Desert + Grand Canyon + Motorcycle!

So, how do I manage to write a post about a 10-day trip to Arizona when I took close to 2,000 pictures? I call my friend Christi, who says, "What are the top three experiences of the trip? OK... if I pick my top 7-10 pictures for each of these three things, then maybe, just maybe, I'll have a reasonable post!!!! Thanks, Christi!

#1 ~ Desert


We bushwhacked and hiked in the desert Northeast of Phoenix every chance we got. I fell in love! Yes, I never would have predicted that both Robert and I would develop such a deep passion for the desert. Everything about it, from the tallest saguaro cactus to the wee little wildflowers, is compelling and beautiful. Highway 87, north of Mesa toward Payson, is a desert gold mine!!!!




Granite boulders on Boulder Mountain, one-mile stretch along Hwy 87, NE of Phoenix.


Prickly pear cactus! Notice there's one heart-shaped paddle... my fave, of course!


Saguaro and prickly pear cactus silhouetted by the setting sun... Oooooooh!


The pretty cholla cactus in the foreground is the devil in disguise! Also called chain or jumping cactus, it's spines are barbed. When they get into your skin, they stay there. The ends break off when you try to pull them out, leaving the barbed points in your thumb to fester. Please, don't ask me how I know this!


This is Robert, my husband, tossing a rock on the "victory pile" at the summit of Pine Creek loop trail off Hwy 87, NE of Phoenix.



#2 ~ The Grand Canyon

Although we viewed three movies about the Grand Canyon before we went, they hardly prepared us for what we experienced there. We both love taking pictures, and took hundreds of them at the Canyon. In retrospect, I believe that taking pictures ensures that I see many details of the place... that I notice composition, color, form, shadows and highlights. But it's possible I miss the whole, the very essence of the Canyon, while busily noticing the details through my view-finder. And then, as I look at the results, they don't even come a tiny bit close to what it's actually like to be there, seeing the Colorado River a mile down and the sky infinitely high.... However, here are a few that at least serve as decent reminders.






Can you see the Colorado River (Robert calls it the Color-red-oh River)? Imagine - a whole mile down! That's 18 football fields, end-to-end.



If and when there's a next time, I want to just sit in one place and meditate for a long while!


We got lucky on the flight home between Phoenix and Seattle. I took this picture of the River and Canyon from my window seat!

#3 ~ Motorcycle

We rented a new, powerful (1800 cc) Goldwing for three days... What a blast!!!! On one of the days we joined Corinne (BJP member) and her husband, Loring, for a day-ride to Jerome and Sedona. I knew Jerome was an old mining-town, turned ghost-town, turned hippy/artist tourist-attraction, but had no idea it was on the very top of a mountain with switchback streets. Who-eeee, what a fun ride to the top! I also knew about the famed, red-rocks of Sedona, but was not prepared for just how red and beautiful the rock formations in the area are.


I took pictures while riding behind Robert on the Goldwing. I even took one of myself.... see how the wind is blowing my face?



Robert and our rented Goldwing. We've stopped to photograph the red rock formations near Sedona, AZ!




Above are Robert, Corinne and Loring posing in front of an old hotel building in Jerome, AZ.


This cliff dwelling is called Montezuma's Castle. It was built and inhabited by the Sinagua people in the 1100s.


I fell in love with sycamore trees... with their long, graceful branches and especially with the mottled, soft celedon, tan and violet colors of their bark!

More pictures on my Facebook page

If you like the above pictures and would like to see a few more wildflowers, cactus, Canyon, etc. pictures, you can go to my Facebook page and check out my photo albums, here. (I hope this link works...)

More fun in Arizona!

We had many other memorable experiences, such as dinner with Corinne and Loring, two spring training baseball games, good SW food, the Little Colorado River Gorge, a fabulous exhibit of Ansel Adams' photographs at the Phoenix Art Museum (the exibit is open to June 1st) and beading with Lisa C for half a day! We are very grateful to our friends, Patricia and Roger, who allowed us to use their vacation home in Fountain Hills as our base. We're also grateful for fabulous weather!

