I love Kim Miles! She is the coolest!

Kim Miles and her husband Rick and their new diesel truck and trailer are off to see the world!

As they do, Kim is blogging. She has started a new blog in honor of their adventure, and had invited all of us to join in, in following it. As she is an excellent writer, thoughtful, funny, and interesting, I recommend you all venture over to Kim's place: http://kimmiles-takingthelongwayhome.blogspot.com/ That is right: the new blog is called Taking the Long Way Home and it is here on my sidebar if you ever forget.

Kim has a competition going for this week, where you can win a gorgeous Kim bead. It is a very intriguing competition. I participated! Why don't YOU? Check it out!!!

Jennifer Jangles Blog Jennifer gives a great source for getting your designs made into rubber stamps.
Snap out of it, Jean! There’s beading to be done! There’s a great giveaway prize to be had if you check out Soft Flex Company’s Big Prize Giveaway! Jean has the low down on how to get in on it!
Strands of Beads Melissa reviews Margot Potter’s new book, Beyond the Bead
About.com Jewelry Making Be chic and make jewelry with some help from a new book: Chic Metal: Modern Metal Jewelry to Make at Home by Victoria Tillotson.
Art Bead Scene Is time for your 15 minutes of fame? There’s still time to be the next Bead Star and ‘bead famous!”
Barbe Saint John - New Jewelry from Forgotten Artifacts Barbe makes a necklace with supplies from Alpha Stamps
Bead&Button magazine Leslie’s keeping up the creativity–see what she’s up to
Earthenwood Studio Chronicles Mixing different kinds of mud with bug images, Melanie has fun in the dirt with new brown Lava Stone beads from Rings & Things

BIG GIVEAWAY FOR BLOGGER BUDDIES!

Giveaway prize includes:

3 FREE Trios of your choice!

That's right ANY 3 Trios.

You choose the colors! Total retail value = $50.85-$71.85 Here's what you gotta do:

Help us get the word out about our new contest.

To enter to win, please blog about our new "Flex your Creativity" Beading Contest.

For your convenience - Right click, Save & Post picture:

just as I, Jean Yates, have done here! I can't wait to see who wins! :)

Margot Potter, the supercraftalicious craftsperson!


There is a cool new machine no one who crafts should be without and Margot Potter shows you how to use it and why!





Here's how I found out about it: Right from Margot!





"Hey BeadBloggers!


We just posted a new YouTube video and the best way for us to get the word out is virally. It's a fun tutorial on using the new YuDu home screenprinting machine. These videos [which Margot makes when she is publicizing a new item like YuDu] are a family project and we have a blast doing them! So here's the link to our video!" note from Jean-->it is great fun and worth watching ! http://www.youtube.%20com/watch?





I am all for family fun and I think Margot is terrific when she makes these videos!

Note: Margot has a great, thoughtful blog entry today about taking a creative idea which isn't yours originally, whether you realize it or not, whether you plan to or not consciously, and making it look as if you created it originally. It involves how to discern the difference between what YOU own and what is rightfully yours, and what is NOT yours and that which you do not own. It is very clear--far clearer than this, and you might want to check it out! http://margotpotter.blogspot.com/

~a pretty photo from the front home page of Artbeads.com~

I got an email from my friend Steve at Artbeads.com today, letting me know their big sale, Dollar Days, would be kicking off TOMORROW! No lines to wait in, no sore feet wearing those high heels, just the pure enjoyment of scanning great deals online at Artbeads! You never know! You might just discover the newest, most elegant and radiant, stunning and beautiful creation ... which will be made by YOU!

Here is what Steve wrote to me:

Hello Jean,

I wanted to give you a little advance notice about a big sale we are starting tomorrow morning called Dollar Days. This was one of our biggest sales in 2008 and many items sold out very quickly.

This year, we’re making it much bigger by putting over 2,000 items on sale for only $1.00 each and running the sale for an entire week. The savings will be up to 60% off.



