The past week and a half has seriously sucked, if you couldn't already guess from the tone of my last post. But I'm better now, and like many things which seriously suck, some good did come out of it.

I was stuck on the couch feeling extremely unwell, basically. Without getting into the gritty details, throughout my twenties I've been plagued with acutely painful cysts in my reproductive system, and a week ago yesterday I could sense the beginnings of one about to rear its demonic head. Various doctors have attempted various treatments to make this better for me, to the point where it comes down to either dosing me with artificial hormones, or, alternately sending me in for surgery. The surgery might be okay, if i liked doctors. I hate the hormone idea.

Basically, I've become adept at riding out the pain, drinking lots of water to rinse out the toxins in my system, taking it easy, indulging in lots of  nice hot compresses and baths, avoiding caffeine, and in general eating lots of foods with antioxidants as a preventative. Aside from a few days of absolute misery once or twice a year, this more homeopathic method works pretty well.  By yesterday evening, I felt considerably better.

Matt took really good care of me while i was down and out, and i love him for being so patient
since i wasn't exactly a peach to be around. i was feeling restless and
bored and horrible, because there's nothing worse than really wanting
to get up and do things, but finding yourself incapable. He kept me
distracted, and fed, and petted me when i was sad, took care of the
rabbit, and did all the chores. His cooking has been getting
progressively more interesting, since there's about five things he
knows how to make, and only three of them were in the freezer. I'm not
complaining, it was just amusing. Last night he made ravioli with
marinara, kielbasa, and baked beans. All on the same plate. it was
multicultural!

But anyways, i haven't really been out of the house in nine or ten days, and have mostly been immobilized on the chaise in the livingroom. If you're going to be sick, it's pretty nice having a chaise. it's tucked into the big bay window in the front room, so when i look up I see the sky and the branches of the big tree in our yard. The breeze comes up the hill and blows through the house when the windows are open, so it's almost like being outside. I wanted to be for-real outside, though. So i laid there all week with my laptop, and geeked out, and watched the tree. Since i couldn't do much else.

I got the bulk of the new website built on Shopify, which pretty much rocks. No content yet, just the bare bones. I spent last week reading tutorials on Java and CSS, and figured out how to hack the code of my page to make it look how i want. I was kinda pleased with myself. I learned some new things.

By Monday i was desperately bored with programming, so I checked to see if i could get into my old account on this online game called Kingdom of Loathing.  Xangans who have been around a while will recall that i was waaay into this dork-mecca a few years back, and i used to make KoL- themed artwork. My favorite part was the community which thrived around the game, and I made a lot of friends which I stay in touch with even now. Well, my account was still there, and i found a couple of old friends, too. I've been missed around the place, apparently, and even some of the newer players had heard of me. Huh. I've also started working on some new art for the game. It's interesting for me to see how my style and skills have developed between then and now, and how much I have mellowed the fuck out, too.

I also talked to an old friend from the game, who ended up being a real-life friend at the time, somebody who was a really bright spot for me, and then the whole relationship went to utter hell. That's about when i quit playing. I tried to talk to him about it a a year or so ago, and he pretty much bitched me out like a rabid pit bull, which i completely deserved, but it still sucked. I've always felt really terrible about the whole thing, and I've missed talking to him. He was online yesterday, and we cleared a bunch of things up. Everything is okay now, and everything is forgiven. I know it's just a stupid dorky game- i feel sorta Kip Dynamitesque talking about it, because the internets r seriose bizniss! - but whatever. It's like this immense weight has been lifted, and I am so happy to have my old friend back.

So yeah. i'm all betterer now, and i can go make some more beads today. And I did get a lot done, whoopie!

   

I'm annoyed at them, and I haven't even opened up shop yet. (yet! but i will! soon!)

While gearing up to launch Moontree Bead Company, I've been perusing some networking sites, passing around some pics of my beads and jewelry, and getting to know the competition. The good news is, I haven't seen anything that comes close to what I do, and I clearly have mad skills and excellent craftsmanship. I kind of feel like a creative bandit, since i've been doing what i do for twelve years now, in semi-secret, and nobody else seems to have come up with a similar idea.

