Upcoming bead show classes

Hi, all!  Before we get into my upcoming classes, I want to remind you that I have a contest for free Zinio magazine subscriptions going on.  You can read the whole thing at the bottom of my Can't leave well enough alone post from last week.  The gist of it is:

Since I'm always yammering on about my studio, and since we had a whole presentation on studio and bead organization at our last Loose Bead Society meeting, I want to see YOUR workspace.  Whether you have a full room like I'm lucky to have, a corner of the bedroom, a shelf or two in a closet, some shelves in the dining room, or a basket of yarn by the couch, I want to see it.  E-mail me at traci@creative-pursuits.biz and send me a picture or three of your area - where you store things and/or where you work - with a description of your space and the types of craft(s) you do.  Tell me what you like and what you don't like about your space.  Also give me your full name, your e-mail address, and which magazine subscription you'd like.  I will post everyone's entries (without the full name and e-mail address, of course), and if I happen to get more than 9 entries, I will draw names out of a hat.  I'm sure I have a hat around somewhere.

The deadline for the contest will be Wednesday, February 20th at 8:00 pm Central time. (see update below)  That should give you all plenty of time to clean things up a bit and to get me your pictures.

So far I have only received TWO entries!  That means there are seven more magazine subscriptions up for grabs.  Grab your cameras (or smart phones or tablets with cameras) and snap a pic or two of your space.  Don't forget to look at the available magazines on the Zinio website and let me know which one you want.

Update:  As of today (2/22/2013 at 11:19a CST), I only have three entries.  Since they got in before the deadline, they automatically get free subscriptions.  I am going to keep the contest going for another week, so you now have until Wednesday, February 27th at 8:00 pm Central time to get me your pictures and enter the contest!

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Did you know that I'm going to be teaching classes at two bead shows in 2013?

The first one is the Madison Art Glass and Bead Show in Madison, Wisconsin held at the end of March.  The show itself is March 23-24, and I'm going to have a table there selling kits and tutorials of my designs as well as some supplies.  Classes start on March 22nd, and I'm going to teach my "Double Decker Daisy" design that day:

This bracelet uses twin seed beads (or Super Duos), 8/0 seed beads, 15/0 seed beads, 6mm fire-polish or bicone crystals, and daggers.  This is a good introduction to the twin seed beads and how to add height to your projects.  I have a number of color choices available.  Click here for all of the information and to sign up.


The second bead show class I'm teaching is at the Bead&Button Show.  It's held at the beginning of June in Milwaukee, WI.  I'll have a table at the Meet the Teachers event on Wednesday, June 5th, and my "Tubed Key, or Not Tubed Key" class is Sunday, June 9th:

This class teaches how to make embellished peyote tubes that can be used to wrap around keys or to use as elements in a necklace or bracelet.  You can choose your own colors and how elaborate you want your necklace to be.  The kit comes with two large keys and four matching mini keys for earrings.  Here's a close up picture of the earrings:

They're so cute!  Click here for all of the information and to sign up.


I hope to see you in my classes or at my tables at either show (or both)!  If you know anyone who might be interested, please share this blog post with them.  Better yet, share it on Facebook and/or Pinterest - the more the merrier!

Can't leave well enough alone

(Make sure you read through to the bottom of the post - there's a giveaway opportunity down there!)

Hi!  Yes, it's been a long time between posts again.  The Christmas selling season went well and the non-selling part of Christmas, too!  In January Steve brought a cold home from the office, and that laid me out for a while.  It usually does.  There have been some other personal challenges, but I'm nearly past all that (I hope), and I'm gearing up for a new year.  Details on that to come in another post.

One of the challenges I've been dealing with for years is my house in Waukegan.  I won't go into all the gory details here, but suffice it to say that I've entered into an agreement with the mortgage company to take the house (and mortgage) off my hands and onto theirs.

The reason I'm mentioning it at all is that it provided me with yet another opportunity to reorganize part of my studio.  In case you're new to my blog or need to refresh your memory:

Original post about my craft room
Part 1 of reorganization
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

One would think I'd leave well enough alone.  I had lots of space, and while it wasn't clean all of the time (or at all since the Christmas selling season started), I had a place for everything.