(note: this is the part where I went "squeeeee!") Pretty good sale, eh?

If you are interested, be on the look out for it to go live tomorrow morning, Tuesday, April 21, 2009 here:



http://www.artbeads.com/dollar-days-sale.html (sorry Steve, sometimes I get this HTML stuff right, sometimes I don't!)

Warmest Regards,

Steve

Thanks for the tip, Steve!
As they say, all roads lead to where, and I have no doubt I will see you all there! What a fun store!

Earthenwood Studio Chronicles Spring is here and Melanie announces a big springtime sale on her website, going on from now until Earth Day.
Snap out of it, Jean! There’s beading to be done! Jean reviews an excellent wire wrapping book, Beautiful Wire Jewelry for Beaders, by Irina Miech
Strands of Beads Melissa shows off a new necklace design inspired by Sir Thomas Wyatt’s poem “Whoso List to Hunt”
The Writing and Art of Andrew Thornton Taking advantage of Artbeads.com’s free shipping and fast, friendly service, Andrew attempts to capture the beauty of a Lord Byron poem with the new Crystallized - Swarovski Element Disk Pendants in his new necklace design, “Cloudless Climes”.
About.com Jewelry Making Puzzle piece jewelry is perfect to make during the month of April since it happens to be autism awareness month. Here are a few projects to help you make your own puzzle piece jewelry.
Art Bead Scene Worried about the economy? Take care of your bead business with these tips.
Art Jewelry magazine Demos and more planned for the Bead&Button Show 2009
Barbe Saint John - New Jewelry from Forgotten Artifacts Marketing Monday: Its all about word of mouth
Carmi’s Art/Life World Carmi creates a punched fiber collage necklace.

It is great to see my favorite people in Our Beading World, now that I have my sea legs and understand what I am doing. I put it here on my blog because this magazine is not available in the US commonly. What a stunning magazine! Here's Kim Miles--this was courtesy of Art Bead Scene, when I was guest columnist there. click photo to enlarge...the article continues below

Lisa Niven Kelly and her amazing teaching store, Beaducation, are on this page. Also the fascinating Econoflex wire by Soft Flex Company. That glare you see is blocking the word "New".

Hope you can read this when you click on this photo to enlarge.

This is my section called "What's Jean up to?" which makes connections from one thing to another. I interviewed Cindy Gimbrone for this. I am really pleased at how it turned out! Hope you are too Cindy!

I got this from Soft Flex Company in my mail today and, as I think this "green" bracelet ( don't get confused! -- it is eco-friendly! Geesh!) is just the perfect way for a beginner to learn to make a stunning piece of jewelry, I am reprinting it , complete with the instructions it arrived with to my mailbox. Jamie Hogsett is so excellent at design (as is Sara Hardin, who also works at Soft Flex). There are some designs which you just cannot resist. That is correct: resistance is futile! This will be around for ages and ages I predict.

Mixed Metals Bracelet Designed by: Jamie Hogsett

Skill Level: Beginner

Materials:
Soft Flex Extreme Silver Flex wire .014 diameter - 90"
Soft Flex Extreme 24k Gold Flex wire .014 diameter - 90"
Soft Flex Extreme Champagne Flex wire .014 diameter - 90"
3mm x 3mm Soft Flex Sterling Silver Seamless Crimp Tubes - 6 crimps
Sterling Silver 3-strand slide clasp - 1 clasp
Tools:
Soft Flex Professional Wire Cutters
Mighty Crimpers
Bead Stoppers
Click Here to Purchase All Available Materials and Tools
Click Here to See All Flexible Beading Wire
Click Here to See All 3 Strand Clasps
Instructions:
Finished Size: 7"
Cut each color of wire into nine 10” pieces.
Use all nine strands of the gold wire to string 1 crimp tube and the first loop of one half of the clasp. Pass back through the tube and crimp.
Divide the wire into three groups of three strands each. Braid the wires for about 6 3/4" inches and place a Bead Stopper on wires at the end of the braid to keep it from unraveling.
Use all nine strands to string 1 crimp tube and the first loop of the other half of the clasp. Pass back through the tube and slide the tube so that it is right next to the Bead Stopper. Remove the Bead Stopper and adjust the tube, if necessary. Crimp the tube and trim the tail wires.
Repeat Steps 2-4 using silver wire and the middle loops of the clasp.
Repeat Steps 2-4 using champagne wire and the last loops of the clasp.

