My brief affair with being crafty

Recently, I tried to bring out my crafty/artsy side. Let me tell you, it's not easy for a person who isn't used to exercising her "creative" abilities, to just jump into it full throttle like she knows what the hell she's doing. I like doing crafty things, but I start these endeavors like a crafting queen, and end up fumbling around like a kindergartner trying to tie her shoes for the first time. 

Or I pick it up really quickly, and drop it like a bad habit. That's a really bad metaphor. Drop it like a bad habit. If it were that easy to "drop" it, it wouldn't be a bad habit. Anywho..

So, the extent of my crafting expertise starts with crocheting, knitting, knifty knitting, cross stitch,  loom beading, sewing, painting, and drawing. Of which I do very few. The only thing I think I do now with any semi-consistency is probably crocheting, and of that I only know how to do the same pattern over, and over, and over again.

So last Friday, I decided to have Eeka teach me how to make bracelets. The reason why I wanted to start this project, was because.. well because I like shiny things and I had seen some really shiny beads at Pat Catan's and I wanted to play with them. They're those really popular beads out right now, made of glass I think, called pony beads. I've seen some of those bracelets going for 50$ at some of the jewelery store, and I thought, "Psh, I can make those."

And that's as far as my brain allowed me to think. 

Late Friday morning, Eeka picks me up, runs me around for a few errands, and we head back to her house. I'm sitting at her kitchen table all excited, swinging my feet under the chair like a 4 year old about to bake cookies with mommy for the first time. I was really, REALLY excited about this idea. As she's in the basement looking for all her beads and bracelet paraphernalia, I'm sitting in there coming up with the most brilliant, awesome, eye-catching, money-making ideas for bracelets and various other jewelry for her to sell on her Etsy account. I'm thinking to myself about how good I am at pairing colors together and making patterns. This is going to be the easiest thing I have ever done! I am going to be awesome at it! 

Yeah, no.

Eeka brings up this, well it's almost like a dresser, but it's small and plastic with three see-through drawers in it. Inside each drawer, stuffed and packed and laying there waiting for my eager little fingers, are bags upon bags of tiny glass beads. Now, for those that don't know me, I'm practically blind. I don't wear glasses because I can't seem to find the time between work and being lazy, to go to the damn eye doctor. I can't see more then 10 feet in front of me on a clear day, and half the time I'm looking at anything, I'm squinting. Unless it's a spider. In which case, I invented the term: spidey-senses. I'm still waiting on Marvel to pay me for that idea. 

So anyhow, I wasn't even perturbed by the idea that I possibly wouldn't even be able to see those tiny beads. I was ready to make a damn bracelet. Eeka showed me the different tools she used, from needle nose pliers, to wire cutters, to these weird ass pliers that have round spindle looking things instead of the traditional.. whatever you call the end of them. She even had a bead picker-upper which I dubbed, The Pooper Scooper. It helped to pick the beads up off the mat so you could put them back into their proper baggies. 

The Pooper Scooper

Then she plops each of the drawers out onto the table and starts waving small bags of beads in my face, as well as charms, wires, necklaces, small tubs of beads, a big oxy-clean tub of random beads that you see in children's kits, strings of pearly looking beads, square ones, oval ones, rectangular shaped ones, and one's that were in shapes that couldn't have possibly had easy to pronounce names. 

Beads!

More beads!

OMG MORE BEADS!!!

I had grabby fingers. 

I was excited.

I was in a world of shit and didn't know it.

Eeka flopped a squishy mat in front of me and told me that it makes it easy to hold onto the beads while working. Advice I would soon learn to appreciate. But all I could hear was, "Blah blah blah, beads. Blah blah blah, wire. Blah blah blah, bracelet."

Now, I know I said I was good at picking color schemes and making patterns. But what do you do when every colored bead you could possibly think of is staring at you in a "pick me! pick me!" kind of way? Well, if you're me, you freak out a bit. I started sifting through those beads as if they were going to poof from existence at any second. 

