Wrapped Fabric Bead

The weather outside is frightful! Hovering a few degrees above freezing, and rainy. On days like this, when mother nature seems indecisive, I would just prefer snow. The Georgia mountains to our North are supposed to get some snow as the evening progresses, but just what they term a "wintery mix" here in the city.

Don't these beads remind you of snow?

I was excited to have time for one of my Build Zone workshop lessons today. Using recycled sari silk, I created a wrapped bead. I added seed beads randomly as I wrapped the fabric with wire. I really like this technique, which I had never tried before. When I saw beads like this before, I thought it might be more difficult to achieve the spacing of the seed beads, but you just periodically add beads as you wrap and they remain in place.

Hope you all are keeping warm out there as winter tries to come early.

Everything in its Place

Over the summer, I moved all my mixed media items onto one pantry shelf in our kitchen. Since my son was home from school, this allowed me to work on projects between doing various things with him. I also wanted to test whether, with my addition of resin and Apoxie, I needed to work near the kitchen sink since there is no sink in my studio space upstairs.

The Build Zone  workshop I am enrolled in begins on October 1, and there is an accompanying supply list. Some of the supplies I had on hand, but others I had to purchase. As they arrived, I began to feel disorganized.

One thing I love about my new Lazy Susan tool caddy is that it matches our shelves!

Beyond basic hammering, coiling, and making jump rings, I have not done a huge amount of metal work so my previous collection of wire or metal work type supplies only took up a tiny amount of room in a small caddy. I have avoided drilling and soldering and have subsisted with only a rubber mallet for hammering/hardening metal.

 The majority of my mixed media supplies fit in this cabinet. 

I also came to the realization that it is easier to have all my supplies in one room. Otherwise, I have to run upstairs or downstairs every time I want something. I determined that I needed one area in my studio for my mixed media supplies and another area for the metal work supplies.

I tend to work standing up, and I also wanted a counter height surface that I could solder on. I discovered this microwave cart at Target. I like that it is metal, not plastic, so it won’t melt from a soldering mishap. Though I will be using a ceramic tile with a soldering block on top to protect my work surface, I covered the top with aluminum foil just in case.

Hopefully there will be much inspiration in my new space!