So if you want an awesome bracelet order up some gorgeous beading wire from Soft Flex and be the first one on your block! Always fun to set a style standard!

For those in the holiday mood, take a look at Tammy Powley's hoppy Easter bunny project.

Then it's on to jewelry links from fellow jewelry designing bloggers.
Katie's Beading Blog Check Out Katie's Fun and Flowery Spring Inspiration!
Snap out of it, Jean! There's beading to be done!April is Austism Awareness Month. Express yourself creatively!
The Writing and Art of Andrew ThorntonA new double-sided sugar skull pendant from Anne Choi, inspires Andrew to create this new bracelet.
Earthenwood Studio ChroniclesA splendid night out at the Smart Shop metalsmithing studio's gallery crawl inspires Melanie.
Carmi's Art/LifeJacket Corsage - Carmi sews a few hooked flowers and beads to create a jacket corsage.
Jewelry & BeadingThink that shell jewelry is just for kids? Take a look at Karen Sugarman's designs, and I guarantee you'll change your mind!
Art Bead SceneThis month's challenge is Botticelli's Birth of Venus.
Barbe Saint John - New Jewelry from Forgotten ArtifactsBarbe talks about riveting and finding the right size drill bits
Bead&Button magazineJulia Gerlach talks about bead patterns and gifts.

I have written before of my childhood memories of Easter. It is a joyous celebration for me to recall. Our family lived on Long island so the flowers were really blooming as it is warmer there than here where I live now. Crocuses and Scilla (?), snowdrops and forsythia, as well as many showy flowery trees were beginning to appear all over the place and at my grandparents where we went to have lunch it was magical. Unlike Christmas, where there was at least one child sick, tucked in on the sofa watching all the activity from the sidelines and feeling rotten, by Easter the air was washed clean and the world had been reborn there on Long Island.

The coolest part when I was young (and I personally stretched this part out for years) was our fantastic Easter baskets. Somehow I always got things I didn't know I wanted in my Easter basket, but I did want them after I got them. Our baskets were used year after year (stored away carefully in the basement between Easters), and had fake flowers and lots of colored silk ribbons and new decorations like little puffy birds and new ivy winding up and even more and newer fake flowers winding up the handles every year, and new Easter grass with tons of jelly beans (which my mother liked herself) hiding in the grass, and plastic eggs with jelly beans and toys in them, and larger, German paper eggs with larger toys in them, chocolate bunnies and chocolate eggs, some plain and some fancily decorated and a few pretty good toys. One year my basket actually got pushed into my room on a red skateboard as I was sleeping! I used that board for years but was better at sitting on it to go down fairly steep roads near my house than using it the regular way. The skateboards at that time (that was the sixties) were pretty primitive. They were like a board with a roller skate. I know they HAVE to be different than that now!!! I think one of my kids used my board for a while as a kid on our driveway and it is here in the garage. Gah!

I had a personal relationship with the Easter bunny. You would had had one too if you had a great Easter basket like I got. The Easter bunny and I were "like this".

One year I decided it was payback time, and that I should thank the Easter bunny for being so nice to me. I went to my mother and asked her for some rope or some sort of odd thing I found in the bottom of her junk drawer in the kitchen which struck me as the correct thing for a gift. I then got my best picture frame, which was a petite, folding, travelling frame with a black and white picture of my mother and our poodle in one slot, a picture of a gorilla in another slot (I had cut that out from some magazine), and a drawing I had done in pencil in one slot and one slot was empty. I asked my mother to write a letter as I couldn't write at the time. This was what I asked her to write:

Dear Easter Bunny:

Thank you for all the nice presents you have given to me over the years.