When I decided to give up my house and not try to rent it anymore, I had a dilemma:

Back in 1998 Dave (not my current husband) and I were living in a shabby apartment in Waukegan, Illinois.  We were going to Carpentersville or Algonquin or somewhere for a doctor's appointment for him.  It was a long drive; I remember that much.  We were suckers for stopping at garage sales, and when we saw one shortly after leaving Waukegan (I think it was in Wildwood for those of you following along) we stopped.  I don't know if there was much there we wanted, but in the back of the garage there was this beauty.  There were a few nicks, but all the glass was intact.  There was a $25 price tag on it.  I asked if that was the real price, and they said it was, and I was sold.

Fortunately we had Dave's van.  Unfortunately he had a lot of stuff in it - seats (unsurprisingly), copier parts (he fixed copiers back then), copier manuals, and random stuff that vans seem to accumulate.  Well, we took everything out, seats and all, and we (by we I mean Dave and the guy from the garage sale) carefully put the china cabinet on the floor.  The seats and everything very carefully went on top, and we went on our merry way to the doctor.  I think the drive was about an hour.  Over an hour back home, and the china cabinet was intact.  We crammed it into the eating space of the apartment, and my mother and stepfather thought I was nuts - we really had no space for it and no china to put in it.

That October we moved into a house (the one I'm now giving up), and there was a perfect spot for the cabinet in the dining room.  Mom said, "A china cabinet needs china," and that was their housewarming gift - beautiful white, gray, and black modern-looking china.  Here's a shot of Mom, John, and Steve in the dining room for John's birthday in 2008.  We were playing poker.  I was free to take pictures because I lost all of my chips.

It seems silly to be attached to a piece of furniture like this, but it's a very serviceable piece of furniture that I got for $25!  I think that was actually the first piece of furniture I bought myself.  The table and chairs you see in the above picture were hand-me-downs from the folks in the picture (not Steve), but they were getting all wobbly and were starting to fall apart, so we didn't keep them.

I have always liked studios and craft rooms that use unique furniture.  It gives the room a bit of class.  Brenda (you can see some of what I did in her studio here) painted hers bright colors.  I don't think I'm going to do that, but I did want it in my room.

Getting it here cost way more than the $25 I paid for it 14 years ago.  We had to move out the two tall bookshelves to fit it in:

I had already decided that the scrapbooks would stay on one of the bookshelves that we moved into the bedroom.  The little bookshelf unit that was in there from the last reorganization Steve took down to the basement along with the other tall bookshelf unit.  Then I discovered a dilemma:

If I were to put my jewelry making reference books (which I use fairly frequently) in the cabinet, I wouldn't be able to get to them.  Steve spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out a way to get the two side panels off but with no luck.  He didn't want to gouge the frame that would be left.  So poor Steve moved one of the little bookshelf units back upstairs, and that houses all of those books and magazines with a bit of space leftover.

What I ended up putting in the sides were things I don't use very often.  When I do I'm likely going to take everything in that section out to find what I need, so it's no big deal for them to be harder to get to.

I still have some room to grow, which is always good in any room, let alone a studio.

One thing I did to free up a lot of space was to move my beads that I use for stringing (which I don't do much of anymore) into baggies into drawer organizers I found at The Container Store that fit perfectly into these drawers:

I can fit four organizers in each drawer.  I bought six, which turned out to be the perfect number for the beads I wanted to put in them.  Yes, the beads are crammed in there a bit tightly, but if I'm going to string something I'm going to want to take a lot of them out for planning.  They're organized by color, so that won't be so bad.

WAAAYYYY at the top of this I mentioned there was going to be a giveaway.  Zinio (an online and tablet magazine reading service) contacted me and offered ten magazine subscriptions for me to give away on my blog.  There are going to be a few ads in here for Zinio and their current sales - that's part of the deal.  They have some good sales going on.  Feel free to click the pictures and check them out.

