The Power of Creativity

Many who are acquainted with me are aware that my family suffered a major tragedy at Thanksgiving time. The situation is now not as grave as we had feared but we still have months, if not years of stress and heartache ahead of us. I think it is natural when faced with horrific circumstances that the mind just shuts down on many levels to allow us to cope with things one at a time. But then, gradually, normal activity must return for us to regain mental as well as physical health. I think that routine, doing what one normally does, activity helps us stay grounded. It's just common sense that without a solid foundation, a structure will eventually crumble.

So part of my emotional foundation is my creativity. At first, in light of the gravity of what has happened to my family, beading seemed rather trivial. Where is the usefulness in creating beauty when the world right now seems so ugly? But creating is a part of who I am. Using my hands in a constructive, positive way has always given me purpose and satisfaction. It is calming and helps me to focus on other things than problems that I can't really solve anyway. Some things will just take time and have to be dealt with if and when they occur. In the meantime, I've found my beadwork again and I will create whatever I'm inspired to create knowing that every bead and every stitch is helping me cope and helping me heal.

I had purchased Marcia DeCoster's book "Beaded Opulence" a few weeks ago but had not taken time to look at it. This weekend I opened it and was immediately inspired by the versatility of right angle weave. In fact, I was so inspired that I gathered my beads and needle and thread and came up with a new cuff. In the spirit of keeping myself grounded, I guess it should be no surprise that the colors that I reached for were brown and turquoise. Not only the colors, but also the style is very elemental so I have christened it Earth and Water. Hopefully, this cuff has opened the floodgates for me and my beading will keep me sane in this crazy, messed up world.

Trash to Treasure

One stop on the Highway 36 Treasure Hunt this summer was a true gold mine! This seller was disposing of inventory from a closed jewelry store for a friend. There were boxes upon boxes of new, still on the card, earrings, chains and brooches. At first, I was looking at brooches and dangling earrings thinking how I could use them as pendants with my beadweaving. Then I saw this pair of button earrings that really struck a chord. They were coppery with a small silver bead outlining this golden hued pebbley texture. I had to have them. In fact, I decided I had to have two pair of them. I finally got them worked up recently and listed to my Etsy shop.

I snipped off the posts on the earrings and treated them as cabochons, throwing in some more gold to the metallic mix with rainbow gold and amber seedbeads and playing up the copper with a darker bronzey brown two-cut seed bead. Then I added dimensional open peyote stitch rectangles between the earring cabochons and finished with a RAW chain of faceted metallic brown glass beads and rainbow gold seed beads. The toggle clasp repeats the rectangle theme but is more like a buckle shape.

I rather like the finished product and kind of wish I'd bought more, but I still have several more pieces to rework. I wonder if they managed to get rid of all that old jewelry or if they just tossed what was left.