Two book reviews - The Creativity Secret and How to Make Money Blogging

Happy Friday!  I've been busy stitching my little fingers off (my first show of the season is Jewelry At The Domes November 16-17), so today's post will delve into my Amazon reviews again.  One book is good, and one is bad.

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Let's do the bad one first:

The Creativity Secret: How to get ideas like a genius - How to come up with ideas the easy way has such a hopeful name, doesn't it?  Like all designers, I'm always trying to come up with something new, and I thought this book might help with that.  However... It was horrid.  Here's my Amazon review:

The book can be summed up by two sentences from the end of the introduction: "There is nothing really new. All ideas come from outside ourselves." Sounds redundant, doesn't it? The whole book is like that, repeating this in slightly different words over and over. The main concept is that you take what you like from various sources and put it together to form your own ideas. You'll come up with nothing truly original that way. I read this book hoping for unique ways to come up with ideas, but none of that is found here.

One of the examples the author gives is how he comes up with covers for his books. Some of his other book covers (that I see below where I'm typing) are good, with appropriate graphics and easy-on-the-eyes colors, but the cover for "The Creativity Secret" looks thrown together, and the book itself feels thrown together.

The writing feels stilted and has many redundancies (which I mentioned above, but I want to give you a feeling of how it would be to read the book so I'm redundant on the redundancies). The grammar needs work with odd comma choices and an "Is" where there should be an "It". I'm being particularly critical of this because this author has written a book entitled "How to Edit a Book Fast and Easy: The Editing, Grammar, and Punctuation System That Works". Since there's a grammatical mistake in the title (it should be "Easily", not "Easy") and since there are numerous errors in "The Creativity Secret", I don't give much credence to his expertise on the subject.

The last 16% of this very short book is a list of about 29 titles by the same author on a wide range of topics: writing (and editing, as I mentioned above), making money, memory, lie detection, cleaning, ironing, and more. I don't get a sense that this author is an expert on any subject and will not purchase any more of his books.

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And now for the good one:

How To Make Money Blogging: How I Replaced My Day-Job With My Blog gave me a lot to think about, and after reading my review I need to read the book again to see if I'm headed in the right direction.

Here's my Amazon review:

The book is short, but it's packed with lots of tips on how to monetize your blog. I've just decided to start trying to make money with my blog, but I didn't really know what to do apart from signing up with Adsense. Bob fills in a lot of the details, and I'm looking forward to digging in!  

I have less to say if the book is good, it would seem.  :)  If you have a blog or are thinking about writing a blog, check this book out.

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Speaking of making money blogging, I'd like to remind you that I have two ads on my blog over to the right.  Don't click just to click, but I'd appreciate you clicking if you see something you might be interested in.  Every click helps!

Have a great weekend!  Come back on Tuesday for the exciting conclusion to the construction of my 2013 Challenge bracelet!  (If you click that link, read from the bottom up.)

2013 LBS Challenge - Part 3 - Bracelet Straps

This is the third installment of my 2013 LBS Challenge bracelet, "My Milwaukee: A Triptych".  If you missed the previous parts, you can catch up here:  Part 1 and Part 2.

For a quick refresher, here's the finished bracelet:

Today I'm going to talk about each of the straps of the bracelet - the "fish art" and our house.  After the center section (Fish Fry & a Flick), the other two sections were much easier.

For the left side of the bracelet I chose to recreate art found along Milwaukee's River Walk:

I knew I wouldn't be able to duplicate it but knew I'd get pretty close.  I found blue curved glass tubes on the Fire Mountain Gems website and knew I'd make the fish from polymer clay.

I had no idea the hardest part would be to find a brown to match the brick.  I bought three different colors of Delicas online that I thought would work (2 possibilities for the brick and one for the mortar), but they were all too orange.  I looked in two local stores, but nothing was even remotely close - these had too much red, those had a tinge of green.  There was nothing close in Delicas, round seed beads, bugles, tilas, or any smallish bead.  I finally decided on DB-287, Cinnamon Lined Topaz Luster Delica beads:

They're far too dark and had a luster I didn't want, but time was ticking away, and I had to get stitching.  I paired it with two lighter colors for the mortar - one with a luster finish and one with matte for variety - and I stitched the bricks on:

They're not perfectly straight, and each brick could have been a bit wider, but I think for an art piece they turned out just fine.

