That's a whole lot of dollies!

Let me tell you, they aren't like those potato chips! Five days and two and a-half bags of polyfil later, we have 42 comfort dolls ready for a workshop. These little ladies are going to be suitably decorated come Saturday afternoon.

Since most of the workshop attendees have little or no beading experience, the faces on these dolls were printed on fusible fabric. Didn't think they would be ready for polyclay faces and all the beading necessary to finish them properly.

We will save that for the next workshop . . .

Summer heat is upon us and I have been tagged twice!

Both Bobbi of Beading at the Beach and Freebird of Freebirdsings have tagged me in the current meme. I have skillfully avoided this game for almost a year but when one gets tagged twice, I guess they need to play:

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?

After quitting my job as a corporate human resource director in the hospitality industry, I started my own business -- event planning and decorating. Two years into it and several hundred weddings and conventions and parties later, I was happy but slowly becoming disenchanted with the fact that people wanted all my good services but did not want to pay what they were worth. But I hung in there and started writing my novel, too.

2. 5 things on today's to-do list:

Finish sewing up 37 comfort doll bodies -- giving a workshop a week from now to many eager participants.

Wrap birthday presents and gifties brought back from vacation

Catch as much of today's spacewalk as possible on the NASA channel

Watch the NBA Celtics/Lakers game

Try to keep my mind off all the new beads that arrived two days ago until I am finished with those comfort dolls!


3. Snacks I enjoy:

Frozen fruit -- especially raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, cranberries
Low-fat cheese of any kind
Lightly salted baked Peta Chips


4. Things I'd do if I were a billionnaire!

Wow, that wild fantasy of no more house payments, owning a lot of land near our Organ Mountains and a vacation home and land in the central mountains of Ruidoso, buying houses for all of our kids, providing funds for all of our grandchildren's education, THEN building an exploratorium for our community's children, more community swimming pools, establishing free summer camps for sports and arts for all the kids, too. If there is anything left after all that, you can bet I will buy zillions of beads and yarn and books for me and lots of model train stuff for my husband!


5. Places I have lived:

Cleveland, Ohio -- yeah, I was born and lived there for 38 1/2 years!
Phoenix, Arizona for six months when our oldest child was a baby.
Roswell, New Mexico for eight years and where I met my wonderful husband.
Las Cruces, New Mexico for nearly 21 years now.


6. Peeps I want to know more about

Brenda at Luna C Bede
Susan at Beading Inspired
Vivage at http://vivage2007bjp.blogspot.com/
Monica at Girl Gone Thread Wild
Heather at Jeweled Elegance
Acey at Nichobella

Anne of Green Gables

Fifty-eight years ago I was gifted with this book on my tenth birthday. It was the first "big" book that was my very own. And I cherished that book, read and reread it so many times it was a miracle it did not fall apart. It was easy for me to identify with Anne for she loved to read, too, and was full of wonder and imagination and adored all of nature's beauty. She was an incurable romantic, something I have been accused of myself throughout my lifetime.


Anne Shirley's exact birthday date is never given in the story but it seems to occur around the time of my own and I always believed when I was a child that we probably shared that birthday. Anne was always yearning for puffed sleeves, lace, and pearls -- and she adored wearing fairy flower wreaths in her flaming red hair, which she wove herself on her way to school or church.

I recently finished reading this book once again and found it as wonderful as it had been to a ten-year old's eyes. My brother and sister and I grew up in what folks today would call a dysfunctional family -- we, of course, did not know of such terminology in those times. My way of dealing with the innumerable crises that arose was to pick up the nearest book and retreat to the farthest corner of our house, then bury my nose in that book.

Anne's fairy wreath is composed of tiny silk flowers with beaded centers and accents. An unfinished freeform peyote pearl bracelet that has languished among my beading projects lies below the stack of books. The dragonfly button with emerald inlay wings is for this month's birthstone.


When I signed up for the Bead Journal Project on May 31st -- my birthday -- last year, I had no inkling of how dear this online group would become to me nor how much I would enjoy and learn from participating in it. It was the best birthday present I could have ever given myself!

So this is my birthday Bead Journal Page -- a thank you to Lucy Maud Montgomery for writing so wonderful a book that a woman can remember it with such fondness.

We will be gone . . .

Instead of a finished May BJP page (which insists it is not finished yet), here is our youngest grandchild, Miss Phoebe, all decked out for play as a spring butterfly.

We will be traveling from May 13th through May 23rd. Off to find a bead shop or two and some yarn shops in downtown Boston while my husband goes to classes at his annual AIA convention.

See y'all soon . . .

