wisconsin.

front

back

Otherwise I have been crocheting a lot, both for Christmas and to get ready for the coming frigid temperatures. I made myself a neck warmer that I can't wait to show off. It is like a scarf, but is short and buttons closed instead. I will post pics soon. As for the rest of my projects, I am bound to secrecy. I don't want to give away any Christmas surprises! But as soon as all has been revealed, I will share.

I'll be wearing a smile for the next four years!

Well, I don't know about you, but I very happy about how the presidential election turned out. If you disagree, that's OK. I like all kinds of people. ; ) But for those of you that share my enthusiasm, here are two freebies to show it.

The first is that http://www.moveon.org/ is giving away these really cool stickers featuring President-elect Obama. They were created by artist Shepard Fairey. You can get one sticker for free (including shipping!!!) or more for a small donation. And starting November 8, they will be selling prints as a fund-raiser for all their good work. Here is the link: http://pol.moveon.org/shepstickers/

And as a bonus, I created a bead pattern based off the print by Shepard Fairey. It is free as well. I recommend making it using peyote stitch. It only has 5 colors of beads. A dark blue (recommended Delica beads color: DB 0277, amount needed: 8 grams), medium blue (DB 0167, 5 grams), red (DB 0723, 5 grams), medium gray-blue (DB 0266, 1 1/2 grams) and very pale blue (DB 1497, 2 1/5 grams). The pattern is 61 columns wide by 67 rows tall. I have not made this pattern myself, so I would LOVE to see it finished! Send me your pics and I'll post them (or if you're shy, just let me look... please!)

If you have trouble getting a large enough picture to work from, double-click on the pattern. It should open in a new window. Right-click over the picture and choose "copy". Then "paste" it in a document where you can drag the corners to alter the size. You can make it fit a full page. Then print. I tried this and it worked well for me. If you can't get that to work, let me know and I can send you a .pdf file.