Yours Very Truly,

Jeannie

I left this next to my bed the night before Easter that year.

When I woke up, my Easter basket was there as usual, just a glorious as ever, but better than that was this. There, next to the basket was a letter for me from the Easter bunny. It said:

Dear Jeannie:

Thank you for the presents. I will take the rope. You may keep the picture frame! I want you to have it!

love,

The Easter Bunny

That was the best Easter by far because I actually got a letter from the Easter bunny. He left my frame too, next to the basket. I unfolded it and put it back on the shelf in my room I had gotten it from.

The cool thing about kids is they never attempt to destroy the magic by puzzling over things. I didn't go and check my mother's drawer in the kitchen to see if the rope or whatever I had asked her for was back in there. It never occurred to me.

It took me years to realize who the Easter bunny was. And then years more to remember that story I just told you.

I wonder if that year was the year I also had the perfect Easter hat. Yes, we got one of those every year, for spring. To go to New York City in, with our matching coats and gloves from the glove drawer. We NEVER wore patent leather shoes on these forays. We wore brown lace up oxfords and short white cotton socks. We were brought up that way. hahaha!

My best Easter hat basically looked like I had simply taken that wild Easter basket I had and stuck it on my head and wore it around. I liked to overdo everything!

Happy Easter to you all!

jean!

Something great about this wire working book is that Irina Miech has a sensitivity to wire which is obvious and clear: she LOVES it. This love then conveys itself into the unique projects, which go from beginner to advanced. If you want to stress the technique of wire working in your jewelry making, go for this book! It is so fun and so worth your while!

What makes it good? For one thing, it is arranged very nicely: if you like, you can give yourself a full course, even if you haven't tried any wire worked jewelry before, ever. The author makes sure that she shows the tools and quick techniques right up front and then she catches your eye with a set of beginner projects which are stunning and tempting enough even for seasoned wire workers. For example: her blue toned "Burst of Color" necklace and earring set was lovely...so special it made me want to get out my pliers right then and there! Although I can make things like this already, I haven't made this. But now I want to!

I think that whether you already know how to make her projects or not is not the point...Irina has a true sense of beauty when she creates.

She is also very playful. You can see this sense of playfulness appear more and more when she is released from the strictures of having to keep things more simple. For example, in her intermediate section, she has a project with a number of variations called "Wire Wrapped Heart". It is GREAT! Having the variations (she wraps a drusy, a sand dollar, and more!) really expands your understanding of what you are doing, and it is as if you are taking a class with a teacher right in your own home. I like the section in the intermediate part on how to make your own findings as well. I am always curious about other designer's work and she has a noticeable amount of fun with these. I can't believe how amazingly intricate some of the projects looks in this part of the book. That is one thing about it which makes it very wonderful. Her step by step approach truly does work to bring you right up to the bar when wire wrapping if you take it slowly and just read the very clear, well photographed instructions.By the time the reader arrives at the advanced section, the cuff on the front looks far less daunting and much more enticing than it might have before reading the earlier parts of the book. It is very much a part of her organic style: fanciful and flowing. Trust me: you will want to try to make that cuff! Ms. Miech also has a stunning "Celtic Knot" set in this section, very worth making.

Many sizes and gauges of wire are used in Beautiful Wire Jewelry for Beaders, mostly sterling, with some chain.

This fabulous book truly makes you want to learn new ways of wrapping wire. Irina Miech has created an inspiring and terrific book to have permanently in your jewelry design library!

Snap out of it, Jean! There's beading to be done!If it has Margot Potter's name on the cover, you know it will be a superfun and interesting book! Beyond the Bead, Margot's latest, is just that!