I had heard of Zinio from Steve - we downloaded it on our new iPad that we bought with money Steve won at work (Review of the Year!  I'm so proud!), but we hadn't subscribed to anything yet.  I asked Zinio if I could have one of the subscriptions for myself so I knew what I was giving away (and so I could have a free subscription - Mama didn't raise no fool!), and they gladly let me have one.  Since I get all the Kalmbach magazines I want, I chose Beadwork.

Zinio is not just for iPads, though.  You can read magazines on the computer (PC and Mac) as well as many Android devices.  If you're curious about your device, see if you can install the Zinio app.  For use on Kindle Fire, follow these steps: http://imgs.zinio.com/faq/fire.html.

This sale ends 2/21/2013 

I thought reading the magazine on the iPad would be neat because you can curl up on your couch or wherever and flip through the magazine.  What I didn't realize is just HOW neat it would be.

The first thing I noticed was that there are hyperlinks everywhere.  They're underlined just like on webpages.  Touch them, and you can go to that page in the magazine (like from the table of contents or a different article), send an e-mail, or go to a website.  This was especially cool when I was looking at the ads.  I usually think, "Hey, that's neat - I'll need to remember to look that up," and I always forget to look.  There's an ad for Grace Lampwork Beads with a very cute white bead with a purple iris-looking flower on it.  Every time I see that ad I want to check it out.  However, I have the attention span of a gnat and always forget.  This time.... ::touch:: and I went to the website.  After a brief amount of searching I found the bead.  It's $17 (which is good for a lampwork bead) but out of stock (of course).  I started clicking links left and right to look at all different kinds of things.

The next thing I noticed was the zoom.  I don't think I'd have noticed this as much in a knitting magazine.  In beading magazines there are always diagrams that tell you the thread path for stitching designs.  When you look at a print magazine sometimes they're a bit too small, and you can't tell one thread from another.  Maybe it's just my old eyes.  In Zinio, you can easily double-click (computer) or double-touch (tablet) to zoom in.  If that's not big enough, you can zoom in farther with a sliding control on the computer or the fancy finger-drag thing on the iPad.  If you still can't follow the thread paths then I think you may need new glasses.  :)

This sale ends 2/21/2013

If you like a design or article, you can bookmark it.  I don't know yet if the bookmarks are magazine specific or across all magazines you have downloaded.  Ask me after the next issue of Beadwork comes out.  Even if it is just magazine specific, that will still be useful so I can find those earrings I want to try to make.

On the computer version you can print pages.  I can see this being useful from a knitting magazine so you can mark things up or if you're going to bead with friends and don't want to take your tablet with you.

What kinds of magazines do they have, you ask?  They have single issues and subscriptions for thousands of magazines, both domestic and international.  A very small number of the titles available are: Better Homes and Gardens, Forbes, Wine Enthusiast, Martha Stewart Living, Consumer Reports, Parenting, and even Dog's Life.  I'm not listing them all - that would just be crazy.  You can search from the Zinio website or app.

However, I do want to highlight some of the magazines from the Crafts category that they have available (apart from Beadwork that I already mentioned): Bead&Button, BeadStyle, Art Jewelry, Model Railroader, Fine Scale Modeler, Interweave Knits, Knitter's Magazine, Knit Wear, Interweave Crochet, Crochet Today!, Lapidary Journal Jewelry Artist, PaperCraft Inspirations, Cloth Paper Scissors, American Patchwork & Quilting, Quilts and More, WOOD Magazine...  Again - there are a lot more to choose from than these.

They even have those special issues that magazines put out:  Easy Metal Clay, Favorite Bead Stitches, Halloween (from Better Homes & Gardens), Handcrafted Jewelry, KnitScene, Interweave's Jane Austen Knits, Studios (from Cloth Paper & Scissors)... Those are just a few of the special issues available.

Now that I've talked it up, I'm ready to announce the terms for the giveaway.  They're giving me 10 subscriptions.  Since I'm using one, that leaves me with 9 to give to you.  I want to make this fair, so I'm going to have a contest.