April BJP Page

The Crystal Cave
by Mary Stewart


This book is very dear to my heart for many reasons. When it was first published in 1970, I eagerly added it to my fledgling collection of King Arthur legend writings. As each subsequent book in the trilogy was published, I greedily snatched them up and reread them many times. Our oldest son discovered the joy of reading about King Arthur in the early 1980's and read these books so many times they fell apart! Now, I ask you -- can anyone not love a book that turns a young man onto reading in such a manner?

The Crystal Cave tells the story of Merlin as a young boy and his journey to discovering who he is and ends with the begetting of King Arthur. I have chosen to illustrate the moment when Merlin, at the age of seven, discovers the Crystal Cave. While trespassing in a large cave, the boy tries to avoid discovery by hiding in a small space in the rock wall as the cave's owner comes home.


I heard the quick hiss and chime of flint and iron, and then the flare of light, intense in the darkness, as the tinder caught hold. Then the steady, waxing glow as he lit the candle.

Or rather, it should have been the slow-growing beam of a candle flame that I saw, but instead there was a flash, a sparkle, a conflagration as if a whole pitch-soaked beacon was roaring up in flames. Light poured and flashed, crimson, golden, white, red, intolerable into my cave. I winced back from it, frightened now, heedless of pain and cut flesh as I shrank against the sharp walls. The whole globe where I lay seemed to be full of flame.

It was indeed a globe, a round chamber floored, roofed, lined with crystals. They were as fine as glass, and smooth as glass, but clearer than any glass I had ever seen, brilliant as diamonds. This, in fact, to my childish mind, was what they first seemed to be. I was in a globe lined with diamonds, a million burning diamonds, each face of each gem wincing with the light, shooting it to and fro, diamond to diamond and back again, with rainbows and rivers and bursting stars and a shape like a crimson dragon clawing up the wall, while below it a girl's face swam faintly with closed eyes, and the light drove right into my body as if it would break me open.


This page is heavily encrusted with beading, black jet, and polished stones and rocks from my personal rock collection. Vintage red, gold, and clear rivolis are surrounded by silver beads and various sizes of AB crystals and flat crystal rondelles -- April's birthstone is the diamond, after all.

March BJP Page

The Lady of Shalott
by Alfred Lord Tennyson



This stunning epic poem is fraught with imagery, any stanza of which could prompt a page in itself. Realizing my limitations timewise and designwise, I tried to focus on a pivotal point in the poem with this page.


The Lady of Shalott is bound by a curse -- she must never look directly upon the landscape of Camelot but instead view her surroundings through a mirror. She weaves a magic web

with colours gay,
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.


You will never know how tempted I was to try to bead a magic web!

One day she was a little down and that is when the pivotal point of the poem occurs:

A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley-sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro-the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneel'd
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote Shalott.

The gemmy bridle glitter'd free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle bells rang merrily
As he rode down to Camelot;
And from his blazon'd baldric slung
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armour rung,
Beside remote Shalott.

All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather,
The helmet and the helmet feather
Burn'd like one burning flame together,
As he rode down to Camelot.
As often thro' the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, trailing light,
Moves over still Shalott.

His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd;
On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow'd
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot,
From the bank and from the river
He flash'd into the crystal mirror,
"Tirra lirra," by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.

She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces thro' the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.


I sure hope my sister (who adores this poem) isn't disappointed in my interpretation of "the mirror crack'd" and Sir Lancelot's "helmet and helmet-feather burn'd like one burning flame together".

Believe it or not, the Hoffman floral fabric is entitled The Lady of Shalott and beautifully depicts the bloom of the water-lily. I have hoarded this fabric for over twenty years! Aquamarine is the birthstone for March and my attempt at a pseudo Celtic border features beads in this color.


If you wish to read this wonderful epic poem in it's entirety, go to http://www.fontcraft.com/shalott/

February BJP Page

My Quirky Queen of Hearts



We grew up in a generation of card players. My first work experience after graduating from high school was for a large bank in Cleveland, Ohio -- we played Hearts or Bridge at lunchtime and even brown-bagged our lunch to save time for card playing!


When I started sewing the piece of manufactured Battenburg lace to the background of this page, I realized I was heading for trouble. It was nearly impossible to get a needle through this stuff! Although I have several lovely antique pieces of Battenburg lace, I did not want to cut them up. So I had to rethink my original intent to bead the outlines of all that lace.

The end result was that I got really silly with the ornamentation of this page. Scrounged through all my sewing and beading supplies and even "borrowed" a few of my husband's antique keys. The large heart is an old Christmas ornament that I kept for my 17" fashion dolls. The amethyst hearts came from an old supply of craft items left over from our younger daughters.

The Queen's cuffs are peyote stitched tubes and her hands were done in peyote stitch as well. A large vintage amethyst rivoli forms her lower bodice.

All those amethyst hearts represent our six kids and our first grandchild. The large heart is for Jim, the love of my life. You can guess which key goes with which heart(s) . . .