There was just a bit of difficulty making the fish.  I had wanted the holes to be mouth-to-tail, but every time I tried doing that the fish squished up.  I decided to make two holes across the body of the fish, and that worked out much better.

I used my thumbnail to make the ridges along the fish.  After baking, Steve painted the ridges and eyes with some black paint, and I was ready to go!

I determined where the waves and fish should go, then I discovered another problem - how was I to get a needle into the curved glass tubes?  Fortunately I use my needles until they break, so I was able to find one that had the perfect curve to it:

After stitching the waves and fish on, I noticed something annoying:

Those waves were not lying down!  More frantic discussions with Steve, and we decided to glue them down.  No, it's not an elegant solution, but I really didn't have any other choice.

I had a heck of a time getting them to stay down, and even after I found a bead and glass glue that worked the waves still have a tendency of popping up when the piece is handled too much.

After stitching the bubbles on, that part of the bracelet was finished:

Now for the other strap - our house.  As I mentioned in Part 1, I moved here because of marrying the love of my life.  I love our house, everyone who's in it, and that it's in such a wonderful city.  I'm glad I was able to include it in my piece.

Because I couldn't find a good, clear shot of the front of the house and didn't want Steve to know what I was doing, I took a picture of it with my cell phone when I came home from buying the brown beads for the bricks.  The picture isn't the best, but it was perfect for my purposes:

It gave me a good idea of the shape of the front of the house.  As with the other parts of the bracelet, I knew I couldn't reproduce it perfectly, but I knew it'd be pretty close.  I drew out what I wanted with pencil then stitched the outline and started filling the spaces in:

At about this point I realized there's much more brick than green to the house, so I made a slight adjustment to the bottom part so it would look like the brick and have bushes in front.  They're actually stitched on top of the "brick" for a more dimensional look.

That area to the right that's not stitched is where the straps overlap.  Any beads there would not be seen when the bracelet was worn, and they would probably interfere with how the bracelet fits, so woo hoo!  There's a big area where I didn't have to do anything but add the snaps!

I stitched the sky like I stitched the water - with curves to represent air currents.  The smoke coming from the chimney is supposed to be a heart, but it looks like a goal post.  That's what happens when you use Delicas instead of smaller beads that can be manipulated a little easier.

That's it for today!  Come back next Tuesday for the last installment on finishing the bracelet up.

Yarn review - Knit Picks Comfy Fingering

I was first introduced to Knit Picks when I decided to make the Choo Choo Child Hat I blogged about back in July.  If you missed it, you can read about my adventures here.  Also check it out if you'd like a refresher on how to look for patterns on Ravelry.

The pattern called for Knit Picks Palette yarn, which is fingering weight (1 in the Standard Yarn Weight System).  I looked at the 150 colors available, and they were beautiful.  However, the yarn is 100% wool, and I was leery of the baby having wool allergies.  Also, I've had wool allergies in the past, and I wasn't sure how I would react to knitting with it.  Now that I'm thinking of it, I'm not sure if I really have a wool allergy or if I just had a particularly itchy sweater once.  I'll have to ask my allergist if one of the poke tests was for wool.
 
(You should have seen my reaction to the dust test.  I'm sitting there with both arms out and turned so the inner, sensitive bits were facing up, and the nurse poked me with four series of tests - two in each arm (over 30 tests total, I think).  Instantly one of them started itching like crazy, but I had to sit there for the 15-20 minutes needed for the full test to be complete.  She checked on me after a few minutes, and I nodded - because I couldn't point - to the one that was all red and spreading out and asked, "Is that one dust?"  She said it was.  It must have spread out an inch wide and didn't heal completely for a few weeks.)

Ahem.  Anyway.  Enough about how one piece of dust in my bronchial tubes makes me wheeze.

