Wish I Had a Green Thumb.

I do wish I were good at growing things. I once had an African violet. It died. To be fair, I didn't know that those flowers are really, really hard to keep alive. It's a good thing I'm not ready to ever attempt to care for orchids. Nope.

But a geranium should have been easy, right? Also, nope. I bought one in May from the Walmart 'nursery.' Nursed it back to life maybe. I watered it and gave it new potting soil and spread coffee grounds over it and even bought plant food for it. Look how well it was thriving a few weeks later!

My poor geranium fell victim to accidental over spray of Weed N' Feed one night when I was fertilizing my lawn. *sigh* There was no preventing the wilting and shriveling to follow. Now it's just a sad lump of former plant on my front porch:

Never fear, dear listeners! I will try again once I can afford a new plant! That's how success works, right? Learn from your failures (keep the weed killer away from the flowers) and try again. The same can be said for beading. Just be persistent!

So in the interest of growing my beading business, I am doing several things:

I am showing up to work every morning to spend a little time each day working on bead related activities. Waking up is still hard, especially after many taxing nights this week.

As you may be able to tell, I have given my blog here a face lift. My brain is geared towards purple at the moment. I changed my blog banner and my avatar icon (after several years of the last one). I have a secondary one that JD made as well that I may try, since this one is hard to read small scale. I may have him make more until we can get it right, but for right now it's universal on all my pages.

My Etsy shop is slowly coming back to life. So far, I've only edited and renewed listings for items that I still have on hand. Upcoming, I will be adding brand new work as I photograph it!

My Pinterest page is quickly growing, both in galleries of my own designs and inspirations from many, many artists around the world. It has become my go to tool for ideas and storage. I sincerely believe it has played a major role in revitalizing my own creativity. :-)

Now, to what I've been making! I've been growing as an artist. Here is an image of a three year old design:

Brick stitched cog with czech pressed leaves for petals.

I made a blue one too, just with a jump ring instead of the bead loop. Bead loops are now ugly to me. Here is one of my very latest creations:

Same basic design, just more layers. And fringe beads.

Strung on Beadalon beading wire.

The initial design was good, but it was too floppy. The added layers on each side add sturdiness to the piece. I like the contrast that the little fringe beads give to the blooms. As you might be able to tell, I've been stash busting and have used up the last of the blue ones. And now I have neither enough leaf beads or fringe beads to make more flowers. :-(

Things are looking up for me I guess. I'm just going, going, going. I even have a commission in the works and a friend agreeing to model for me in the near future (both from the same person). I'm excited. Are you?

Today's book model: The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde (signed!!!)

This is the best book about cucumbers you will ever read! Ever. Seriously, go read it. You can't say no to Jack Spratt being a detective. And while you're at it, go read the Thursday Next series too so I can have someone to make toast and marshmallow and time travel jokes with. Please?