The Beader Crochets

I have spent the last several days finishing up a project that I began almost a year ago.  The project was a request from my son to make him a blanket-sized afghan.  Yes, blanket-sized.  I had to take a few longish breaks from this project as life intervened.  Even so, the prediction I made when I first started working on this afghan about how long it would take me to finish was uncannily accurate.  My son asked me if it would be done by Christmas, and I said, "Yes, next Christmas."

The finished afghan is 85x110 inches and fits comfortably on my double-sized bed.

And then I began the next requested project, which is the scarf in progress, pictured below, in camo yarn.

This project will definitely be done by Christmas--this year.  :)

"I Craft, Therefore I Am!"

It's always nice to get a little freebie along with something you've ordered.  (That's why I always try to include something extra when I package orders from The Midnight Beadery.)

Today I received an order from Create For Less which included the above tattoo.  Normally I don't go in for tattoos, but this one is different.  It's me.  It expresses who I am.  Besides having dedicated myself to crafting, I was also a philosophy major in college and can appreciate so well the allusion to Descartes.  I just had to put it on right away!

So, what did I order?

Camouflage yarn for the next crochet project my son has asked me to work on.  He wants a scarf and a hat.  Small potatoes compared to the last thing he asked me to make him, a gigantic project which I am almost finished with, but more on this later.

For now I need to go around and show off my tattoo!

Find The Santas On ArtFire

There is a contest going on at ArtFire, and the lucky winners could end up with extra money, up to $300, to spend at their favorite ArtFire shops.

Hidden Santas can be found in participating shops, including The Midnight Beadery, and other shops on the ArtFire website. Find all the Santas and you can enter the contest.

Information about how the contest works, including how to enter, rules, and guidelines can be found at the Find-Santa blog.
 
Thanks to Linda Jackson at Moonstone Creations for her time and effort in putting this contest together :)

Art Every Day Month

When I first read about Art Every Day Month last year I thought it was such a great idea to get your creative juices moving and to give your artistic impulses a place where they can be shared with other people who also have wonderful creations to share.  So this year I decided to commit to creating something every day during the month of November.

To help me with my task, I am borrowing from Sarah Bush, whose blog Make Great Stuff I have admired for some time.  Sarah has been promoting her 20-Minute Technique as a way to help us creative types to actually get down to work, even if for only twenty minutes at a time.

So, I set my timer for twenty minutes and I went to work making the earrings pictured above.  I had just gotten the black Swarovski crystal pearls, and I was looking for a way to use them.  I paired them up here with red aventurine beads.  It took slightly more than my allotted twenty minutes to make these earrings, but that's okay.  And by the time I finished with the photography, a collateral creative process that frequently bogs me down, it was about an hour later.  But that's okay, too.

As soon as I get the opportunity I will be posting these earrings for sale at my Etsy shop.