BJP Progress Report

I'm a terrible behinder right now. I've hardly started working on my March piece. Yet, the week ahead looks pretty open right now... I'm crossing my fingers to keep it that way so I can bead, bead, bead.

My six words for April are:

rest
flow
resolve
stitch
finish
forgive

The one I circled as my key word for the month is forgive. Hmmmmm.... wonder what that's about?! Well, one thing for sure... I need to forgive myself for not getting around to any of my favorite blogs for a long time.... It's on the list!

Beading Tips

Hi Everyone!

I'm in love with Saguaro cactus (above... this one may have been just a wee tyke when my Mom was born 93 years ago) and all the desert cacti and wildflowers in March!!!!! But our adventures in Arizona will have to be the subject of my next post. We took thousands of pictures... really, no exaggeration! So, it will take a bit of time to sort through them and find a few gems to post here.

In the meantime, I was reading Lisa's blog (Indigo's Beads) and decided to comment here on a couple of the issues she had with her March BJP bead embroidery... Here's her very beautiful piece... called Springtime in Heaven.


In her post, here, she wrote about making the fringed "grass" border before filling in the background sky and about how the thread caught on the fringe over and over again, making it quite challenging (and time-consuming) to bead the sky.

Tip #1. It makes sense to wait to add fringy things to my bead embroidery until AFTER I've completed everything else. But often that's just not the way it goes. Often the fringe just needs to happen and I can't resist the urge. Generally I curse the tangles and keep beading, just as I imagine Lisa did. However, when it really gets to be a problem, I take the time to cover the fringe so that it doesn't keep catching my thread. There are two ways to do this. One is with tin foil. Tear a small piece of tin foil and scrunch it around the fringe. If a larger area of fringe is involved, as in Lisa's piece, I stitch a piece of netting or fabric over the fringe, temporarily containing it. The netting is nice, because you can still see the fringe through it.

Lisa also mentioned that she had to break the Bead Journal Project rule of maintaining the same size for all of her pieces. This is because she started with the ribbon meadow, working from edge to edge of her predetermined size. After creating most of the design, she decided it needed a grass border. That would either mean starting over or making the piece larger than the others in her BJP series for the year. Lisa chose to break the rules and go for the larger size. I say, "Bravo!"

Tip #2. Always break the rules of any art project when it enables you to create your art in a way that works for you. I really believe this! Rules are good guidelines. But don't let them hold you back when it comes to the flow of your creativity!

Then, showing a closeup picture of her beading, Lisa wrote, "oh, wow...my enlarged pics really shows my crooked lines! lol. oh well. They looked pretty straight when I was doing them." Yup, Lisa, I certainly know that feeling well!


Tip #3. This issue always reminds me of looking at my cuticles under magnification. They look fine until I peer into the magnifying glass. Akkkk! The truth is this: it's the same for all of us. Any flat beading (back stitch, couching and/or weaving) can look smooth and straight... even when we examine our work with a critical eye. But when we take a photo of our work in macro or enlarge a high resolution photo to greater than twice the actual size, suddenly we see the thread between the beads and the beads appear to be crooked and unevenly spaced. Our work looks flawed. This is even more pronounced because of the nature of digital photography and scanners, which are designed to capture even slight differences in value. When I find myself feeling harsh about an enlarged picture of my beading, I try to remember to look at the whole, the un-enlarged picture and the original work, to regain proper perspective.

Hope these tips help...

I'm glad to be back on the computer, even though I have lots of catching up to do and oodles of pictures from our trip to sort through. I'll be around to your blogs as soon as I can... Oh yeah, and I'd better get started on my March BJP piece too... YIKES... the month is nearly gone!

Building Nests + 6 Words

There's always that one day that marks the end of winter and suddenly you're soaring into spring with all its glorious re-birthing. Today was that day for me!


The crocus and daffodils are blooming earlier this year after a very mild winter. February was unusually warm... 40s and 50s, no freezing at night. My neighbor, over at Herb Crazed, grows hundreds of daffodils on her triangular property, a joy for all of us! Check out her two recent posts, one about deer resistant plants and one about daffodils. These are hers, by the way.


The robins are back, hopping around moss-coated rocks in search of worms. Soon our 5 acres will team with all sorts of woodland birds. And two of them will commandeer our bird houses!