Since I'm always yammering on about my studio, and since we had a whole presentation on studio and bead organization at our last Loose Bead Society meeting, I want to see YOUR workspace.  Whether you have a full room like I'm lucky to have, a corner of the bedroom, a shelf or two in a closet, some shelves in the dining room, or a basket of yarn by the couch, I want to see it.  E-mail me at traci@creative-pursuits.biz and send me a picture or three of your area - where you store things and/or where you work - with a description of your space and the types of craft(s) you do.  Tell me what you like and what you don't like about your space.  Also give me your full name, your e-mail address, and which magazine subscription you'd like.  I will post everyone's entries (without the full name and e-mail address, of course), and if I happen to get more than 9 entries, I will draw names out of a hat.  I'm sure I have a hat around somewhere.

The deadline for the contest will be Wednesday, February 20th at 8:00 pm Central time.  That should give you all plenty of time to clean things up a bit and to get me your pictures.

I'm really looking forward to seeing your workspaces and learning more about you all!

Bead organization options

Yes, I know I said it was going to be bead organization porn, but I really didn't want people stumbling onto my blog when they were looking for something else.

This is all from the trip that Steve and I took to Madison, Wisconsin for our anniversary.  We were only gone for one night, but we packed quite a bit into those two days!  The chief thing we did was to go antiquing.  Neither of us had done this before, and we found it to be quite a bit of fun, once we got past the "Oh, my goodness - how does one find anything in all of this?" feeling:

Imagine this multiplied again and again and again, and that's only one half of one aisle!  We quickly started poking around and found a number of neat items - old dominoes with lions on them, skeleton keys, and other things that I would love to use for my business, such as this card rack:

I think this could be used to hold my tutorials when I do bead shows, but the price is $84!  That seems a bit ridiculous to me, and I'm not positive it'll work.  When I'm in Madison next I'll bring some tutorials along to see if they'll fit (provided the rack is still there) and see if I can dicker the price down.  I think this would give a lot of character to my table plus provide a needed service.  Ah, well.  I can do without.

This rack got me to thinking... what other things would antique stores have that could be used for displays or for bead organization?

I found plenty of items in many shapes and sizes.

This is a watch/crystal case for $325:

Cabs and art beads would feel right at home in this case!

The brown one below is a spice cabinet for $165, and the green one is a 10 drawer cabinet for $89:

We saw many, many spice cabinets.  A number of them were smaller than the one above.

This one is a spool cabinet for $195:

Can't you just imagine all the tubes of Delicas you can store in this?

I'm not sure what this cabinet is - the picture I took isn't clear enough to make out what it was originally for.  I do know that it's about $445:

Tubes and bags and spools, oh my!

I didn't have foresight to take a better picture of the tag of this next one, but it even has colors listed to help with sorting:

This next one is a rolling parts organizer for $180:  I imagine it'd be nice for books or magazines or a number of other things:

Heck, it could even be used for yarn for crocheters and knitters!

Here's another watch/clock crystal case for $48:

This would lend quite an interesting look to one's studio!

I've saved the best for last.  The one I drooled, squealed, and generally went nuts over:

Steve says it's taller than I am, but I'm not so sure.  It's about $3400, if I remember correctly (I didn't get a good picture of this tag, either).  The base has drawers along three sides.  I don't think the top part spins, but I was afraid to try.  Here's what it originally was:

It appears to be a turn of the LAST century piece!  It's in beautiful shape with sizes of bolts and screws burned into the wood, and just take a look at these drawers:

Some of the drawers even have dividers in them!  I can never look at this enough, so here's another picture:

So... the moral of the story, er, point to this blog is that you can find bead organization and storage options in many different places.  Yeah, most of what I showed you here is out of a normal person's price range (or that bolt and screw case would be sitting in my studio right now - I could NOT talk Steve into it!), but with enough digging and creative thinking, you can find some perfect pieces to make your space pretty while you're storing your beads or other craft items!

Busy busy busy, part 2

As promised, here's what I'll be doing for the rest of the year.  I won't be nearly as busy as I have been (see yesterday's post in case you missed it), but the next month does have its challenges.

Well, my organized studio is a mess again.  That accursed table is back because I needed the flat surface for putting kit supplies on for the Milwaukee Bead Show I discussed yesterday, and it's become a dumping ground again.  I need to get all new supplies inventoried and cleaned up so I can move the table out of here, but I just haven't had the energy.

