STEPHIE'S BEADS AND BAUBLES

This was our dining room table not too long ago a wonderful creative mess . this is our table today , no mess, no creativity !!!

We had our daughter and her family for breakfast last Sunday and had to clean it off, and I have not gotten anything out yet to play with.

My struggle is this. What do I want to do. I follow a wonderful and talented blogger Tracy at Big Skies Jewelry and she makes the most amazing jewelry. Her necklaces are to die for. I cannot wait to see the next one she comes up with, I highly recommend you check her out,    http://www.bigskiesjewellery.com  , not sure why her link will not work but the other one will, very frustrating  !!!    She is just so talented. My friend Linda, who I do have a link to the side for, at Creative artworks, lets me list my wine charms on her wonderful site and is a very creative person. She paints and gardens and comes up with so many creative ideas, her website is well named. I love seeing what she comes up with and the different artists she features on her site come up with. Many of them  specialize in just one kind of art, or jewelry. I also follow dstonedesigns and she has an etsy store as well, her blog http://dstonedesigns.wordpress.com/  , you can find a link to her Etsy store on her blog.  I follow many other creative bloggers as well, many who are artists on the side, it is not the main focus of their blog.

I am at a cross roads right now. I LOVE making my wine charms, they are so much fun. I have always loved creating earrings and bracelets and have been exploring more with necklaces the past year. I adore making things with my felt and seed beads and sequins. I love photography and seeing instant gratification when I take a picture I am really happy with, whether it be for the blog, or just for my own enjoyment. I love writing and I am actually working on a book. For far too long , lol !!

But, which is my true passion ? Which one am I most drawn to ? Can you do more than one thing you love and be successful at it, or do you need to concentrate on one thing and focus on that item !! I love to crochet, have learned locker hooking in the last couple of years, painting gift cards, stamping cards, so many things. I feel very scattered.

I love working with the beads and sequins, probably more than anything, but to be honest. There is not much chance at making that successful. People just do not want to pay you what your time is in hand beaded sequined items. I love to make these angels, and make them for gifts quite often. I hand bead hundreds of beads and sequins on both sides and then sewn together with seed beads and lightly stuff them as I go. They take 8 to 10 hours of work to complete . I would have to sell them for 40 dollars to make five bucks an hour. I know many crafters do not charge for labor, but these are too labor intensive to sell cheap. I cannot sell them even at 35, I have tried,  so I continue to make them as shower gifts and gifts for friends and families. One was taken to Iraq three times with our son, one was buried with our infant grandson, and so many have been given to people for so many reasons. I will always make them and share them. But as a business, it is not realistic. Even if I wanted to sell them for a lot less, I could not make enough in a month to make much money at them, they are just too labor intensive . I would love one day to bring in a steady income of at least a few hundred to five hundred by my own work, whether it be jewelry, wine charms , photos or writing. I think most of us who create have goals and ambitions of what we would love to earn based on our hard work. I am not alone. Anyone who sells what they make wants to make sales and earn an income for their creativity.

I also bead this same type of beadwork as ornaments

Again, very labor intensive, and although I enjoy the process , probably not something I can do to earn money.

some other items I created with the sequins and seed beads

So, my question to myself right now is, what in the world do I want to do ?

I keep reading do what you love, and I love doing all the jewelry but I am most passionate about the seed bead and sequin bead work, but just do not see how I can build this business on those pieces. should I keep trying , or are there times you just say, no, that is what you should do, or should you always follow your passion !!! ???

I watch my numerous blogger friends making wonderful things and they are so talented, but most of them are focused on one style of craft.  So, how do I choose what I want to focus on ?

I am really struggling with this and it is causing me to kind of freeze up a bit creatively. I look at that first picture, hundreds of beautiful beads, findings and so on and I just feel like I have a beading block, kind of like a writer’s block, but with my beads. I cannot think of one creative thing to do right now. Nothing.

Some of it could be the impending move. We bought this house only six  months ago and as soon as we get a six-foot fence around it, we are trading houses with our daughter and her family as they are renting our other house and we want to move home and they are in love with the house we just bought and plan to rent it  for a while  and then buy it from us. So, I am a bit flustered about having to pack it all up, very happily though,  and not only are we going home, but I will be able to have a dedicated studio for the first time ever. NOT a guest room studio, a real, honest to goodness, art studio, built the way I want it and shared with my talented stain glass artist hubby !! It is a 90-year-old house so the front bedroom, soon to be studio,  has a front door too, so I can get outside for stuff I need to do outside, like making polymer  clay beads, oh yeah, I like to do that as well !! I actually did have a studio in that house  for a short time, but we got the blessing of the before mentioned daughter and her family joining us from Calif so our two studios because both  our daughter and her hubby   and their kids needed bedrooms while we all lived together for a few years. I happily gave up my studio to get them in Texas !! But now, we get them in Texas AND we get to create a studio for ourselves and still have a guest room  in the house !! separately !!!

I hope as we get moved back home and set up that studio that maybe not having to move my stuff around when I want to work and having to pick it up when we need the table, will help. But for now, I am a really confused about what to do.

Can you be successful and do a lot of different creative things ? I think so, my friend Bonnie and her husband do all kinds of creative things and sell them so I think it is possible. Is having that dedicated space important ? Do other people struggle with creative blocks sometimes too ? Will things be better when I can leave out projects and not have to pick up all the time to use that space for other things.

So that is my what is on my mind today. A  rambling post, for that I am sorry. But I just am a bit frustrated and confused on what to do with my creativity.  I will continue to make wine charms, I really enjoy making them, but  I am not sure if I should just reconcile myself to beading with the beads and sequins for myself and gifts, or should I look into doing some things with that I can sell , and maybe some wedding things, which I have always wanted to do ?? I know I can make some really pretty things with the sequins and beads.

I do want to continue to make jewelry and seeing Tracy’s wonderful pieces inspires  me want to try my hand again at a few stone items, I have a few in my Etsy store, and have sold some wine charms that were stone, and  have one or two pieces that  have been in my store quiet a while now, but I have so many stone beads I have bought over the years and then have not really done a lot  with. I want to continue to work with my glass beads and make the bracelets and earrings I love to make. I just have to figure this all out I suppose. Maybe just two moves in , it will be around 8 or nine months, and we moved 14 months before that, lol, could be the issue too. It is a  wonderful and positive move, no doubt about it , for all of us, but a bit stressful also for all of us,  trying to get all our ducks in a row so to speak !! It will be a wonderfully positive moves for us and our daughters family, we just got to get the work done to be able to move , and then , the move !!!!

Any advice is welcome !! I think I will start asking my creative friends some questions. That might be a great first step !!!

Thanks for stopping by !!

Stephie