More neat finds

I was all set to do another "non-blog" like I did last week because I have been busy again with more being added all the time.  In between the activities I've been resting, because Fibromyalgia hates nothing more than an active schedule.  I was going to appease you by giving you lots of pictures of our new kitten, Clinchfield.  But then I realized that I do have a blog topic!  And there was much rejoicing.  (Yay.)

One of the almost-last-minute activities was a trip to Illinois for lunch with my mother and my cousin Dawn.  Dawn had an appointment after lunch but went back to Mom's for a while after, so Mom and I hung out and "helped" my stepfather, John, while he was working on cleaning out the shed.  We found some neat things in there that have come home with me, and they are my topic for the day.

Almost three years ago I posted about the hidden treasure I found in my garage - a wooden box with dividers.  If you missed that or want a refresher, click here.

I know I posted about two more wooden boxes I found in Mom's basement, but I wasn't able to find the post.  I use those boxes when I do bead shows.  Kits fit in them nicely, and they add a nice rustic look to my table.  I've had to keep an eye on the boxes, though, because various friends of mine have expressed interest in them and have "joked" about them walking away.

Well, yesterday in the shed we found more wood boxes and a tin!  I found another box in the garage, and John cleaned them up for me and put them in my trunk.  Here's the haul:

I may have to start sharing them.  I love that one of the boxes was for prunes (the one under the orange tin).  The small box in the front has a bunch of door hardware that I'm either going to put on eBay and/or make something artsy with.

This wasn't the whole haul, though.  Sitting on top of a work table in the shed were four pieces of petrified wood and a quartz fragment:

The quartz is being soaked because it was pretty filthy.

If you're thinking that doesn't look like you thought petrified wood would look like, check out this site.  If you scan down the article, the second picture in the left column looks a lot like the pieces here and ones John found in other parts of their house.  (It's a treasure trove in there.)

Oops!  It's 2:30.  I have to run to today's last-minute activity, getting my teeth cleaned.  I was going to do it tomorrow, but something unexpected-but-necessary popped up for tomorrow.  I'll wrap this up when I get back.

Home again!  Where was I?  (Um, you were at the dentist.  What did they put in that fluoride polish besides fluoride?)  No, no, where was I in the blog?  Oh, yes.  Petrified wood.

I used other pieces for photographing a few pieces of my jewelry.  You may have seen them before:

SDN15 - Intertwined Pyramids

SDN15 - Dino-spine

I've been telling my husband that it's a pity to keep all the petrified wood in a box.  We should put it on a shelf or something.  But when I brought the new pieces home I had a thought.  Dare I say it was an epiphany?  Why don't I use the petrified wood, the quartz that's soaking, and anything else I have like that for displays at my shows instead of just for photo shoots?

So for the purposes of this blog I set up a quick little display:

I've been using a white tablecloth lately, but this purple napkin was handy.  I'd space them out more and have a few of them up on risers or something, but this should give you a good idea of what it would look like.

In case you're curious about the designs, the pieces are (top to bottom, left to right): Shadowed Diamonds, Double Decker Daisy, SDN15 - Dino-spine, StarLite Mini Flowers, Cobblestone Path, and SDN15 - Intertwined Pyramids.

Here are a few of the displays close up:

I like it!  It shows the pieces at different angles and gives you an idea of the drape.  I'll try it at my next few shows and let you know how it goes.

But who cares what I think?  What do you think?  Let me know in the comments!

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For those of you looking forward to pictures of Clinchfield, I will not disappoint.

Here he is last Tuesday after the whole water-splashing escapade:

Turns out he had a bit of a buzz from the pain meds (instead of getting sleepy) and was quite the crazy cat the rest of the afternoon.  I could not keep him out of the sink until I forced some quiet alone time on him in his crate.

Even though he's calmed down from that, he's still a kitten.  One of his favorite activities is making a mess out of the shelf above my desk:

You see him there at the bottom right?

All the destruction wore him out, the poor baby, but he still had enough energy to reach for the Darth Vader Pez dispenser he had sent flying towards my head.