This is the remains of a nest from last year, which my husband cleaned from one of their houses. If you study it, you can see that the little tykes know how to build! The sticks, carefully sized, are placed one west, one south, one east, one north and back to west. It was easier to see this pattern immediately after the nest came out of the bird house. I took this picture a day or so later and the wind had already begun to destroy it.


This picture is the nest from our other bird house. I love the little feathers woven into the sticks. I think both residents were sparrows... but I could be wrong about that.

Yesterday I spent the whole day with Christi of Sweatpea's Path on Lopez Island. We stitched, talked, ate delicious home-made chicken soup and walked the paths through her neighbor's 80-acre woods... 50+ degrees and sunny! Could it be better? Well, yes, it could. Add to the above that she's tamed a whole flock of chickadees to eat bird seed from her hand. They're so tame, some of them will sit or her dog's head. Wouldn't I love a picture of that!!! I fed them too. Amazing and sweet to feel their little feet on my fingers, look eye-to-eye with them and watch them choose a special seed. Chickadee-dee-dee!

Words for March BJP

March 1, sat outside on our deck, quietly contemplating the sky and madrona trees, then quickly wrote the first six words that came to mind. They are:

Build
Fly
Reflect
Explore
Learn
Dance

Of these, the one which seemed the most compelling at the time was Explore, so that's my "featured" word for this month's BJP. While with Christi yesterday, I started stitching a bunch of different fabrics together, layering them. They may have to be part of it.

Takin' a Leave of Absence for Two Weeks!

My husband and I are taking our first significant vacation in 13 years of being together!!! We're going to Arizona, where we'll see a couple of Mariners spring training games, visit the Phoenix art museum, take a motor cycle ride to the Jerome-Sedona area, spend 2+ days at the Grand Canyon, and photograph blooming cactus (I hope) and wild flowers. We'll be away from our computers and home responsibilities for nearly 2 full weeks. Glorious!

BJP ~ Polar Ways to Approach Our Creative Process

Two bloggers have started me thinking about polarities in the way we approach working on our BJP pages.

Sharkeysday posted here about re-starting her February BJP page and about wanting to make her doll's chest less prominent.

And Kali posted a comment on my blog about my February BJP page, giving some suggestions for how it could be improved and a list of artists renowned for their word/image art. One of her comments was that the heart seems crowded, overwhelmed and pushed down by the words, like the whole piece needs to be tipped upward, counterclockwise. (These are my words, my interpretation of Kali's suggestion.)

Well, I got to thinking about it. I can see her point... viewing it as a piece of art. Yes, she's right about that.



Yet, from the point of view of telling a story, my story, about these words... about my mom and me, it's right on the money the way it is. With Mom so near the end of her life, I feel like I'm slipping off the page. I feel like the words which belong to our 67-year relationship are surrounding me, close to the surface, especially the word cry. I feel the need to experience these Mom-words as much as I can right now, because the opportunity to do so is changing.

To my eyes, the piece better tells my truth (the way it is now) than it would if it complied better with the precepts of good art. That got me thinking about two polarities for our BJP pages... On one hand, we have making art and doing it right. At the other end of the scale, we have just doing it, letting it be what it is.

Making Art < - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > Just Do It
Do It Right < - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > Let it Be.

Where are you on this scale right now? Where do you want to be???

Personally, I want to lean as far as possible toward the letting go side, because that is where I believe I will find who I really am as a person and as an artist; that is where I'll discover my own unique way to tell a story. After thinking about this, my new way to approach those times when I don't like my work will be to ask, "What does this tell me about myself, my feelings... what is the story here, what truth is showing up in my work?"

It doesn't mean I won't check into all of the artists suggested by Kali, filling my subconscious with inspirations from the way they tell their stories. Nor does it mean I'll ignore principles of art. It's just that I won't force the principles in any way. They will be just one component of my subconscious process. I hope!

Cry ~ Feb Bead Journal Project ~ Finished!

I look at magazines like the Feb. issue of Cloth Paper Scissors and think "I'll never be able to do collage well, especially collage with words." Then I have to remind myself about "baby steps" and about how learning takes time and practice.

