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!)
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