I'll have to do my best to get that done in the next week because we're having my mother and stepfather over for Thanksgiving.  Steve makes such a nice turkey, even if he refuses to deep fry it.  He keeps talking about unintentionally setting the house on fire if he tries.  Probably wise, but I hear it's SOOO tasty!  I'll be making our traditional German wedding soup (even though Steve says it's bland - I think his taste buds lack finesse).

The following week is when the challenge comes in.  I sort of double booked myself.  I'm doing a craft show at St. John's United Church of Christ in Waukegan, Illinois (1520 North McAree Road to be exact, if you're in the area) on December 1st from 9-2.  I'm also teaching my Winter Wonderland class that day from 2-4 at Knot Just Beads:

Oops!  If there are enough students that the class will proceed, Steve will come down to Waukegan to finish my show out for me and to pack my stuff up, and I'll come back up to teach the class.  It's a good problem to have, so if you'd like to learn how to make this odd count peyote snowflake bracelet, please call Knot Just Beads at (414) 771-8360 for more information and to sign up!

The following week is the Milwaukee German Immersion School's Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas Market) on December 8th from 10-3.  This one is very close to home (the school is located at 3778 N. 82nd Street in Milwaukee), and it was bustling last year!  There's a lot to see, so if you can make it, please come and find me!

And in between that, I'll be posting things on Etsy, setting things up for next year, and wrapping up businessy-type things for this year.  I made a spreadsheet that grabs numbers from all different places, so all I'll have to do is run a few reports, plug a few more numbers in, and - Voila! - I'm ready for taxes!

Whew!  I'll soon be off to bead at the Knot Just Beads for their UFO event (UnFinished Object).  It never stops, I tell you!

Have a safe weekend, and I'll be back next week for "Bead Organization Porn"!

Busy busy busy!

Has it really been almost two months since my last post?  You need to poke me every once in a while and say, "Hey!  Post something!"  Truth to tell, I've been poking myself quite a bit (about posting - get your minds out of the gutter, if you please), but as you know from my Time post, time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.  (Heh - I blinked, and it's Thursday.  You'll have to read the Time post to know what I'm talking about.)

Let's see... what happened since my last post on 9/24/2012 (not necessarily in chronological order):

I co-hosted a baby shower for my cousin Dawn.  I made the invitations a month before, of course, but I had decorations to make.  Here's a mobile I made that hung in the dining room:

I was a vendor at the Milwaukee Bead Show (hosted by Knot Just Beads) with my darling Steve there to help me:

Steve and I went away for a night for our 4th anniversary to Madison.  I made a contact with a bead store that will hopefully carry my designs, and we did a lot of antiquing.  We stayed at a wonderful Bed & Breakfast (Sweet Autumn Inn in Lake Mills, WI) and saw "Hello Dolly" at the Fireside Theatre in Fort Atkinson.  I'm planning on doing a "Bead Organization Porn" blog about a bunch of the different things I saw while antiquing.    We also went to Ella's Deli in Madison which was amazing.  It has to be seen to be believed.  There's stuff moving all over the place inside - I really cannot describe it.  To give you a hint about what it's like, here's Steve and me on the full size carousel outside the restaurant:

The following Saturday I taught a class at Knot Just Beads (Shadowed Diamonds), and it was my mother's birthday.  We had dinner with them on Sunday.  The following week I led a class at Vision Forward for blind and visually impaired ladies (for community service for the Loose Bead Society), and the cold that was brewing hit me (and Steve) hard.  I barely moved off of the couch for over a week.

After that was Loominosity - a collaborative sale that the Loose Bead Society holds with the Wisconsin Handweavers.  I helped with checking pieces in from a number of vendors and with cashiering for a few hours on a few days.  It was a lot of fun!

The NEXT week was Jewelry at the Domes (at the Mitchell Park Domes in Milwaukee).  That was two days of selling and visiting with my friends.  It was a lot of fun but very tiring!  Here's Tammy Rae Wolter who was my neighbor at the show with her gorgeous display:

And somewhere in the middle of all that:

I signed up to have a table at the Madison Art Glass and Bead Show in March, and I'll be participating in the Make 'n Take event.  I'm also hopeful I'll teach a class, but I need to get that proposal sent in soon!