OK. That's the program for this year's BJP... one piece at a time... just do it... see how it grows (or doesn't)! My piece for February is finished and at least I like it better than the one for January. Here's how it looks (click picture to see detail).


Originally, when I spontaneously chose six words for the month, I didn't have any sense that they were related. The word I circled as the most compelling at that moment was cry. Immediately I wanted to change my mind, to circle play or any of the other words. Three weeks later, with my piece complete, I'm so glad I stuck with my original choice because, little by little, I realized that all six of my words are about my Mom and our relationship.


I wrote about my tear in the center of the beaded heart holding a picture of Mom and about my love surrounding her in my previous post here. Now, looking at the completed piece, so many associations and memories of Mom (some recent, some in the distant past of childhood) are unfolding... triggered by all six of the words!

When I view it, not as attempted collage, not as art, but as a story about my Mom and me, it's a delight and a treasure! Maybe that's a lesson for us with our art... to view (and to value) it from the standpoint of what it tells us. Just a thought...

The technical and design issue for me about collage with paper, cloth and beads is how to make all the elements interconnected and whole. To make the words for this piece, I created them in Photoshop and then printed them on fabric (poplin) with my inkjet printer. The heart is beaded on felt. The background is drawing paper painted with acrylic paints.

When I first laid out the three elements, the paper and heart looked OK together, but the words looked dull and unrelated. What could I do to make them come forward a little, but not so much as to overpower the heart? The answer came in steps and with trial and error...

First I stitched beads around the borders of each word. That helped a little, but not enough. I needed some way to enhance the edges of the words, bring the color and texture of them more in line with the little edge of felt showing around the beading on the heart. I tried crocheting a scalloped edge with a single strand of embroidery floss. Yuk! I tried drawing around the edges with marking pen. Yuk! Finally I got the idea of couching a six-strand length of embroidery floss around the edge. That worked pretty well... the color was right and it gave a slightly uneven texture, similar to the felt. Here's a picture of the three steps... 1- plain, 2- with beads and 3- with a couched edge.


I'm looking forward to March and already curious about what six words will pop into my mind on March 1st! It's a fantastic pleasure to look at all the juicy, creative, fun, stimulating pieces being done by this year's BJP participants. OMG!!! We are soooooooooooooo way cool!

Thanks to everyone who commented on my previous post about Mom and me and crying... I really appreciate your kindness and encouragement!

Technical information:

• Black background paper - 8.5 x 11 inches
• Painted background paper - 7 x 7 inches
• Beading - completed on red wool felt, then stitched to background paper
• Words - created in Photoshop, printed on fabric, glued to paper with bookbinder's glue

Beaded Valentine!

It's still Valentine's Day where I live, so happy day of love to everybody!


This is part of my February Bead Journal Project... the easy part! It only took me about two and a half days to bead this heart. It's about 3.5 inches wide. Now I have to work with the words, paper and the heart to make a collage...

My BJP plan for this year is to do collage and to include six words (all verbs), compiled on the first day of the month, on each piece. I don't ponder these words at all... simply list the first six that pop into my mind. Then I circle the most compelling word, which must be visually shown in my piece.

I posted my February words here... The circled word was cry. Immediately I wanted to erase the circle, even the word, and circle one of the others. Although I feel resistance to working with cry, I know in my heart it is all about Mom.


Here she is. She was 93 on Jan. 11! I took this and the picture below in November while visiting her for a week. (I live in Washington state; she's in Minnesota.) In December, her health took a turn for the worse and she was put under Hospice care by her Dr. I went again, staying for another week. This time she was very weak, sometimes unable to feed herself or sit up. Often she seemed very confused. Yet we did have several beautiful moments together when she was quite lucid.


Mom and I are a lot alike physically and in personality. I'm her eldest child of five. Although we had our differences when I was in my late teens, at all other times we've been great friends, close emotionally, respectful, loving and supportive of each other. I understand that nobody lives forever. I know that her quality of life is poor, even on her "good days." I have a sense that she won't live much longer... and inside I am crying.

One of my tears, in the center of this beaded heart, holds a picture of Mom. She is surrounded here and in real life by my love for her.