"THIS ONE! Oooh, no! THIS ONE!"

I'm sure that's how I sounded. If I hadn't mentioned, I was really, really excited. So I picked out my beads, shoved the first wire at Eeka, and proudly exclaimed, "ROLL THE END FOR ME!" I was already way in over my head, and didn't even know it. 

Eeka rolling my ends for me.

I started shoving the end of the wire at the beads as if I knew exactly what I was doing, but they wouldn't stay. They kept slipping off the end and rolling away. One or two even popped off and went flying across the table. I fumbled around trying to catch them and make them stick like my life depended on it. This wasn't the awesome daydream from a few minutes ago. This was bracelet making hell. I was determined though. 

You see how tiny those bastards are?!

I grabbed for a pair of scissors and cut the string holding all these blueish looking pearls while Eeka went to check on the baby. Of course, because I hadn't paid attention to the mat part, the beads slipped off the string, bounced and rolled across the wooden table, and fell to the floor. So I crawled down around on my hands and knees, retrieving the runaway pearls, and placed them on the table.

Where they rolled.

And bounced.

And fell onto the floor again. 

I learned really quick what the mat was for.

Once perched back in my chair with the pearls firmly resting on the mat, I continued to poke at the beads, trying to get them to situate themselves into some pattern that was pretty enough for someone to want to wear the damn thing. Eventually I succeeded and made my first bracelet. 

Yay! I did it!

I eventually learned how to roll the ends of my wire on my own as well. Eeka even gave me a pair of reading glasses so I could see those tiny bastards just chilling on the mat. That made it much easier to keep the beads on the wire and hold them in place. 

Normally, I look more human. 

Eventually I learned to make the bracelets a little faster, and before I knew it, with a few smoke breaks in between, I made five of them. 

All five of them

I felt accomplished. It started out wonderfully, then slapped me in the face with reality, then ended on a positive note. 

However, it's not just bracelets that I throw myself into with enthusiasm, it's every project that I start. I still have a blanket that I've been crocheting for the last year or so, and a couple more that I've started and never finished. Scarves I've attempted to knit that just un-weave while being thrown around in my closet, cross stitching that I got half way through and now I have no idea where it's at, and various other projects I've attempted and never committed to. 

I get myself all hyped up on something new, and when the glamour of it has faded away, I push it off to the side and forget all about it. Sometimes I surprise myself that I can even get dressed in the morning with all my non-committal, A.D.D. ways. 

So don't look for me at fairs and flea markets. I won't be opening my own Etsy account. You won't see my name attached to any QVC product line, and I won't be famous except in my head. The experience though was rather enjoyable when I wasn't off chasing beads or cursing them for being so damn tiny. I may even do it again, but this time with more patience and knowledge about what I may be getting myself into. 

So here's a few more pictures of the things I couldn't fit in properly to the rest of the blog, and forgive the quality of the pictures. For once again, I had forgotten my camera and had to take pictures of the experience with my cell phone. Enjoy.

I like the little beads, but I really like the chunky ones. There were just to many options, so I stuck with the small ones so I wouldn't get to overwhelmed.. well more then I already was, anyways.

I couldn't tell if I was using gold or silver beads here, because I kept forgetting that my reading glasses were sitting on my head.

For this one, I used wax string. I also spent 10 minutes digging through the Oxy-clean bucket looking for the different sized colored pearls, and the tiny ass silver beads that kept escaping my fat fingers.

This is one Eeka had done a while back.

Two seconds flat, she had earrings. Creative bitch.

The bracelet Eeka made for her niece.

Hello, Eeka!

Multitasking, a thing I could never do. Bracelet making, phone call, and me.. Like oil and water.

What we accomplished at the end of the day. Not to shabby for a first timer and a busy mom/patient teacher. I must say though, that Eeka is a hell of a lot better at this creative crafty stuff then I am. Props Eeka!