And finally, I also found out that I'm teaching my "Tubed Key, or Not Tubed Key" class at the Bead&Button Show next year!

That covers the highlights.  Tomorrow I'll fill you in on what's going on in the next month.  I need a nap!

Have dominoes (and stamps), will travel!

Before I get started, Anna Stern asked a question on my Anatomy of a Spiral post on if there's a way to join two ends of a spiral for a continuous spiral necklace.  I don't know if she'll get my reply.  I get e-mail notifications of all comments, but I don't know if it sends e-mails to people I reply to.  I have a feeling it might not.  Anyway - Anna, I've been thinking about your question, and I think I might know how to do it.  I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but I hope I'll be able to do that soon and will post about it here one way or another.  Stay tuned!  (And thank you for your lovely compliments!)

Back to our regularly scheduled blog post:

I've mentioned many times that I'm a member of the Loose Bead Society of Greater Milwaukee.  Not only do I get to learn about all different kinds of jewelry making (and other things to do with beads), but I have made quite a number of friends.  That was extremely important because when I moved to Milwaukee from Illinois I only knew one person up here who I met through a Cricut message board (Hi, Jackie!).

A few times a year we have "Bead-Ins" - we all sit around tables and bead all day long.  It's simple but a lot of fun.  During the winter Bead-In, I was sitting with my friend Kat.  She knew that I'm a stamper and scrapper, and she asked if I'd ever worked with dominoes.  She had bought an embellished domino and wanted to learn how to do that or something like it.  Well, stamping on unique objects is right up my alley, so I started listing various things we could do with them.

They're slick, so we'd have to use Staz-On.  She nodded.  To make them more durable, we'd have to seal them.  She said, "Yeah, I've thought about that."  I laughed and said, "What do you need me for, then?"

Well, she determined she did need me and organized a class at her house at the end of March.  I made up a number of samples for her to show people.  Here are a number of them:

Kat took this picture.  Isn't it nice?

You can glue a bail on them for a necklace or glue on a pin back.  You can also drill through it for a key chain or another pendant option, but the one time I tried that I got the drill bit stuck, and Steve was less than pleased.  I'm not allowed to touch the drill anymore.

I had 5 students plus Kat.  Everyone fit around the kitchen table which Kat had covered with a plastic tablecloth and newspaper.  I had written up a bunch of instructions in case they wanted to do this again after the class.  I brought a bunch of my stamps (a small subset of the whole - have you seen my OCD Stamp Index post?), and Kat brought out some of hers.  They seemed to have a good time, and they made some very pretty pieces!

Kat's the one in blue smiling.  She thinks of everything - gloves so hands won't get inky and name tags so everyone knows who everyone is!

A few people couldn't make it to this class, so Kat held another one!  This class happened this past Saturday, and we had eight people plus Kat!  I got there, and newspaper covered everything: the kitchen table as well as both levels of the counter (one side is higher with stools).  As I was setting up I teased Kat that no one sitting at the counter would get anything done - it was nothing but the funnies!  She did that on purpose so there wouldn't be anything depressing like the obits.

This class went as well as the last one - everyone had fun and made at least 4 pieces each.  Kat even had some dominoes that her husband drilled for key chains, along with key rings!

So cute and colorful!

Everyone looks so serious, don't they?  I do wish I had taken more pictures of pieces, but I was a bit busy answering questions, checking on people, cleaning stamps (multiple times for some of them!), and spraying sealant on finished items.  I was able to sneak in a little stamping with some of Kat's very cute stamps!  Kat took pictures, and hopefully I'll get them from her soon.

Thank you, Kat, for holding such wonderful classes in your home!  I truly hope everyone had a great time and will experiment with this technique more, either on dominoes or on other things!

If anyone reading this lives in the Milwaukee/SE Wisconsin/NE Illinois area and wants to have a stamped domino party class, please e-mail me at traci@creative-pursuits.biz.  I'll give you all the details.  Here's a teaser - any host who finds at least 5 people to come gets her class and kit for free!

