Inspiration staring me in the face

Hold the phone!  Stop the presses!  Traci is posting TWO blogs in a week!  I hope you're sitting down.

A few days before a beading party at a friend's house I was looking for something new to do.  It's not that I don't have a huge backlog of projects like everyone else does, but I just wanted something new.  Something inspiring.  Something slightly different but well within what I'm capable of and would be capable of at a bead party.

So I was sitting here at my desk, and I looked up at the shelf above the desk and found....

Before I tell you what I found, let me first remind you of my room.  I posted about it early in my blog "career", and you can (re)acquaint yourself with it here.  The room has changed a bit since that post.  The bookshelves and cart are still there, but when I got my new Cricut Expression (you can read about it here), the Cricut station had to change.  I moved in a folding table which has ended up being an extra dumping space more than a Cricut station.  I did use it as such yesterday, but that was the first time.  Our dining room table has been a Cricut station more.

Another change is that the more I've gotten into jewelry, the more room I need.  We moved all of the scrapbooks into the spare room to give me more room for jewelry books, magazines, and supplies.  I'm so far behind on my scrapping.  I'm going to a crop this Saturday - hopefully I'll get more than one or two layouts done.

Once I clean things up I'll post updated pictures.  It seems that any time I clean off one thing, everything else gets messy, then I start a new project, and all bets are off.

In the last picture on my craft room blog post you can see my desk.  I love this desk.  It's sleek, it's smooth, it generally has a cat (or two) on it, and it has a shelf above it.

Here's a closer-up picture of the shelf in all of its messy glory:

The little ledge on top has a "t" stamp (I love monograms, especially stamps!), a metal page border I Staz-Oned purple, an eraser, a pedometer, a bunch of little knick-knacks, a thumb drive, a small piece of art I got out of a vending machine here in Milwaukee from a Waukeganite artist (Peter Bullock - www.art-hounds.com), and another monogram.

The lower ledge is much more of a mish-mash.  To the extreme left is hand sanitizer.  I'll not name everything, but the highlights are: clear nail polish (for earring wires, not nails), a baby anvil, a decoupaged rock one of my cousins in Germany gave me, sushi erasers, a binder with examples of my punches, my favorite picture of Mom and me at my wedding, a book where I've written some of my favorite quotes with stamped embellishments, a bunch of resin bottles and sealers, a few more thumb drives, some alcohol ink, more little knick-knacks, at least one monogram, a picture of my first cat (Perin - he's been gone 7 years now), a little vial I made in a Christi Friesen polymer clay class, some soul candy, and a lot of dust.

But wait, are any of those things the inspiration for the new piece?  Well, you should know I'd save the best for last.  A number of years ago I frequented a shop where there were crystals, Reiki, fairies, beautiful jewelry, and neat music.  I was friends with the owner.  One day I saw a dark purple pyramid with a Goddess symbol on it, and I just fell in love with it:

It's been close to me ever since - on my bedside table when I lived in Waukegan and now practically right in front of me at eye level.  No, I'm not super into Goddesses, but it spoke to me of the glorification of the female form.  Besides, it's purple (duh!).

Here's what's inside:

A few crystals, rose quartz, a slightly heart-shaped rock, and my favorite poem.

So that night, when I was looking up at my shelf, my eyes fell on my beloved pyramid and I really looked at it.  Then I did some research.  Come to find out that this symbol is the triple moon goddess.  There's also a simpler symbol where there are just the three moons - waxing, full, and waning - right next to each other.  If you're interested in seeing that picture plus a number of other ones plus a bunch of information, please click here.  I remembered that I have dark blue moon beads, and my mind started spinning.

I was wondering if I could design a peyote pattern to represent this.  I found an image somewhere with a spiral for her coochy instead of a circle, so I did that instead, plus added a few other spirals.  It was a bit difficult because you can't easily do curves in peyote, but I'm happy with what I came up with.

There is a neat free program called EasyBeadPatterns that I frequently use for these designs.  It's a quick download with a pretty easy interface.  You can design loom beading, peyote, two drop peyote, and more - check it out!

It took quite a while to bead, and Steve and my friends were teasing me that it looked more like a spider or alien than a Goddess.  They relented once it was done, however.

After ALL that lead-in, you've either left or are dying to see the piece.  In case it's the latter, here it is:

I incorporated the simpler triple moon goddess symbol twice on the necklace and once at the bottom of the focal piece.

Here's a closer look at the focal:

Since I didn't want to go to the store, I picked blues that I thought would work well with each other and with the moons.  The Goddess herself is done with silver beads, and she shimmers nicely against the light gray background.

I've been finding that I can put together some nice color schemes when I try to use what I have instead of hot-footing it to the store.  Don't tell the bead stores that, though - I spend enough there as it is!  :)

My friend Maggie Roschyk just had a book published that's all about getting inspiration from things around you.  It's called Artistic Seed Bead Jewelry: Ideas and Techniques for Original Designs.  You can check it out here on Amazon.