Six Words for February ~ BJP

As you may have seen on my previous post, day 1 of each month, I grab paper/pen and write the first six words (action verbs) that pop into my head. Then I circle the one that seems the most compelling. These words will appear on my monthly Bead Journal Project piece, somehow worked into a collage of beads, fibers and papers...

My six words for February (above) sat fallow, until I read Elizabeth's post about her blank canvas problems with her January BJP. Once again, let's hear it for BJP bloggers!!! Her wonderful post turned me around and made me excited to play with my words! (Thank you, Elizabeth!)

So yesterday, when finally there was a block of free hours, I painted and played with my words in Photoshop, the results of which you see above. Then I printed them on fabric (smaller than what you see here on your monitor). I can't wait to get out my painted papers and beads later today. Where will this month's journey lead? Who knows?

One thing I will say, cry was the word I circled. Right now I don't want to deal with crying at all, so it may be a hidden element in my page... We'll see...

Bead Journal Project for January ~ Fini!

I'm trying some new things this year...

1. Beading on felt
2. Using fibers, paper, multi-media approach
3. Learning collage
4. Using some of the papers I've painted
5. Including words
6. Making a hand-bound book with my 12 pages

It all started on Jan. 1, when I impulsively wrote 6 words that seemed important to me. They are:

Listen
Lighten
Walk
Cherish
Paint
Simplify

Then from those six words, I chose the one which seemed the most compelling to me at that moment. The word was walk. Why not use these words as the underlying theme for my BJP piece for January? In fact, why not write 6 words at the beginning of each month and use them as the basis for that month's piece? Well, OK, that's just what I'll do!

So with the six words for January in the back of my mind, I quickly flipped through my stash of painted papers (acrylic paint on 90 pound drawing paper) and found one that appealed to me. Same process with my felt stash. Purple felt! I basted it to a piece of interleaving paper to stabilize it, got out some beads and started stitching. Obviously, the word walk showed up in my beading. Here's how it looks:


That part was pretty easy.

Since I'm going to make a book, I wanted the page size to be larger than the bead embroidery (which is only 2.5 x 2.5 inches). I have some sheets of deep black paper (heavy-weight, with a deckle edge) which will be luscious for a book. I decided to make the book pages 8.5 x 11 and cut the painted papers to a 7" square. So now, I'm defining my BJP page as a 7 inch square, which will include some beading on felt of any size I wish for that page.

Now we get to the difficult (er, I mean challenging) part for me. What to do with the painted paper and the beading??? How to put them together??? How to add elements of collage??? How to add the words??? Yikes! Suddenly I'm all tense and don't know what I want to do or how to do it.

"Calm down," I remind myself... "It doesn't have to be perfect. Just do it. Think improvisationally." That works for about 5 minutes and I glue some wrapped fibers on the paper to extend the idea of walking from my bugle bead pathway onto the paper. Then I'm stuck again. I worry that the fibers aren't the right color. I worry about what to do next. I write some words on the page and worry that they look amateur... And so on...

Worrying about my art isn't the normal me. I worry about that too...

Finally, Marty's post "Editing and Improvisation," about ripping out beads in parts we don't like, rescued me from all the angst I was feeling about my piece. Somehow reading her words created a turning point in my mind. My self-talk changed to "This is a learning experience. I'm trying something new. I'll get better at it as the year goes by. It's a journey of discovery and everything I make is simply a marker along the path."


So here you have it... The first marker! Fini! Tomorrow I get to write 6 new words and continue the journey into February!

BTW, some of you readers are excellent at collage... all suggestions for the next piece are welcome!

Taking and Editing Quality Photos of Beads and Beadwork

During 3+ years of blogging, several readers have complimented me on my blog pictures and asked what type of camera I use. So today, I’m going to write about how I take and edit pictures for my blog. I’m no professional and still have much to learn. Yet, for the most part, my pictures aren’t too bad…


My camera is an old, Sony Cybershot 717. It’s seven years old and obsolete by today's camera standards. However, it still works great and I've taken many thousands of pictures with it. Although it's only 5 mega pixels, it has a quality lens and the ability to take macro shots as close as an inch away from the subject. When taking pictures for the web or for printing pictures 8x10 size or less, 5 mega pixels is perfectly adequate. My brother bought a re-conditioned, used camera like mine a few years ago on eBay and is pleased with the pictures it takes of his beadwork and quilts.