If you're going to the Milwaukee Bead Show on October 7th (admission is only $2 and parking is free!), I will have my instructions (nearly 18 pages of content and pictures!) and some domino kits available.  There will even be some pendants for sale.  I'll give 10% off your whole purchase with the code phrase "Stamps are sexy."  Yeah, I know they're not, but I sat here for at least 5 minutes trying to think of something clever and witty and can't come up with anything.  So, "Stamps are sexy" is it!  I want to reward people who read my blog all the way through.  :D

WYSI (not necessarily) WYG

WYSI-who, now?

My non-geeky readers may never have heard of the term "WYSIWIG" (pronounced WIZ-EE-WIG):  What You See Is What You Get.  There's a Wikipedia entry for it, of course.  There must be a Wikipedia entry for everything.  Yes, yes there is.  Really, now.  But back to WYSIWIG.  The definition given on Wikipedia is:

The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content (text and graphics) displayed onscreen during editing appears in a form closely corresponding to its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, which might be a printed document, web page, or slide presentation.

This is huge for programmers who create applications in code without seeing what it's going to look like.  You have to compile the program then run it, and if something doesn't look or work right, you have to tweak the program and try again.  Web developers run up against the same thing if they work in straight HTML.

Now my geeky readers are saying, "But, Traci... There are HTML editors that allow websites to be designed while seeing what it's going to look like.  And don't forget what you, yourself, programmed in for many years - Visual Basic.  You designed the screens in a WYSIWYG environment.  Hell, this blog is written in an editor where you can see the pictures along with the text.  Isn't that pretty much WYSIWYG?"

Yes, geeky readers, that is correct.  Not all of it can be done that way in HTML editors, though.  They don't always interpret things correctly, and when you display the page sometimes there's way too much space between paragraphs or not enough.  It works most of the time, and going into the code to tweak is a lot better than writing everything from scratch.

There's a whole bunch of information in that Wikipedia article - history, etymology, problems of implementation, and related acronyms.  Ooh!  A link for comparisons of HTML editors!  brb

Oh, it's just a bunch of charts listing features of quite a big list of editors.  Something for me to look into, though, because the HTML editor I've been using irritates me sometimes.

I should point out here - for those of you who don't know me past the crafts - I was a programmer for many years and now develop the website for my business (Creative Pursuits) and the Loose Bead Society of Greater Milwaukee.  That reminds me... I need to add upcoming show information to my business website!  Lots to do!

Now all my readers must be asking, "What on earth does WYSIwhateveryousaid have to do with beading or scrapbooking or anything that you usually talk about?"

Well, nothing in the very literal sense.  (Also see www.nothing.net.  Check out the recipes.)  But I was reminded of it recently when I went to bead.

On August 26, 2011 I purchased orange Delica seed beads (DB744, Matte Transparent Orange) because I was going to make sushi California rolls out of polymer clay and wanted beads around the edges for the flying fish eggs (Tobiko).  When I went to make them, though, the beads turned out to be too large.  I found orange microbeads that worked perfectly:

I made a bunch of things with these California roll slices.  The rings are available on Etsy if you're interested.

Okay, polymer clay is definitely WYSIWYG, but that's not what I'm here to discuss.  It's those orange Delicas I bought over a year ago.

Orange is not my favorite color.  Orange is possibly my least favorite color.  I'm not fond of yellow, gold, or brown, either.  Those are all colors Steve likes (depending on the shade of orange, he says).  Decorating in our house is always fun.

So what am I going to do with these very bright, nearly glowing beads?  Look at 'em:

Makes my Transitions lenses darken.

They're really only good for one thing.  Halloween.  So I designed a Jack O' Lantern to wrap around the skeleton keys from my "Tubed Key, or Not Tubed Key?" design (that link is to Etsy, not Wikipedia this time).

Now we get to the point of the post.  (finally)  Those glowing orange beads cease to glow when they're on their own.  You can kind of see it around the edges of the pile, but when they're stitched you can really see the difference:

I will admit that I used a black thread (Smoke Fireline, to be exact) which will darken it a little, but even just separating beads from the pile made them look so much darker.  I guess the word "transparent" in the name of the color should have been a clue, huh?