So I looked at the Knit Picks website for a fingering weight, non-wool yarn and found Comfy.  It comes in 20 colors and is 75% Pima Cotton and 25% Acrylic.  It's $2.99 a 50g ball (218 yards), which is a touch cheaper than Palette's $3.39 - $3.59 a 50g ball (231 yards).  Since I needed 7 colors for the hat, I appreciated spending a bit less per ball since I knew I'd need a small amount of most of the colors.

This is Peapod

The one problem I saw was that there wasn't really a sky blue.  There was a Seafoam, which looked a tinge green, and there was Marlin, which is a bit too dark.  I opted for Seafoam, and when it arrived I was a bit dubious.  Here it is nestled between Peapod and Celestial:

Looking at it like that I decided it was okay and continued with the hat.  Other colors I bought were White, Black, Hollyberry (red), and Semolina (yellow).

When the hat was done, I thought the Seafoam looked just fine:

The yarn itself was very nice to knit with.  I don't remember any knots or splits or anything like that.  It's a sturdy yarn (it would have to be for all the tugging and pulling I was doing in trying to weave the spare color behind the stitches), and it's fairly soft.  There was a tiny bit of fuzz (you can see it at the bottom of the hat in the above picture), but it wasn't distracting.  That could have been from me not really knowing what I was doing for a new cast on or from all the tugging and pulling I mentioned above.

I am looking forward to maybe making another Choo Choo Child Hat with the leftover yarn or some socks.  I think the yarn would make really good, comfortable socks.

If you're looking for something to do with leftover fingering yarn, you could make Knit Pick's Tiny Holiday Sweater Ornament which is free on their website right now.  Check that out here.

If you can, peruse the Knit Picks website and pick up some of this yarn or any of their yarns.  They have quite a selection, and the colors are all gorgeous.  I get the catalog now, and it's quite the drool fest every time it comes.  There's a new yarn now - Diadem - which is another fingering yarn.  It's 50% Baby Alpaca and 50% Mulberry Silk, and the colors are really unbelievable.  There's a slight variegation to some of them that I'd love to see worked up.  There's a top listed in the patterns for Comfy that I think would look great in Diadem.  The catch is that Diadem is $16.99 for a 100g hank (329 yards).  I think I'll just admire it from afar.

2013 LBS Challenge - Part 2 - Bracelet shape and FF&aF section

This is the second installment of my 2013 LBS Challenge bracelet, "My Milwaukee: A Triptych".  I do have to warn you that it's a bit long, but there's a lot of pictures.  And... there's a Frisco reward for you at the end.  Remember - it's cheating to scroll down just to see the kitten being cute.

If you missed the first post about the bracelet's inspirations with lots of lovely pictures, you can read it here.

For a quick refresher, here's the finished bracelet:

The shape of the bracelet started with the center piece, Point Fish Fry & a Flick.  I knew it wouldn't be completely to scale, but I wanted to reproduce the shape and atmosphere of the event as best I could.

Again, here's a good view of FF&aF:

Please see my previous post for picture credit.  :)

Before I could do anything, I had to go shopping for the figures.  Nope, I didn't make all those by hand.  I'm not that talented!  I've mentioned before that Steve works for Model Railroader magazine, so it shouldn't be a surprise that I "hired" him as a consultant.  ("hired" is in quotes because I didn't pay him.  Sorry, honey!)

In our basement we have essentially two model railroad layouts - the one that takes up over a third of the basement which is in HO scale (the most common), and a much smaller one that Steve had started for articles in the magazine but needed to come home due to lack of space at Kalmbach.  That one is N scale.  In case you didn't click the links to the Wikipedia articles, HO scale is about 1:87.1, and N scale ranges from 1:148 to 1:160 (a lot smaller than HO).  I'm very familiar with the size of HO figures and knew they'd be too big for jewelry, so we decided I'd use N scale.  There's also a Z scale (1:220), but Steve said the selection for figures isn't very good.  (As an aside, I saw a Z scale layout at a model railroad show once - it was in a briefcase.  Easiest set up and take down ever!  Open up the briefcase, put it on a table, plug the cord in.  Done!)  If the numbers mean nothing to you, check out these pictures: Scale chart for figures (the tallest is 3") and Scale chart for locomotives head-on.