Guess what he's doing right now?  Yup!  Back on the shelf:

While shelf-destruction ranks high on his daily to do list, his absolute favorite activity is pestering Pixel.  Clinch jumps on Pixel or lies underneath him batting at his head, and Pixel whines and grumbles and bats back.  Then Pixel swishes his tail back and forth in irritation, which Clinch thinks is strictly for his benefit:

Let's look at that from a different angle, shall we?

It's most fun when Pixel is on a level higher than Clinch.  Most fun for Clinch, that is.  Pixel just gets more and more annoyed.  We usually just yoink the kitten and try to distract him from Pixel for a little while.  They'll get it figured out eventually.

Quickie: My new friend Amelia

Hi, all!  I know I usually post reviews on Fridays, but I have been too busy getting ready for the Milwaukee Bead Show, which is October 6th, and the class I'm teaching at Knot Just Beads tomorrow afternoon (or today if you're reading this on Saturday, or yesterday if you're reading this on Sunday...) to delve into anything to review.  I do have a stack of beading books (actually, a few shelves of them) that I can review, so hopefully I'll have some time to read one and review it next Friday.  If not, there will be another quickie post.

For the most part I do my grocery shopping on Wednesdays.  It's a double coupon day, and I've found that I can keep our food spending down if we do menu planning and shop the sales.  Theoretically we shop less frequently, and we save more money.  Since I've been keeping track of our grocery spending and have a goal, we've been doing wonderfully.

This Wednesday I went to my local Pick 'n Save as usual but saw that the Marshalls next door that had been closed for a number of months was selling off their fixtures.  I typically don't find too much at these things because my needs are limited (portable jewelry displays), but at another such sale I found clear acrylic U shapes that I use as risers.  They were very cheap ($1 each, I think), and they work wonderfully.  I throw a cloth napkin or two over them, and they add height and dimension to my displays.

This fixture sale didn't have any of those available, probably because it had been going on since Monday.  However, I found something I absolutely adored:

I have long since wanted a bust that I could use for displays and for taking pictures, and I finally found one!  The two larger mannequins were $50, and the smaller one was $30.  Someone said she was coming back for all three of them (she didn't have cash, and it was a cash only sale) and was going to be back in an hour.  After a number of texts with Steve, we decided I would do my grocery shopping, get cash, and wait until either the woman came back or 1:01.

When I came back it was 12:55, and the guy said I could go ahead and get it.  But if I was the one who was coming back for it, I'd be upset if it was gone before the time I said I was coming back.  On the other hand, she should have just gone to Pick 'n Save and gotten cash.  I'm glad she didn't, because I was able to get it and not feel guilty when I checked out at about 1:06.

I was pleased to find that the bust can come off of the stand, so if I want to put it on a table at sales where I can't have free-standing displays.

I found a perfect place for her in my studio...

... and I've named her Amelia.  She kinda reminded me of Amelia (Amy) Pond on Doctor Who because they're both so slim.  Turns out my stepfather has an ancestor named Amelia, so that's nice, too.  I can sound less geeky if I say I've named her after an ancestor.

I've already decked her out in my Loose Bead Society 2010 Challenge piece:

Steve said I can also put sweaters on Amelia to blog about, "if you ever finish one."  Ha ha, husband.  Very funny.  Just because I have two sweaters in process right now doesn't mean that I won't eventually finish one.

I'm very excited about my new addition and can't wait to take her out for a spin at shows.

One more thing I got was one of the letters off of the wall.  They were just giving them away.  They're mostly made of foam with some particle board or something on the front.  I really like Ts and have a number of them around my room.  This one looks cute up on one of my knick knack shelves:

It seems to want to fall over, though, so I'll need stronger adhesive or to find another place for it.  We might stick it right on the wall.

So whenever you're out and about and notice a fixture sale, stop in!  Folks who sell their wares might find great things for shows, or you might find something neat for your studio or even your kid's room.  Send me pictures of your finds at traci@creative-pursuits.biz, and I'll post about it!

Guest blogger: My husband (again)!