There's another acronym I just found that describes seed bead shopping:  WYSYHYG.  What You See You Hope You Get.  There have been many times that I look at a tube of beads and absolutely love the color, but when I bring them home and start using them I find that they're either too light, too dark, too close to another color, or flat out not the same color as in the store.

You just can't always tell.  Why is there so much of a difference?

Part of it is the lighting in the store.  Most of them use florescent lighting, and colors won't look the same as they will outside in sunlight or the lighting in your own home.  Florescent is cheap, so we can't blame them (much).  Many stores don't mind if you take beads over to the window to see better how they look "sans florescent", but that's not foolproof.  Maybe you can take the beads outside if you give them your wallet, phone, or child as collateral.  Don't offer your husband.  If your husband is as great as mine is, they might not give him back!  If the store has an Ott light or other natural light, that's the best way to tell what the true color is.  (OttLite doesn't have a Wikipedia entry.  It says, "Did you mean Otte?"  Since that is my last name, I had to click.  I'm not in there yet.  Darn.)

Another reason, at least for seed beads, is that they're all piled up there in their bags or tubes, and the color seems to magnify.  Beads with a bit of transparent in them are most susceptible to this.  Ask the bead store for a head pin or, better yet, bit of beading thread.  It shouldn't be a problem to string a number of the beads onto the pin or thread to see how they're going to look.  I would do this at the counter so they know you're not trying to steal any beads, and there's less of a chance of losing any.  If you're going to use them with other beads, bring those along and put those on a pin or string, too.  Probably best to use a different string so they don't accidentally mingle.  Put the pins/strings next to each other and see if there's really the contrast you thought there would be.

This isn't just for transparent beads.  I bought two different colors of purple peanut beads for my "Shadowed Diamonds" design.  They look completely different in the tubes, but once you get them out and start using them there's very little difference.  I guess I should have known - the color numbers are only one apart.  Once they're stitched they look fine, but if you accidentally mix the beads up, you have quite a hard time separating them.  I know from experience.  Here's the bracelet:

Huh - they look really similar in this picture, too.  If you're interested in the tutorial, here's the Etsy page for the PDF, and a kit with black/white/gray.  If you're interested in the finished bracelet, I have that, too.  :)  I can't do the purples right now, though.  I'm having a problem finding the beads.  I'll have to find other purples that will look nice and be easier to separate.

Or it could be bling frenzy.  We're so blinded by the shiny objects (Really?  "shiny objects" redirects to "SpongeBob Square Pants: Battle for Bikini Bottom?"  That's ridiculous.  Oh.  It's a video game in which shiny objects are the game's currency.  Still...) that the color isn't easily detectable.  This is a hazard primarily with Swarovski crystals, especially the AB or ABx2.  The light reflects off of those facets, and we lose all control and buy two or three packages of each color we see.

Okay.  That last one isn't completely true.  But the first two are - lighting and grouping.  See what you can do to see how the beads will actually look, and you'll do just fine.

Back to the orange beads.  I wanted to use them all up, so I made a bunch of embellished bead tubes, ala "Tubed Key, or Not Tubed Key?".  I made a necklace and earrings:

I showed this to Kim who is the owner of Knot Just Beads, the store where I taught the "Tubed Key" class this past Saturday.  She loved it and said I needed to design a whole series of holiday patterns for the keys to sell at the Milwaukee Bead Show which is coming up October 7th.  I've already come up with quite a number of patterns and have stitched one of them - an Easter egg - and will be stitching up each of them as examples.

So since I used up all but 10 of my orange Delicas...  I bought another package as well as other colors perfect for holidays and seasons that I didn't already have: red, blue, green, pink, and a few fall colors.  I skipped yellow, though.  A girl's got to have her standards.


This blog post was brought to you by the letter W for Wikipedia.  Whatever did we do without Wikipedia? (Yes, each one of those is a separate Wikipedia link, including the question mark.  "did" and "without" are a little sparse, but there are actual pages for them.  I'm a getting a little loopy now and Steve is verbally poking me to be finished.  Time for bed!)