Once we determined the scale, I figured out basically what I wanted and went shopping online.  Thank goodness for the Internet.  Like I've ranted about before, I couldn't buy everything from one place.  Walthers has an enormous selection, but I was surprised that they didn't have everything I needed.  I ended up buying from two different vendors: Wig-Wag Trains and Zug Meister Trains on ebay.

If you want to reproduce what I did, I bought Faller's "Garden Chairs & Tables", Model Power's "People Eating", Preiser's "Family at the Beach" (Family Krause, to be exact), Preiser's "Seated People", and Plastruct's "Pleasure Boats".  I have a lot of leftovers that I'm going to have to figure out how to make into jewelry.

To give you an idea of how small these pieces are, here are the chair parts with a quarter:

The hurdle-looking things are the arms and legs of the chairs.  Two per seat.  Here's Steve my contractor gluing a chair together:

 See that tiny bit of white at the end of the brush?  That's the chair.

After my contractor glued the chairs together, he glued people in the chairs.  I decided to take four people from "People Eating" and four from "Seated People".  Since three of the "People Eating" were standing, I couldn't put them in chairs (duh).  I planned on arranging them so they would mill around the seated folks.  One of the people eating was a tall redhead and looked like Steve, and one of the "Seated People" had brown hair and was reading.  I determined that one would be me.

We're so in love, even in model form!

When Steve glued "me" into the chair, he said, "Just like the real Traci, her feet don't touch the floor!"  So not fair.

I arranged everyone (including an empty chair for "Steve") onto a piece of paper:

It was a little big, so I rearranged everyone and drew out a plan.  I then cut out a template:

 Yes, it's a G, but that can't be helped.

I mixed together some clay (ivory and translucent, I think) and cut the shape out:

This is in process, of course.

Using the pins from my Bead Baking Rack, I skewered the piece longways so I would could sew the form to the bracelet backing.  I then started pressing and gluing little rocks (in the model railroad world they're called talus) into the clay:

That was difficult, and some of them came off when I stitched the lake.  I should have used a better glue like E6000.  I used G-S Hypo Cement because it was thinner, but maybe the thicker glue would have been more adhesivey durable.  Other options would have been to make little rocks out of polymer clay and press them on or to sculpt rocks right onto the base, but I wanted actual rocks.  I thought it would be faster.  Ha!  It does look nice, so maybe that was the right choice.

Once the rock-gluing was done, I pressed the screen (I'll discuss that in a few weeks) into the clay so it would fit snugly.  I placed the people where I wanted them and pressed their little feet and chair legs into the clay.  I then took a picture so I would remember who went where:

I just noticed all the people eating are men. :::insert sexist joke here:::

After I took the people and chairs off of the clay (didn't want them to melt!), I oh-so-carefully took the skewers out.  I really wish I hadn't had to do that, but I needed to curve the clay while baking, and I couldn't do that with the skewers in.  Steve said I should have curved the skewers, but I didn't want to bend them.  Besides, I probably would have screwed up the piece.  I millimeter-by-millimeter eased each of the pins out and was glad the top part of the G didn't break off.  I then draped it over a pop can (Mountain Dew, to satiate your curiosity), which fit pretty well in the baking rack.  After baking, the form kept its shape very well.  Yay!

Based on the width and length of the FF&aF section, I made an initial paper form of the full bracelet:

When I was testing the bracelet around my wrist, I noticed that when the ends met on the inside, there was buckling on the outside.  That meant that it was too wide to work like a "normal" bracelet and would need some adjusting.  After an unbelievable amount of time and discussions with my model railroad jewelry consultant, I determined that on the inside the ends should form a V.

I made a new paper form (dropping the rounded corners because of the angles needed for the new shape), and Steve and I made a few notations so I knew where everything was supposed to be:

It may seem silly to have so many notations, but I was getting seriously confused.

