Been a Busy Bee . . .

And I thought July, 2007 was a busy month. I honestly cannot say where any of July, 2008 went to because my fingers were buried in beads up to my ears!


Found out in mid-June that New Mexico Magazine will be using one of my necklaces in it's September issue. You know what that means, right? Yep -- scurry like a bunny to get other beaded pieces done and get a website up and running BEFORE the magazine comes out in early August. Nothing like a crashing deadline, right?


The blue-green necklace shown above is titled Ophelia I, the tragic heroine from Hamlet. It is the first in a series of projects that I have been planning -- don't be surprised to see another Ophelia necklace in a completely different colorway soon.
















This is the necklace that will be showcased in New Mexico Magazine. It was made last February and is titled Carnivale -- a gypsy's memories.

Full descriptions of both of these necklaces and other beaded pieces can be seen at -- tah-dah! My new website -- www.artfulmuse.com -- which is far from being completely done, but it is live and running.

Gotta say that building a website is not for the faint of heart! Thank goodness for templates. The huge blocks of time that are necessary for working on a project like this are incredible. And we thought the beading itself was time-consuming . . .

A bit of catching up here . . .

Since our daughter Mandy's birthday is today, I can finally post her gifties. Hard to believe the youngest of our six kids turned 29 today.

All these birthday goodies were completed a few weeks ago before I came down with some strange sort of flu. Only good thing about being tied down with an achy body and sore head was getting to finish several great books.

We are experimenting with different methods of photographing beadwork here, hence the different shots and exposures.



For those of you who have asked about the Comfort Doll Workshop that I gave last month, believe it or not I was so darn busy helping folks I forgot all about my camera until I unloaded all the workshop supplies back home! Quite a few of the workshop attendees had never even threaded a needle let alone do any beading previously. But they became the most enthusiastic participants of all.

One of the sample practice dolls I used in the workshop has become yet another birthday present for the Mandy daughter. Pictured below, she is decked out in July's birthstone color -- a color I knew Mandy would never wear in a bracelet but would enjoy in a doll.

Will have more projects to post soon (I am knee-deep in them at the moment!) and a few more of the sample practice dolls that have been developed further since the workshop.

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.