For a number of years now I have been wanting new earring racks.  The first one I bought was a tall three-sided plastic one that liked to tip over in the wind, if it was brushed against, or if it was sneezed at.  I bought a few cube earring racks last year at the Loose Bead Society rummage sale but didn't like them, either.  They were also plastic but with metal rods on the ends.  They weren't want I really wanted, but they were cheap.  After using them for a season, I decided I wanted to upgrade before the art fair I wrote about on Sunday.  One night my insomnia kicked in, and I ended up looking online for possible solutions.  I wanted wood or metal, and it had to be large enough to hold earrings on my new earring cards:

They're business cards printed vertically with earring card adapters stuck on the backs.

I was finally able to find something close to what I wanted on Etsy, but each rack was around $90 (plus shipping), and was only 8"x8".  Way out of my price range, and it wouldn't hold any where near what I needed.

So I got my thinking cap on and went to Home Depot with Steve.  While I knew he could make what I wanted out of raw wood, I wanted it as easy and as quick as possible.  We didn't find anything that day, but I kept thinking about it.  What could be done with as little work and cost as possible?  One night on my way home from a meeting I stopped at a Michael's that has a Home Depot next door.  I picked up some supplies - mainly those I had thought about but with a few changes - and thrust them at Steve.  "I trust you!" I said.  Here is what he came up with:

Oh - there aren't as many pictures as I would like because the first rack he was testing, and he got all ambitious to make the second one while I wasn't home.  I got what I could, but an astute woodworker should be able to figure it out based on the descriptions and a few pictures.

Though we looked at different sizes of lumber for the basic structure of the jewelry racks, good lumber looked to be too expensive. Traci found a solution in a milled rectangular wooden plaque (6"x9" by ArtMinds) sold by Michael's. The plaques weren't square, but Traci decided she could live with an earring rack that was narrower in one direction than the other. So while I was still trying to think of feasible designs, Traci showed up with a bag of plaques, a couple of lazy-Susan bearings, several lengths of 1/2" square molding, and a fistful of 3/16" dowels. This pretty much solidified my thoughts.

I cut the 3-foot-long molding in half, making eight 18" lengths. Four would form the corner posts of each rack. I measured the length of the business cards Traci was using for earring cards, and decided the rails they would hang from should be spaced 3.5" apart. Since 5 x 3.5 = 17.5, just under the length of my posts, this would work fine. I would stagger the dowels slightly on adjacent sides so they wouldn't intersect each other within the posts.

I marked one rail with 3.5" increments starting 1/2" from the top on one side, and starting 3/4" from the top on the next side (not the opposite side, but 90 degrees from the first). I then clamped four square rails together in a 2 x 2 square, to ensure that the holes would line up from one side to the other, and drilled 3/16" holes through all four rails. (The first time I did this, the bit splintered the wood slightly as it broke through the other side; I sanded them as smooth as I could, and faced those surfaces in. For the next one, though, I put the rails on a piece of scrap wood and drilled into it to keep the holes clean.) Each post was drilled through five times in one direction, 3.5" apart, and five more times, slightly below and 90 degrees rotated from those holes.

I wanted the racks to have no visible hardware holding them together, so screws were out. I decided to glue them together using bits of my 3/16" dowels to strengthen the joints. I placed two plaques on top of each other, back to back, and measured the thickness. I then used a piece of tape to mark my 3/16" drill bit so I could drill through one and part-way into the other without breaking through. I marked where a corner post would fall on the top (beveled) side of the plaque that would become the bottom of the rack and drilled into the center of that square, through that plaque and partly into the bottom of the top plaque, situated upside-down under it. This alignment guaranteed the posts would be aligned vertically. I then drilled matching holes in the top and bottom of my posts for alignment dowels. I cut short pieces of dowel, glued them into the ends of the posts, then put glue in the holes in the plaques and pushed them together, making sure the holes in the posts matched their mates on the other side (high on the narrow side, low on the wide side). I weighted the racks under a carefully balanced stack of magazines while I let the glue thoroughly dry.