For the bracelet base, I used Pellon interfacing and Ultrasuede from Knot Just Beads.  I tried to make it work with one piece of Ultrasuede by having one whole piece for the bottom and two pieces for the part that would be covered up with beads, but I had a gluing and logistics problem:

Glue was seeping through in some spots, and the piece on the right in the above picture I tried gluing upside down or something stupid like that.  Like I said, I was getting very confused.  Back to Knot Just Beads I went, and I brought back another piece of Ultrasuede and a hank of very gorgeous dark blue Charlottes I used in the lake.

Not only was the glue seeping through, but it wasn't always working.  I tried a plethora of glues - I don't remember all of them - and finally my scrapbooking Mono adhesive worked well enough.  It just had to stick enough for me to be able to stitch the pieces together while I beaded.  I know there are many people I could have called who know exactly what glue to use, but I was in a rush (as I often seem to be) and needed to get started.  If I had read Explorations in Beadweaving that I reviewed last Friday, I would have known to use E6000.  I even have it in the house already.  That's what I get for not checking my resources!

I should probably say that Explorations in Beadweaving is a great book for learning how to do bead embroidery.  I'm not going to explain how to do it step-by-step in my blogs, so if you would like to know, please pick up her book.  I sent her a Facebook message letting her know about the review.  She's very nice, and we're now friends on Facebook!  (Hi, Kelly!)

I'm glad I had a single piece of Ultrasuede because as I was curving the piece around for testing, the split ended up rather wide and wouldn't have been workable.  Perhaps it was "good luck" that I had so many problems and needed another piece.  If I had spent hours stitching just to find out that the split was screwing everything up, I'd have been pretty upset.

I taped the FF&aF base to the bracelet base and sewed it on, using light blue Delica seed beads to signify water crashing against the pier.  Then I started stitching the lake, using the gorgeous Charlottes, some dark blue 15/0 seed beads, and the light blue Delicas:

You can't tell in the pictures, but the Charlottes are flat on one side, and when that part catches the light it's really beautiful and looks like light glinting off the water.

As I stitched I noticed that I was "making waves" toward the right side of the piece.  I had the boat facing the wrong way for that, so I erased my lines and switched the direction of both boats:

Now it looks like the boat is pushing the water in that direction.

The final bracelet picture for today is this section all stitched up (including the edging, which happened much later) and before the figures and boats are glued on:

Next Tuesday, both straps of the bracelet.  It will be much shorter.  I promise.

Now for your reward for getting all the way down to the end.  Here's Frisco in his new favorite place, the window above my desk:

He's adorable up there, but he keeps knocking stuff off.  It's messy enough up there as it is without him wreaking more havoc.

Book review - Explorations in Beadweaving by Kelly Angeley

Explorations in Beadweaving: Techniques for an Improvisational Approach by Kelly Angeley is an interesting book on a wide range of stitches, styles, and even materials.  It's a good reference for anyone who's interested in learning the basics and then having fun with them.

Even though my Challenge piece I've started blogging about is free-form, I'm not really all that comfortable creating pieces that are "improvisational" as the sub-title suggests.  I was happy to see that Explorations in Beadweaving has many projects that can be followed step by step with beads and materials easily found.  There are a few projects that have focal pieces you might not find as easily (such as vintage cabochons, antique glass art print slides, or porcelain sink faucet knobs), but the author gives tips and suggestions on what you can do to make a similar project with different materials.

The book is divided into five chapters: peyote stitch, herringbone stitch, right-angle weave, bead embroidery, and combining stitches.  Each chapter has 3-4 projects using the chapter's technique, and each project has a "Take Two" section that explains either an alternate way to make the project or how to make earrings or a necklace using the same technique.  Throughout the projects are tips to help you adjust length, pick the right found objects, keep the tension tight enough, and much more.

The projects themselves are beautiful and cover earrings, necklaces, bracelets, and there's even a ring.  Each has a number of full-color charts to help you with the thread paths as a companion to the written instructions.

There are a number of different types of beads used, so if you've been curious what to do with long magatamas, peanut beads, drop beads, or spikes, this book has you covered.  I've shied away from spikes, but after seeing the two projects here that use them, I may have to rethink my reluctance.