In my experience, however, the real trick for quality images is more about photo editing than the camera. Learning how to use Photoshop was the best thing I ever did for myself to improve pictures of my beads and beadwork.

Tips for taking pictures of beadwork

1. Beads are shiny objects, which reflect light, especially faceted beads. Therefore, almost all direct lighting yields terrible results. I take most of my pictures outside on days when there are high clouds and the sun is overcast. If I can’t wait for a day like that, I take pictures outside in the full shade and place a large white cardboard behind the item (out of the picture frame) and wear a white bib apron to capture and reflect ambient light. If it’s raining or snowing and I can’t wait for a better day, I take pictures inside near a south-facing window (with all the lights in the room turned off) around noon or when there is the most light in the sky. I own three professional lights and a light tent. However, I rarely use these. Natural light on an overcast day gives better results with truer color.

2. Camera shake is responsible for many out-of-focus pictures of beading. The closer the camera is to your subject, the more you’ll see the effects of camera shake. I always try to brace my elbows on something and hold my camera with both hands. When I really care about the picture, I get out the tripod and take the picture with a remote control cord.

3. Another common reason for pictures being out-of-focus is using automatic focus with an incorrect camera setting. For my camera, if I am less than 3 feet from my subject, I must select the macro setting if I want my subject to be in focus.

4. One more reason for out of focus pictures has to do with depth of field. Flat beaded objects aren’t a problem. But if you are photographing a cuff or a sculptural item, you’ll want as much of the subject as possible to be in focus. The closer the camera lens is to the object, the less depth of field you will have. Therefore, don’t get too close. The more depth of field you need, the father away from the subject you need to be, even if there is a lot of extra space around the subject as seen through your viewfinder. When editing your image, you can crop the background away.

5. Distortion is another problem you will sometimes have when the lens is too close to the object. Again, it helps to move farther from the subject. Later, you can crop the picture to show just your subject.


Tips for Learning Photo Editing

I use Photoshop CS and occasionally Photoshop CS2. I do not have experience with other photo editing programs. I’ve heard that the less-expensive Photoshop Elements offers many good features, but I haven’t seen or used it yet. Whatever photo editing program you use, there are certain things that can greatly improve the quality of your digital photos.

For example, below is the original photo I took of the moth pin (posted here). Not a very pretty picture, is it? Below that is the same photo after I edited it with Photohop CS.



To learn Photoshop, I took a 20-hour class at our local community college. That was a good start, but I needed more. Scott Kelby has written several excellent books that provide everything else I need to know. The Photoshop Book For Digital Photographers is my favorite of his books.

The following are the Photoshop editing features that I find most important and use most often. Although I'm not explaining in detail how to use these features here, the list will give you an idea of what features are important to have and to learn in the photo editing process.

1. Levels. The first thing I do with each image is adjust RGB (red green blue) levels. Most photo editing programs offer an “auto level” adjustment feature, but generally it’s not as accurate as doing the adjustment for each range of the spectrum individually.

2. Shadow/Highlight. My second adjustment is one that brings out the details in the shadows and the highlights. This adjustment will make the picture look a little flat. But you will be able to see detail in all areas of the picture. For example, in the moth pin original picture (above), you can barely see detail in the lower body of the moth. In the adjusted picture, all of the detail is seen.

3. Brightness-contrast. Next I adjust the brightness level. If I have previously adjusted shadow-highlight, then it’s often necessary to increase the contrast a little.

4. If I’ve taken a picture of a square or rectangular object, I check for distortion. This can be corrected using the transform adjustment, which allows me to compress or extend the image at each of the corners.

5. Rotate and crop. I rotate the picture as needed so that the subject is in the desired position. I crop the edges of the picture to showcase my subject with only a small amount of background.

6. Many times, my pictures have a blue cast to them, especially if I’ve shot them in low light conditions. There are several different ways to correct color. The easiest way to correct a cool color cast is to apply a warming photo filter. Red is a color that may look too garish in digital photos, especially if the contrast is high. To correct an over-intense color, I use the Hue/Saturation adjustment, selecting the offending color range and lowering the saturation level.