Of course, everybody on Etsy, and other bead-jewelry-crafty sites, think precisely the same thing of themselves, and in some cases it's quite true. In most cases it's definitely NOT. I certainly have my favorites out there in the craft-cosmos, which tend towards being extremely different, well-made, or useful. Not just "cute". Or "retro", for the sake of being retro. Or some bead jewelry that looks like it came from the reject rack at Target. Or another  stupid tote bag.

Jeebus, the tote bags, with the ironic patches and silkcreening, they never ever end. Maybe they need them to carry the other lame DIY rejects around in.

When I was working at the bead shop, we often had customers who would come in and beg for assistance designing something, claiming to be pathologically un-creative. They always got a lighthearted scolding for thinking so little of themselves, and then taught to make things. I think everybody is capable of creativity, and my favorite part of the job was teaching people to make stuff and seeing how happy they were to discover that they could. Because whatever the result, it's important to create things, even for yourself. So in a larger sense, I'm eternally pleased with how well this DIY fad has taken hold. And Etsy is a big part of that.

Like I said, it's a great and beautiful thing to be creative, and as
snarky as i feel right now, I won't argue with that most sacred of
truths. But it's one thing to make stuff, it's quite another to have
the method, the originality, the motivation, and the craftsmanship to
sell it.

Basically, it comes down to this: I see Etsy as a means to an end; it's a slick e-commerce tool and a great way for people to get their stuff out there. Like I said, some of it is awesome, and some of it is irretrievably ho-hum. But in reality, as cool as it is to "Buy Handmade!", The ol' Ets is an inherently limited marketplace. Why the hell would I make my sole focus a website where i have to compete with a bazillion other
beaders and jewelry designers for the limelight? Point is, it gets really insular and masturbatory pretty fast. How do you seriously make a living off a venue like that?

So hile I've been scoping out the crafty scene, I've gotten to know some of the regulars and a little bit of the culture. And you know what? I really hate the cliquey shit that goes on. To lots of people, DIY/ crafts = Etsy, and they take themselves way too seriously. They think they are CEO's of super-duper craft studios because they sell a couple pairs of earrings a week. Not that i'm any better, i guess, I'm the jerk who hasn't even got anything in her shop yet. But as much as I'm overthinking it, I want to avoid the pretense, you know?

Today I was throwing some pics up on Flickr (Flickr! for photos! not the end of the universe, girls!) and someone in a group or some crap "Etsy-messaged" me to give me the third degree about what I do. And not in a "hey, nice beads," kinda way, it was clearly a "You might be good enough to sit with the cool kids over here" kinda way. WTF? They were all Etsy people. They even had a membership plan, which read like an HOA agreement and had an annual  fee. That is farking LAME. And to make it worse, they had about thirty members in their little group- and it was all, you guessed it:

"Cute", "retro", gratuitous beady stuff, under the pretense of being "Artisan Jewelry".

And their logo? while i'm pissed off I'll say this too: it sucked. Did they make that in MS Paint??

The good-craft-karma-fairy says i may have overstepped a little there, but it's difficult not to be malicious when other people make a good thing suck so bad. So, screw you (just a little bit), Etsy, I've registered my domain name elsewhere, and I'm in the middle of
building a real website. I have people I've met face to face who are keen on
getting some of my work, and that's faboo. I've been literally walking around
with my beads on, and working on ways to make them better. I'm also pretty savvy about marketing and the bead
and jewelry crafts industry from all my years of hoarding beads,
teaching beads, selling beads, and making beads. And selling and
hoarding and teaching and designing other things. But for the most
part, i'm having fun, and relishing the ability to sit in my studio and
make what i love. Because I'm good at it, muahaha.

And that's the whole point.

A couple of people have asked about keeping rabbits as pets, so I figured, heck, here's a chance to brag about my wunderbunny-in-residence, and share some info about the benefits of having a rabbit as a companion animal.

