This is what it looks like outside.

Beautiful yes, but the lack of color can get old quite fast. Not surprisingly I love making beads in the winter because I get to snuggle up (but not too close) to a warm (2000 degrees Fahrenheit) torch by a wood fire and dream up scenes like this...

Wearing Charm Beads in Unexpected Ways

 This is a necklace I wear all the time, and while it's very unique to me personally, I wanted to share it with you so it can give you an idea of how to wear my or other brands of charm beads without a Pandora, Trollbead or other brand bracelet.

The gold chain is antique from I think the late 1800's and it's a little longer than I like. It came on an antique locket I got lucky and won in an eBay auction. I thought about shortening it but because it's antique I didn't want to alter it. However with the beads added in this way it's the perfect length. The lion charm is a very sentimental piece that I've had since junior high. The two glass beads are beads I made and liked how they turned out so much couldn't bare to sell them. One is a simple encased dot bead and the other is one of my large focal flower garden beads. I SO adore teal with a little bit of purple. This necklace combines many things dear to me, gold AND silver, lions, flowers, luna moths, and antique things.

To make a piece similar like this, all you need is...

-A charm or pendant

-One of more charm beads

-A flexible chain, preferable in some kind of link style. Most chains sold as rollo, cable or link should work. Make sure to get a length longer than the length you like to wear. If the chains clasp is not simple or is too wide the beads may not fit but for the vast majority of chains this is not a problem.

Add your beads onto the chain  first, then add your charm and simply double the chain through the beads again. Center them out on the chain and you're done! 

Reflecting on my Disasterous Resloutions for 2015

2015 was an amazing, life changing, full of surprises year for me.Yes, I'm expecting a baby early this year, but my pregnancy was one of the few things in 2015 that I actually did plan. :) This time last year I had a lot of goals and expectations for myself which I won't even bother to write out here. Instead of presenting me with smooth sailing and the opportunity to accomplish them, 2015 threw new challenges at me that I had not dreamed of facing. To top off an incredibly difficult year, my closest friendship ended in a way that was completely devastating and I'm still not able to fully process it. I had had such a difficult year and I had lost the one person I went to to talk about everything... even the most minor annoyances of my life.

Towards the end of this year I had so much STUFF to process that the only thing that kept me sane was trail running. The endorphins together with the beauty and peace of the woods were the very best therapy I could find. Then within one week I got sciatica so severe I could barely walk across my kitchen and had to give up running and even walking outside at all.

Though I might be tempted to think it, life is not against me. Life is showing me that I'm much much stronger and flexible than I think. For every setback there is an equal blessing, if I can only look past my disappointment to see it. In losing my friendship, I learned to appreciate my family and others in my life so much more. Because of being forced to stop running I discovered yoga which I never dreamed of having the patience for before now.

Leo, who writes one of my favorite blogs, http://zenhabits.net/ says that goals are not always helpful and that instead of making a goal we should focus on making a small change of habit, or by setting a "rule" for ourselves. For example if you want to write a book you don't make a goal to finish a book by 2017, instead you simply schedule 20 minutes of time to write in your day. The only real difference is that the focus is on the activity (writing) rather than the end of the road (the book).

I've learned to aim more for intrinsic versus extrinsic goals, and at least some of the time I now remember more than ever to be grateful for the incredibly rich life I do have. I'm a lot happier with myself, and happier in the moment. It's not about goals, it's about life as a journey as a whole and more than that it's about accepting each moment as it is now and seeing the beauty in it's imperfection. You can't focus so much on goals that you forget the big (and invariably better) picture. You can't try to force things into being perfect or how you want them to be without missing the beauty in what is.

Spring in Maine

Are you the Coyote or the Forest?

The coyote is always hungry.  When he isn’t hungry, chasing prey or feasting on a fresh kill he fights for his place in the pack or a mate. Most of us live our lives just like the coyote. The coyote in us is our ego. Our ego only cares about us, about how we feel about ourselves or perceive others to feel about us. It’s number one job is to make sure our most basic needs are met but when that job is done it’s still working just as hard. If we don’t learn how to tell the ego to stop we are always tired, always hungry.

This is the root cause of almost all our problems as humans, it’s why we cheat, why we overeat, why we murder, why we spend money we don’t have, why we gossip about others at the same time feeling jealous of them. It’s why we always feel we have to increase our wealth, gain popularity or status, acquire new things. It’s why we are always chasing after excitement just to feel a very short lived moment of bliss after attaining what we so desperately wanted.  In those rare times that we find ourselves with the bliss having faded and no new desire to take it’s place that’s when we truly feel despair. Without thought we frantically look for a new desire to replace the last.

But you can break the pattern and transcend it all by stepping out of the coyote and instead becoming the forest.

The forest just is. It is timeless. It is now. The forest nurtures. The forest does not judge the coyote for preying on the rabbit but it nurtures both. It has no knowledge of past or future or memory of what it was or ambition for what it could be. It is perfect as it is. It doesn’t question this, there is no question.  