As I was reading the book I wondered where some of the focal pieces could be found.  In "Finding Wonderland" I thought the focal looked like a Lipstick Ranch piece, but it wasn't listed as such in the Materials list.  I was glad to see the "Project Resources" section at the end of the book and to confirm that it was a Lipstick Ranch piece!  It would have been nice if the resources were listed with the project, but this is okay as long as you know where to look.  There's a "Where to Shop" section on the page facing "Project Resources" with the contact information for the resources.

I think the main advice for this book (or any bead book, really) is in the introduction to "Sol Sister Cuff":

Although I have provided bead-by-bead directions below, trust your instincts and follow your own creative voice while beading.

I'm glad I picked this book up, and I actually wish I'd looked through it before I did my Challenge piece.  I think I could have made a few aspects of the bracelet easier on myself from some of the tips in the bead embroidery chapter.

Check this book out if you're interested in developing an "improvisational approach" to your beading!

2013 LBS Challenge - Part 1 - Inspiration

I know last week I mentioned that today I was going to blog about the earrings I made for my mother for her birthday.  However, I forgot that last night was the voting for the 2013 Loose Bead Society Challenge, and I could finally blog about my piece.  I asked Mom if she was okay with me postponing the earring blog, and she said that was fine.  (Pssst... Mom... I need a picture of the necklace that goes with the earrings.  Can you please ask John to take one and send it to me?  Thanks!  Love you!)

Unfortunately that earring blog is going to be postponed a very long time.  I want to really go in depth about my Challenge piece, and that will take some time, since I'm trying to keep my posts shorter.  :)

The theme of this year's Challenge was "What Says Milwaukee to Me?"  I loved this theme because I love Milwaukee.  There is so much to do here, and everything is right at our fingertips.  The drive to downtown takes 15-20 minutes in good traffic, and it's not that much longer in bad traffic.  Easy in and out, and there are many free or low-cost events.

Pretty soon after the theme was announced, I knew what I wanted to do.  I knew it would stretch my abilities, but I wanted to create something large in concept that would match my love for Milwaukee.

I decided to do a bead embroidery bracelet.  For someone who has done a lot of bead embroidery, that wouldn't be too daunting of a task.  However, I had only made one bead embroidery piece:

It's a pin, in case you were wondering

I love it, but it's a far cry from a bracelet.  I wanted to showcase different aspects of living in Milwaukee, and that meant a bolder, more elaborate piece was needed.

The first inspiration was Point Fish Fry & a Flick, which is held every summer outside next to Discovery World:

 
I got that picture from the To quote or not to quote? article from A.V. Club Milwaukee.  It gives a good view of the area.  Off to the right you can see the huge inflatable movie screen.  Curving around to the left and behind is a pier, where boats frequently came in to turn around.

We didn't go this year, mainly because there were few movies, and it didn't get started until late August.  It gets really chilly after dark that late in the season.  Last year and the year before, though, we went a number of times, and we really enjoyed ourselves.

The Fish Fry & a Flick would be in the center of the bracelet.

The second inspiration was this piece of art that can be seen along the RiverWalk:

I don't know exactly where this is or anything about it.  My friend Sherri Ballard took this picture when we walked along the river with her daughter Sydney.

I had originally wanted to do this on either side of the Fish Fry & a Flick section, but something was niggling at the back of my brain.  Possibly it was because I wasn't able to find the right color brown for the bricks, but I think it was because I wanted to include the main reason I love Milwaukee:

It's my home.  I would never have moved here if I hadn't met and married the most wonderful man in the world.  If you missed my review of him and our marriage so far, click here.

So after all of that, I should probably show you the bracelet.  I'll break down how I made it in later blog posts.

I give you:

My Milwaukee: A Triptych

Here's the Fish Fry & a Flick section:

The art along the river:

Our house:

Oh - one last piece of inspiration: the beads represent the Loose Bead Society members who are my friends and who have supported me as I've grown in my beadwork.

And to prove that it's actually wearable (although I won't wear it to the grocery store):

I think I didn't mention this earlier, but I won for the Advanced category of the Challenge.  Yay me!


Next week: designing the shape of the bracelet and the Fish Fry & a Flick section.