I made these rings last night. It just came to me out of the blue, when I was looking at one of the UFOs I posted yesterday, that I could use a small section of my signature work as the centerpiece with a ring of skinny herringbone. Why didn't I ever think of this before?

As soon as I made these I posted them on Facebook so please forgive the repetition if you are seeing them again. I am currently working on another design and will post iy when it is done.

It is warm here in SE lower Michigan and is supposed to get warmer. I have to go pick up Cheyenne from poms camp tomorrow (she made captain of her varsity team!) and Sierra comes home from pre-camp (where she is a counselor). We have to take Sierra back on Monday and Cheyenne leaves on the 9th for Italy. Have I mentioned that before? I am so happy she is going somewhere so fabulous. I would love to go with her.

That's all for now. Share this blog with others. It might actually get more interesting as time goes on. :)

Do something nice for yourself.

UFOs and "hey, what's with all the string?"

Not to be confused with unidentified flying objects, the pieces pictured above are indeed UFOs, which in the crafting world stands for UnFinished Objects, hence all the strings.

While I work, my ideas seem to ebb and flow. I have a flash of what I want to do but somewhere along the way I get distracted or bored or just don't like what I am doing. In some instances I actually put all of these pieces together into one piece but in most instances they end up in a box, ignored and abandoned. One of these boxes sits on my side work table so that I have easy access for tossing in my rejects (oh, that actually hurts to say). Okay, not rejects exactly but, um, experiments.

While thinking of something to write about today, these "experiments" started calling out to me to be photographed. I didn't want to tie in all of the strings because that is my least favorite thing to do. Perhaps that is why I don't care for loomed beadwork - too many strings to tie in, but I digress.

There is something about revisiting abandoned work that I really like. I try to remember how to do certain techniques and as I play I find myself moving into other directions. I get frustrated when I can"t reproduce my own work and I wonder why I just didn't write it down to begin with.

I have created so many techniques and technique variations that I could fill another book. My third book, "Bead, Play & Love" is a culmination of a number of structural technique variations as well as a number of original techniques and variations. I was sad to have stopped selling it and hope to be able to offer it again either in book or ebook format. I am still looking for different options, especially ones that aren't cost prohibitive. In the meantime I have lots of ideas to share and have even toyed with the idea of sharing "365 techniques in 365 days." That would be huge undertaking given the fact that the instructions alone would take a while to do. I may just share a picture of the technique and write instructions for some of them. So many ideas. I hope to have it all sorted out soon.

If you have any UFOs lying around, take them out and see if they inspire you to create something new. And if you do, let me know.

Have a fabulous rest of today.

Happy Tuesday,

My daughters are gone for the week which gives me some time to either clean and organize closets and storage areas or work on something that feeds my need for creativity. As you can imagine, I am choosing the latter. For now. I will get to the closets and stuff another day. Really, I will. Really.

I am also going to try to keep this blog somewhat up to date. I am not going to promise an everyday thing but will strive for at least three days a week. I have so many ideas swirling though my head and hope that by sharing some of it here, I will be able to sort it all out.

First and foremost is my project for August called, "Beads. Beaders. Beading." I am looking for submissions of work from people all over the world who want to be included in a slideshow showcasing all of the collected work as well as a PDF file of submissions and artist information.
Details of this project can be found on my Facebook page, Beth Katz Stone, under "Events." I hope to have many more people agree to play. This is a fun project. It will generate no money and even if it did I would donate it to some type of art thing anyway. I want to bring bead artists together in a new and fun way. The finished project will be posted on Youtube for easy sharing. Please join those artists who are going to participate.

If you follow me and my work on Facebook you may have already seen these two reversible pendants. They were inspired by my love of freeform beadwork, which I started doing over 20 years ago.