Thursday, June 30, 2016

The Long Overdue Update

Greetings to all of my fellow beaders and jewelry lovers! It has been very quiet here on Inspirational Beading for several weeks, and I need to begin this update by apologizing profusely to anyone who has been waiting patiently for new content to appear. I know it was incredibly rude to wander off without leaving a note, but it couldn’t be helped.


I’ve had a few unexpected absences before, and I always assume that they won’t happen again. I never see them coming. When things were really rolling here on the blog, I was working up to posting nearly every day, and I was really happy with the content. I’d never had so many ideas at once. Things were going great. And then I got sick, and took a few days off, and just never got back on track. There were days when I felt really guilty about having nothing to share, but there were also many days when I just really enjoyed not being tethered to my workspace.


The Oatmeal recently published a comic called Creativity is Like Breathing that explains the creative process really well. Nails it, in fact. If you aren’t familiar with The Oatmeal, please note that the comics are almost always Not Safe For Work. To summarize this one: creating things is like exhaling, and doing it too much can be hazardous. I was exhaling a lot, and it burnt me out so completely that I couldn’t even bring myself to log in to Facebook or compose a farewell Tweet. I checked my emails almost every day, in the same way that one checks on children periodically to make sure that they’re not about to stick something into the light socket. Other than that, I’ve been completely unplugged.


Over that last few weeks I’ve been waiting for inspiration to happen, for something to spark the kindling that makes me want to play with beads, make things, and/or write about it. There were little motes of inspiration here and there: watching Bob Ross on Netflix made me think about making things; I needed something to do while sitting at my laptop binging on Orange is the New Black, so I started a new medallion with my bead helper, and put a few stitches on the coconut dagger necklace. Unfortunately, none of it has started a fire. I don’t even carry my creative journal with my anymore. I’ve mostly just been reading, filling myself up with new words and waiting for beads to be exciting again.


I don’t have a definite plan, but things are going to be very light here on Inspirational Beading over the summer. I don’t have as much free time as I did when I started the schedule that went so far off the rails, so it will be baby steps from here on. It would be a mistake to force the ideas - I want to be sure that what I do post is really good, and not just whatever I had the energy to pull together. I promise that when inspiration strikes, you will be the first to know!

Mortira

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Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Work in Progress: Lazy Collar

It is taking quite a bit longer than I expected to get back on track after my recent hiatus. There’s something about a long to-do list that’s easier to put off than a short one. Plus I’ve really been enjoying some quiet time for reading and other hobbies. It was nice to take a break, even if I did feel things looming in the background most of the time. We’ve missed one week of the mini collar challenge, but I did manage to get one started for this week.

Easy Mini Collar in Progress


I really want to take things slow and get back to something resembling my old routine a bit at a time. For this week’s collar I’m going with a super simple design in some favorite colors. I have been saving the Autumn Tucson Gold for an upcoming peyote stitch tutorial, but I think I can spare enough to make this quick collar.

What have you been making lately?

Mortira

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