The next step was the dowel rails. I found the dowels fit the holes snugly enough that they didn't need glue. I pushed them in place, marked the length with a nick from my razor saw, then backed them out slightly, sawed them off, and pushed them back in place. As opposed to measuring the dowels, this technique guaranteed that even if the distance between the posts varied, the dowel ends would lie flush. I sanded them lightly to make them smooth.

(This is when I got home)

Next, I added the bearing that would let them spin freely.

For those of you who will be looking for this...

Traci had originally bought only four plaques, thinking the rack would stand on the bottom plate of the bearing. Instead, after measuring carefully to ensure it would be centered, I used short, flat-headed wood screws to attach another plaque to the bottom, so the rack stands on a sandwich of two plaques with the bearing between. This made the rack more stable and less likely to scratch any table it would be placed on. This meant Traci had to go buy two more plaques before I could build the second rack. (Yay!  Back to Michael's!)

Once both were complete, I finished them with a combined stain/polyurethane product. Since we don't have paint thinner, I used a cheap foam paintbrush. This was clumsy and difficult, compared to a good paintbrush, but since I don't want to have to deal with properly disposing of the thinner (it's toxic), with a foam brush I could just let it air dry and throw it away.

One of the bearings doesn't rotate as easily as the other, but that aside, the new racks worked and looked great. Don't tell Traci, but I'm already trying to think of other things I could build to showcase bracelets, necklaces, and rings. Oops, cat's out of the bag. (Who would put a cat in a bag?  That's just crazy talk!)

Here are the racks at last weekend's show:

The narrow sides can hold two cards across, and the wide ends can hold three.  Since I didn't bring my cheaper jewelry I had space to put bracelets.

I should mention that I spent around $20 for each earring rack.  If I had been patient, I would have stopped at Michael's every time I passed one and used a 40% off coupon each time.  The plaques aren't that expensive, though, and I was anxious to get going.

I'm very curious about what else Steve has in mind!  My main bracelet holder is a three-tiered thing that in general I like but is SO bulky to store and bring to shows.  Besides, it's black and doesn't match my new wonderful racks.  Thanks, honey!

Hidden treasure

I've been busy since I last posted, but not with anything new I can post about.  I submitted classes for next year's Bead&Button Show - the six designs I submitted last year plus two new ones using twin beads.  The other thing I have been working on was relabeling my finished pieces for sale.  It was a lot of work, but I'm happy with the results.  I think my consistent branding will look good at the Donna Lexa Memorial Art Fair I'm in next Saturday (August 18th).  Something else occurred this weekend that I'll tell you about at the end of this post.

A number of my Loose Bead Society friends sell their work.  We frequently talk about how to price, what to do with older items that haven't sold yet (keep plugging on with them or take them apart and try something different?), how to balance making the time-consuming yet gorgeous pieces with items that will more quickly sell, and how to set up our displays.

One person I always look to for neat displays is Brenda Schweder. Here's her business's Facebook page and her Etsy page for steel wire and her new "Now That's a Jig" wire jig.  She's written three books, too: Junk to Jewelry, Vintage Redux, and Steel Wire Jewelry (every time I see her books at Barnes & Noble, I take them off of the shelf and put them facing front in the "special books" section).  Whew!  After all this I'd better get a commission!

Anyway.  Brenda.  I've posted about her and her studio before and the little bit I did to help her organize (you can read it here if you missed it).  What she's very good at is getting cool vintage displays.  She takes anything and makes a display out of it - old suitcases, old boxes, metal display shelves from some old store, and tons of things.  A friend and I found wooden crates for her at a garage sale (originally for pears, I think), and they were perfect for her to put books in!  We also found her a neat wooden tool case.

Since I haven't quite found my "niche" yet, I'm always on the lookout for functional but cool-looking displays.  I've started using paper-covered boxes that I've found at Michael's, and Steve is making me wooden earring racks (which we'll be posting about soon).  I have decent bracelet displays and a few standing necklace displays, but I have these horrid white spinner racks for the bulk of my necklaces.  They're horrid because they easily tip over, and they don't nest very well, so I don't know how to store them.

