The perils of not taking notes

Some things I thought I'd never forget

Hi Friend,

I’ve been so busy lately that creating art has taken a back seat and I really miss it. I’m hoping to get back to it very soon.

In the meantime, handmade beaded holiday ornaments are now available in my shop! I first learned to make snowflake style ornaments from my aunt in Germany over 25 years ago. At the time, I didn’t bother to write anything down because I assumed I would remember how to do it forever. (!!) This is the same cavalier attitude that led me to jot the briefest of notes for my grandmother’s bread recipe and plum cake recipe, which now read like shopping lists, devoid of quantities or specific instruction. However, song lyrics from that time? Firmly etched in the vault. Not super helpful, and nowhere near as delicious.

But I digress. After some trial and error, I remembered how to make the snowflakes by hand cutting and bending wire, adding beads and joining the pieces in the middle in a spider web design. Did you know that snowflakes are not perfectly symmetrical? Naturally that’s why mine are asymmetric as well. 😉

Handmade wire and bead snowflake style ornaments in a variety of colors.

I was also inspired to create beaded bulb ornaments. This ended up being a bit of a learning curve, one because I wanted to incorporate my stash of vintage beads, and two because I’m impatient, and instead of carefully mapping out a design, I tend to do it on the fly. In the end, the mid-project design changes and late night screams led to some delightfully wabi sabi results.

Handmade beaded bulb holiday ornaments in a variety of colors.

Please check them out and let me know what you think! Do you map out your creative projects? Are there ways that being disciplined help you creatively?
Also, can you forgive me for talking about holiday ornaments in October? 😊

Hope you have a lovely day.

xo

Tanya