Our ego is the coyote in the forest and the forest is our soul. The problem with this analogy is that no animal no matter how predatory or vicious could ever rival the human ego and no animal possesses an ego. This is what separates us from animals. This is why animals are so beautiful both in form and in spirit.  

“He didn’t acknowledge me, she doesn’t respect me.”  “I’m not attractive enough.” “One more scoop of ice cream and I’ll be satisfied.” “I’ll feel better after I buy this.” “I’m unhappy because I haven’t met the right person yet.”

The ego puts our thoughts into words. The ego is the voice in our head. The voice that won’t ever, ever shut up.

The soul doesn’t use words. The words that describe the thoughts of the soul are hard to define, hard to describe. The forest is love, compassion, creativity, wisdom.

If you are starving or in terrible danger you will almost always be all ego. Most of us have to be the coyote to navigate through life and work. Some people are the exception to this, and exceptional they truly are.

The problem is that most of us are no where near being in danger of starvation or homelessness, yet the ego is the ever reigning king and dictator of our lives and not only does he make decrees but he also filibusters constantly. 

Happiness is a step away. Just step into the forest.

Buy Art Not Brands

Do you ever think about what your dream home would look like if money were no object? Would it look like luxury home photos in magazines? Would you be surrounded by expensive furniture and whatever art and decor that was trendy and expensive at the time? Would you want things like a pool and a tennis court even if you don’t really like to swim or play tennis? Or would it be a completely unique place all of your own?

I’ve recently been thinking a lot about what makes us want something, and why sometimes we find ourselves wanting things that don’t really fit us as individuals. Sometimes we want things because its more about them helping us fit in rather than those things fitting who we are.

Lately I've seen multiple articles like this about Etsy’s most successful seller. http://www.inquisitr.com/1863026/thr...libaba-claims/ I’ve started to completely rethink my approach to selling art.

Common advice to artists is to become a brand. Basically this means to somehow magically make distinctive art and become famous at the same time. This is great advice because our society is brand obsessed. Even as artists, we are brand obsessed. Etsy’s most successful seller created a brand that is so big that now she must have her designs mass produced. She's definitely a brand but is she an artist?

Is it really Etsy’s problem that they have to find a way to survive and thrive as a huge popular website that serves a culture that is brand obsessed? Just like food brands would have never taken corn syrup out of their products before documentaries like Food, Inc, got so popular, Etsy won’t change before the culture does.

I believe that big brands are as to artists as huge farms are to small local farms. The reason that so many people desperately want to sell their art and work for themselves is to avoid having to work a soulless unfulfilling career, but ironically many of those soulless careers are working for a big brand. I think marketing is often approached by other artists as a way to get their art seen by more people and bought by more customers over other artists. I can give you advice on how you personally can get an edge over other artists by finding the right keywords and optimizing your listings for search engines, etc, but that can only help one person be able to quit their regular 9-5 to sell their art.

Other artists aren’t your competition, brands are. If we can work to sell art itself to people instead of just marketing our own art and trying to find a way to tell everyone how great your work is without sounding egocentric or stepping on others toes or spamming all your fans you’ll create real change in the world. The hands that make products for a brand don’t belong to the minds that dreamed them up and in that disconnect the “soul” is lost. Art has soul. Art that is created in the mind and made by the hands of the artists that belong to that mind, that are ONE with that mind, that art has soul.

The problem is that as a culture we don’t put a monetary value on that. We dismiss that “soul” as oh you made something cute, oh she is crafty. Oh he does art for a hobby. Then we turn around and put a huge monetary value on something mass produced or even made in a sweatshop because it has a brand name. Someone put a lot of money into advertising and product research to make you aware of that thing. They spent a lot of money to make you believe that if you own and display that thing that it will enhance your ego or impress people you don’t really care about.

A masterfully crafted craft or piece of original art is not something that you throw away when the trend has passed. Rather there is no trend to come or go but the thing has true value that is more likely to increase then quickly diminished with time. The less well known the artist and the more original the art, the less brand like it is.

Trends in fashion are the most ridiculous waste of resources because essentially a trend is started by a few brave people who discover they want to be different from everyone else and everyone else wants to be different too so they all end up looking the same. Then it’s on to the new trends. Trends are destroying the earth. Instead buy an original piece of art that speaks to you, that you love and be original.

Before you purchase something ask yourself? Why do I like this? Do I like it just because I like the brand name? Do I like it because it’s popular? Do I value it because I think it has value or because my friend thinks it has value? How much is this actually worth considering the materials and time spent on workmanship? Whose hands made this and who designed it? Are they the same person? If not how greatly removed are they?

  

New Murrini, Angler Fish

New murrini, an angler fish. As freaky and awesome as these fish are why don't they have a cooler name? Murrini is made by making a large design and pulling it out into cane that when cooled is then sliced into chips that you set and encase in the glass beads. Making this reminded me of 4th grade when we had to do reports on various creatures that live in the "midnight zone" of the ocean. Some other lucky kid got to do a report on an angle fish and I got assigned this... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathypterois_grallator I'm still pretty annoyed about that.

Beads to come soon!