Coming home from the grocery store today I was thinking about what I'm going to work on next - mini key earrings to match a black and purple necklace.  Could I make a bracelet to match?  Hmm... probably!  How am I going to display these pieces so customers will know what all is available?

I pull into the garage, open the trunk, and for some reason look across the garage:

(I opened the other door so there will be more light over there.)

Do you see it?  No?

Behind the ax is... I don't know what it is besides cool!  And vintage!  And free!

Anyone who has bought an old house knows there are hidden treasures everywhere.  In my last house, there was a picture on some sort of metal with a cow.  When I sell that house, that cow picture is coming home here, unless my renters have tossed it.  In this house I've posted about the shelved closets and built-in desk in my studio (click here for the final studio-organization post - you can click through to the others from there).  There have been many times where we thought, "Hey, it would be cool if we could..." just to find that there was a hook right there or a shelf or something.  There's a laundry chute, a milk door, and two built-in china cabinets.  And closets and shelves everywhere.  The previous owner was an architect, and he designed this house.

Apart from neat built-ins, we have found a few other hidden treasures: old suitcases (I take one of the smaller ones with me to all-day bead events so I can put my feet up after I've emptied all the goodies out), records, and now this.... box?

I carefully extracted it and took it outside:

It's about 19" long, 5 1/2 " wide, and almost 3" deep.  It was covered in cobwebs, scary-looking white nest thingies, and general been-in-the-garage-for-God-knows-how-long ickiness.  My first thought was, "I'll ask Steve to clean it up for me!"  My second thought was, "He'll roll his eyes at me."  My third thought was, "I want to post about it, so I'd better do it myself!"

I got a few wet paper towels and carefully cleaned all the gross stuff out (and off of the back!).  Outside.  I even threw the paper towels away outside.  Just in case there was anything still incubating in the scary white nest thingies.  I brought it inside and washed my hands.  I then went over it with a disinfectant wipe and washed my hands again.  Because of my allergies, of course.  Not because I was afraid of it or anything.

It's all nice and clean now:

Here's a view of the slightly beat-up side (which is what you want in a vintage piece, I think):

Now, what do I do with it?  I could hang it on the wall and put stuff in it, but I think not.  It won't be good for my original quandary about displaying sets, but... wait... KITS!  This will be perfect for displaying kits at the Milwaukee Bead Show, and I bet I can come up with something to put in it at other shows, too.

I don't know why I didn't see it before, but I'm glad I did.  I'll have to take another look at what's in the attic!  What do you have in your house?  If you find anything cool, send me a picture at traci@creative-pursuits.biz, and I'll post it here.

________________

Now, on to what happened this weekend.  I've gone back and forth on if I should post about it or not.  Many of my regular readers already know.  Steve and I decided not to publicly post about it on Facebook, but should I post here?  Yes, I think so.  This blog is not only about what I do but also about how I do it, where I do it, and who I do it with.  Thorns along with the roses.

Simoon passed away Saturday night.  She had a large mass in and around her intestines that would have been more than difficult to remove, plus her spleen looked odd.  We decided to not put her through that, and we held her when she went to sleep.

She was my companion for over 14 years, and she loved to be right in the middle of what I was doing.  You've seen that in my chainmaille post as well as my studio posts.  I looked through all of my pictures of her so I could post one you haven't seen.  There were many where she was just hanging out or grooming, of course, but there were quite a number of pictures where she was on top of my supplies.

These pictures are "quintessential" Simoon:

Big, cat-sized open space on the desk, but she has to sit on the messy side!

Needless to say, I had to move on to something else.  (This project was the altered book I made for Mom a few years ago.  See the posts here:  part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4).

She had a ready, loud purr that made me content while I worked (when I eked out a space where I could work).

There is a more-than-cat-sized hole in my studio and in my heart.  Pixel is doing his best to comfort me by sitting on my lap and jumping on my desk, but Simoon will be missed.

I have a blank book that I put quotes and poems in.  I'll post about that soon.  One of the things I love about it is a quote on the spine:  "The soul would have no rainbow if the eyes had no tears."

On to happier things tomorrow.