7. It’s useful to know how to burn (darken) and dodge (lighten) specific areas or tones in your picture. For example, if you need better contrast in a certain area of your picture, you could burn the shadows and dodge the highlights in just that area.

8. On important pictures, like the ones for my books, I often remove the entire background. For this you need to know how to paint the background white or erase it altogether. I’ve never found a quick or easy way to do this. I enlarge the picture to 400% and work in very small areas so that I don’t accidentally erase or paint over details on the edge of my subject.

9. Rubber stamping is a good feature to learn. It allows you to copy any size area and paste it somewhere else. I use it to fix backgrounds and occasionally to place a copied bead over a bare thread, where my bead spacing wasn’t quite right. These areas are more noticeable in a digital picture than they are on the real piece.

10. Save as. After all the above adjustments, but before sizing and sharpening, I save the picture as a tiff (.tif) in a folder called Adjusted Pictures. Later if I want the image a different size or perhaps sized for printing, I work from this version. After saving, I continue to edit the image for my blog or other web application using the steps below.

11. Sizing. It’s very important to learn how to size your images, with appropriate dimensions and resolution for your intended use. If a picture is for my blog and I want it sized for maximum click-to-enlarge, I generally set the resolution to 72 pixels per inch. I set the width to no greater than 12 inches and the height no greater than 9 inches. If a picture is for my blog but not one where the enlarge feature is important, I set the width and height to under 5 inches. I posted specifically about sizing pictures so they will click to enlarge here.

12. The final step, after sizing, is to sharpen my picture. Sharpening will not fix an out-of-focus picture. Nothing will fix that. If your image is out of focus, delete it from your files and shoot a new picture. For an in-focus image, sharpening may bring out the details in an attractive way if not overdone. If you have reduced the size of your adjusted image significantly, it is necessary to sharpen it. I use the unsharp mask filter for this (amount: 90 to 200, radius: 0.2 to 0.5, threshold: 2)

13. When I’m finished with all the above adjustments, I save the image again, this time as a jpeg (.jpg) in a sub-folder within my main Blog Pictures folder.


It's wonderful to feel good about the pictures I post here or on my website or Flickr, to feel that they adequately represent the quality, colors and attractiveness of my beading! Learning to do this has involved a lot of trial and error... it wasn't easy for me. But, it certainly is worthwhile! Hope this post will help some of you!

Bead Embroidery and a Few Short Subjects

Beaded Moth ~ Pin (Brooch)

Thought you might like to see this beaded moth pin I made for one of my special quilting/beading friends this Christmas. It's mostly size 15 or smaller beads. The wingspan is slightly under 1.5 inches.

Beaded Button Earrings


My other best quilting/beading friend got these for Christmas. I made them using Dritz half-ball cover buttons, size 24. The button form is 5/8 inches in diameter, but after beading the fabric and covering the form, they are slightly larger. I removed the button shank from the form before covering and then stitched a circle of Ultrasuede on the back side using the picot edge stitch. You might want to check out my tutorial on making beaded buttons here and here.

World Beads ~ Book Giveaway ~ The Winner Is....


Ta-daaa, drum roll..... Ane Severine!

In my previous post I reviewed Beading with World Beads edited by Ray Hemachandra. Sixty some readers commented! Thank you so much for telling me about your own world beads. I really enjoyed reading about them!!! I wish I had 60 copies of this book to give, as everyone had such good reasons for wanting it.

As Peggy commented, "In a sense, I have thousands - maybe even a million - "world beads" - Czech seed beads! And Tohos - Japanese seed beads." She's right! In that sense, all of us own world beads.

Using a random number generator, the winner is #26, a comment by Ann Severine, who said, "The world beads I love most are 10 small milleflori cylinder beads in blue and red. I never thought about making a necklace from them. But now I'm looking forward to seeing this book for inspiration, whether I win or purchase it. How nice for you to inspire us to look at our old stuff we haven't paid much attention to for a long time." Congratulations, Ann!!!

I'll be reviewing and giving away Marcia DeCoster's new book, Beaded Opulence, in a week or so. Watch for it!!