Rabbits make AWESOME house pets. Because they are naturally inclined towards living in family or group, they quickly adapt to routines and are quite socially intelligent. They can be trained to come when called, will learn & respond to basic vocal commands, they like to play simple games like Chase, Hide, and Pounce (sometimes on your toes when you're too close to the couch), and also enjoy just sitting on your lap and being petted, much like a cat.  Rabbits can also be litter-trained, and as long as you tuck any stray electrical cables out of reach they are able to free-roam the house with no problem.

Ours has taken to sleeping under the bed at night, and follows us around the house during the day. We give him an assortment of toys to play with- some small stuffed animals to wrestle, chew toys and cardboard, a big box which serves as his rabbity fortress- but he also is very inquisitive and makes up his own "projects", or climbs or pokes into things when he's feeling explorative. I often find him up on tables or high places, surveying his domain. In the morning, he bangs around the house as a way of demanding breakfast, and will jump up on the bed to wake us if we don't answer. He likes to smooth out the blankets by digging and pushing the comforter with his front paws, or pouncing on our hands and feet. He likes to snuggle in the evenings, and sometimes will sit at the foot of the bed and watch movies with us. We've also taught him to sit up at the table with us at meals, and he likes to follow me around the house in the morning to "help" me with projects, and to make sure his dinner is served properly.

Our Ugmoe, like many rabbits, actually makes a suprising range of vocalizations. When he's feeling affectionate he will nudge our ankles with his nose and make a mumbling "hmf hmf hmf" sound, until we pick him up or pet him. He also likes to honk and bark at us when we play, and will squawk and loudly complain if we do something that displeases him (like touch his toys or pester him out from under the bed). Sometimes I overhear him and Matt having "conversations" in another room. It often sounds something like this:

He also responds to things we say to him. For instance, he will intentionally make mischief in order to get our attention and to test limits. When i look up and say "NO", he stops. This works most of the time. He also knows "Go to your room!", which is the studio, and this means
he has misbehaved too much to sit with us. He
usually barrels off in a hot fuss and  thumps his feet angrily in his
cardboard box. In the evenings, he will sit in the kitchen until we say "chair", and then he comes over to be picked up and plunked in a seat where he has a better view. We call all of his meals "dins", and he will go running to his food dish if i tell him his dins are there. His favorite is "Jumpies", wherein he  makes a dramatic leap from your arms to plop down on the bed (wheeee!). it's alot like having a little kid around.

What else? Feeding rabbits is easy, and a much less smelly affair than cat or dog food. Rabbits primarily eat alfalfa pellets and hay, which can be bought inexpensively in bulk. I also add oats and raisins to his pellet dish, and we give him lettuce, carrots, and frozen broccoli in another dish to round out his diet.  He also gets whatever leftover vegetables I have cut up from our meals, and he's an absolute fiend for potato chips and cookies. Those we try not to let him have too much of, although when he gets a whiff of oreo frosting he pretty much will do anything to try to steal a cookie from your hand.

Anyways, he's a spoiled little spider monkey and one of the most interesting creatures i've ever met. I'd definitely consider Ugmoe an important member of our family, and I'd highly recommend a house-rabbit to anyone looking for a critter companion.

I colored them in!

As we already know, I live in a house with a very clever, very naughty rabbit. This morning his "projects" included:

• Rummaging through my purse and leaving half-nibbled receipts all over the floor;
• Systematically removing all refrigerator magnets within reach, and strewing them around the kitchen;
• A thorough investigation of my bead box, which is of great interest mostly because he is not permitted there;
• Scampering across the wet painting i was working on;
• Nudging my ankles until i got up from my desk to give chase;
• Loudly destroying the cardboard castle i built for him (that's okay, though);
• Banging and scratching on the pantry door, because he's obsessed with a cardboard box inside,
• Begging for raisins, knocking things over on the bottom shelf where they are kept;
• Pretending to eat electrical cords, all the while peering at me sidelong to see if i would holler;
• tipping over his pellet dish in protest of lack of treats;
• telling me my taste in music absolutely sucks. Okay, i totally made that up.
• Scaling large items of furniture to get a better view of his domain:

I'm not even kidding. He got up there all by himself. Maybe he wanted to check his email or something?