Barbe Saint John - New Jewelry from Forgotten Artifacts Barbe reviews Dr. Weiman's 101 More Jewelry Selling Techniques Ebook

Speaking of e-books and downloadable projects, Linda has posted one in this week's highlight...BeadStyle MagLinda's jewelry does the Lindy Hop far better than she does...check out her inspiration!

About.com Jewelry MakingTammy has some tips for branding yourself and your jewelry product while also putting together some awesome packaging.

Carmi's Art/Life World Carmi features a mini canvas pendant on a felted background to make a brooch.

Earthenwood Studio ChroniclesUsing gluable bracelet blanks from Rings and Things, Melanie shares ideas for how to use them in two very different ways

Strands of Beads Melissa shows off a celadon-themed necklace she made for Ornament Thursday

Jewelry & Beading Thanks to some inspiration from beadmaker Melanie Brooks, Cyndi has an article in Belle Armoire Jewelry!

The Writing and Art of Andrew Thornton A sleepless night for Andrew produced seven new necklace designs.

Art Bead Scene Feeling out of step with the trends? Here's some inspiration for the fall 2009 season!

My friend Elizabeth King Gerlach's book of compelling vignettes about her son, entitled Just This Side of Normal. Available at Amazon.com. See below for her other book, or go to her site: http://www.fourleafpress.com/ for all of her amazing work.

I love this bracelet for a special month around here, made with findings from Artbeads:Artbeads.com

Then here are the game pieces by the fabulous Tari Sasser of Claybuttons.com. Tari Sasser of Claybuttons.comYou can order them in two sizes, with loops on the ends if you wish, and in many more colors than this, as she makes them to order for you! Tari just filled an order of a hundred for a lady who is involved with autism. I am so proud to know this!

Actually, the month of April is not all that foolish for us here (despite the way it starts, with April Fool's Day), but rather, an exciting and serious month. Each year, parents and family members, and caretakers of people with autism as well, get together and mark April as Autism Awareness Month.

Although there wasn't a day that didn't go by which wasn't complicated and difficult when our children were younger, there wasn't much of a feeling of accomplishment in the world community for years and years concerning autism. Nobody was sure what it was, we were getting jokes about our children being "artistic" 'way after that should have passed by. Every UPS guy who came to the door had to listen to my question "Did you happen to see Rainmain at the movies?" when he appeared puzzled by my childrens' behavior. Then the light would dawn and he would nod and grasp why my son or sons were shrieking like crazies, and racing around clad like little animals in what was supposedly a regular family house.

This continues to be complicated and we often have what I would call hard days. Or weeks...

When the organization called CAN came along, things started to fall into place. Our first famous representative from CAN was the lovely Rene Russo. She had just been in the movie "Tin Cup". CAN was a group based out in CA, and stood for Cure Autism Now. The head of it has a son with autism and is a film director. Where regular people cannot get things done, Hollywood people actually accomplish stuff, if they want to. CAN was great. It pulled everyone together finally and we got some publicity. AND a bit of money finally, for the first time, for research.

Our next representative was Anthony Edwards from the TV show ER. He was enourmously popular. They knew how to pick good people with an air of compassion to represent us and soon we were not hiding in the background any more. Regular people began to know what autism was. It was freeing. Phew! FINALLY.

Previously, just to note what driven people do in desperate circumstances to assist other fellows in arms:

My friend wrote her watershed book, Autism Treatment Guide, by Elizabeth Gerlach, listing every single treatment available for autism, and her beautiful book of personal vignettes, Just This Side of Normal.

We didn't know we were home free until every show on TV had a kid on it who played a child with autism, at least once a TV season. It was interesting to watch for us, not silly.

We were popular. A popular cause.

Now as a group, we are mostly under the aegis of Autism Speaks. They are a great organization who used to be a part of CAN in some way but I am not certain how. Anyway, they blended and then took over.

I am proud to be a mother, and Jim is proud to be a father, of a couple of severely autistic kids. This has been a hard year but we will keep going. This is our month. Happy Autism Awareness Month to all of us.