Bead Journal Project ~ January Progress Report

No pictures yet. And I have to admit, I'm a little behind, a little afraid, a little unsure.... For this, my third year participating in the BJP, I decided to practice collage. I admire my sister-in-law, Julie's, collages and the work of so many other artists. Yet, I've never felt I had a grasp of how to mix it all together.

This is my year to play with it, practice, try it on for size... beads, fabrics, papers, paint, fibers, ephemera, rubber stamping, lettering... bring it on... all of it. Yes, but how? Do I hear some of my former students saying, "Just do it!" Yes, that is the way. And I must remember my mantra, "It does not have to be perfect!"

Well, I've worked on it some, but am far from finished.... It's my first of 12... Hope they'll get better and easier. I'll take and post some pictures soon.

Beading with World Beads ~ Giveaway!

What “world beads” do you have in your stash? You may have more than you think! Here are a few of mine…


We buy beads in a local bead shop or in the comfort of our own home computer. But where were they made? Where have they traveled before we found them?


The origins of beads, particularly those in my stash, has fascinated me since day-one of my beady career 24 years ago. Joining my local Bead Society, where most members had a collector’s perspective about beads, and attending early Bead Conferences, which were more about the history of beads than making things with them, I began to appreciate that beads are truly ubiquitous!


Did you know that beads are one of man’s earliest artifacts? It’s possible that beads predate vessels and primitive tools in many cultures. Did you know that men and women of nearly every society, every culture and every land since the beginning of mankind have made and used beads in one or more ways?


Beads, being small, portable, long-lasting and made from various, naturally-occurring substances, have been a trade commodity for many centuries. Thus they have traveled the world in the hands of traders and merchants, sometimes for centuries. They arrive in our stash, some new and some used, from far-away places around the world.


Just as groups like the Bead Journal Project and other internet-based beading groups unite people of the world, so do the beads themselves. More than anything else about beads, their ubiquitous nature fascinates me!


So too, the world-connection of beads intrigues Ray Hemachandra, editor of a book, recently published by Lark Books - Beading with World Beads, Beautiful Jewelry - Simple Techniques. This book features 30 jewelry projects with an international and multicultural flair created by 15 acclaimed jewelry designers.

Lark asked me to review several of their books and offered a signed copy of each one as a blog giveaway. And so, this is the first of my reviews. Someone who makes a comment on this post will win an autographed copy!


Those of you who know me, are aware that I’m not really a recipe type of gal with my art (or my cooking for that matter). For me, it is simply more fun to “do my own thing” than to replicate a design by somebody else. Consequently, I don’t gravitate toward “project books,” preferring technique or inspirational guides.

Happily, Beading with World Beads, gives so much more than projects! First, there’s the whole idea of beading as “a multicultural bonanza – a melting pot of craft practices that yields innovative combinations of materials and influences,” to quote editor, Hemachandra. I love this concept and how it is realized in the unique creations of the designers chosen for the book. All of the jewelry is appealing and mysterious because of the cultural roots found in the materials and designs.


The second thing I really like about this book is that all the projects are based on sound design principles. They are well-balanced (although not necessarily symmetrical) and the different beads used in each piece have relationship of scale, color, style and origin. So even if I choose not to replicate any of the projects, each is an inspiration to me and offers challenging ideas I can apply to my personal world bead stash in my own way.


Looking at the photos in Beading with World Beads makes me crave making jewelry again, makes me get out my African trade beads and view them as potential designs rather than a collection, makes me remember things in my stash long neglected! And by the way, the photos are outstanding, something I always admire about books published by Lark.

Lastly, I have to bravo the book for its clear, concise step-by-step instructions for each of the projects. For each project, excellent editing results in consistency and clarity that are rare in project books.

In conclusion, I give Beading with World Beads an enthusiastic two-thumbs-up!

Would you like to win an autographed copy on this blog giveaway? Yes? Then make a comment in the next 10 days. Just for fun, tell me about something you love in your world bead stash! To be eligible to win, you must give me a clear way to get in touch with you - phone, email or snail mail address. (BTW, it's safest to give your email this way: name[at]provider[dot]com. Use the [ ] signs and substitute the word at for @ and dot for .)