I haven't written much, because I've been glued (almost literally, damn you cyanoacrylate epoxy!) to my studio. The beads are going really well, and right now I'm just building up stock to put in my online shop. Grand opening, along with new website, will hopefully be next week. I've been doing a bunch of "online networking" and putting some ads and marketing stuff, making some little animations, all on top of designing the new site. There are not enough hours in the day. And yet again, i'm up past my bedtime, hehe.

---

Edit:

here's some links for Moontree Bead Company online. Woohoo!

Xanga
Myspace
IndiePublic

Coming soon:

moontree.etsy.com
thewhole9 online portfolio
gohuman.com listing
cutout&keep profile
craftlister.com

---

For starters, my hands were getting tired from hand-rolling hundreds of paper beads, yargh, so I ventured downtown to the hardware store to pick up some materials for an "invention". The guy behind the counter was baffled as to why i'd ever need five copper couplings and an electrical box in one go.

It works really well, for being completely jerry-rigged; the broad end of the paper goes between the two pins and you turn the handle, which rolls the paper into a coil. And it looks schnazzy. Heh. Even my tools are artsy.

So I painted a bunch more sheets of paper, so that should give me a good supply of colors to work with. I'm also getting requests from crafty people who want to buy just the paper for scrapbooking, so i'll probably make some paper pack assortments, too. Here's some paper, and the beads I made from it.
 

I also fiddled around with the poetry beads some more, but i'm not really satisfied with the white paper. I'll probably go with vellum or metallics. Or metallic vellum! There must be such a thing. At any rate, I also looked up a tutorial on acrylic gel transfers, which was wicked cool, but it didn't really fly with transferring text to the beadies.

This is a really strange and kinda beautiful necklace I made a few years ago out of some yellowed vintage paper beads I bought at a yard sale. I'm sure they're really old. the necklace has a ton of other things incorporated into it, everything from indian glass beads to murano to cheapo plastic. I call it The Ugly Necklace, but it's kind of fascinating.

Oh, and then I ordered a ridiculous amount of stuff from the bead supplier, and got a kickass discount. Some boring stuff like plastic baggies and wire, but also some goofy they they had on sale and a bulk quantity of furnace glass artisan beads to resell. I've also been waiting on a shipment  of Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel, which I've never heard of before this week, nevermind ever tried before (curse you rubber stamp scrapbookers! curse you all to scrappy hell!), but supposedly it's the shiznit for glazing and sealing beads. Right now that's the big holdup- I can't sell my beads until they're glazed, and I can't make any jewelry samples to take to local galleries either. I'm getting impatient.

In the meantime, I've been in contact with a small publisher who asked me to do some illustrations for a book he's going to print in the fall. If he likes these, i've pretty much sealed the deal and my first book will be published by next spring. It's a children's story about a ballerina pig and her friend- not really my cup of tea, but cute nonetheless. At any rate, I've become really attached to the characters already. Here's the prelims, which I'll color tomorrow:

Aaaand then i made some more beads. I bought some clear vinyl and I've been trying out different paints on it, and then cutting it up and making long beads from that. So far, i like how slick they are but i can't get the color bright enough. I'm going to kick it into high gear tomorrow and get them finished, so i can make them into a cuff bracelet by the weekend. Then photograph it ASAP. Lark Book Publishing has a deadline next week for images for their Plastic/Resin Art jewelry book being published in the spring, and i'm going to try to get in. Yikes.

And then over the past two days I created some jewelry components out of polymer clay. The highlight is this crazy pendant I made for myself, which I know will serve as a good conversation piece and maybe attract some new clientele. Sneaky sneaky.

I also made a bajillion pairs of earrings with crystal and vintage rhinestones, and then after I made the arrings i was like, "oh, hey, hows about some pendants to go with them," and then after that  I made some more bits and pieces to go into bracelets. They're all going into the shop next week ; )

So yeah, I've been busy. Matt made note of the fact that it seems like I'm working more than ever; it doesn't feel like work though. i'll be happy when it comes to fruition. We've been having fun. I'm really really happy. Other than needing to go outside more and enjoy the sunshine, yeah, things are really swell.

Yay, beads!