Jim and I were in business together for 17 years before we sold our three stores and most of our possessions in order to sail around the world. During those years I more or less gave up my own artwork (not entirely -see this post) in order to make a living, and keep the stores profitable. Jim created, and I made sure that we sold what he created.  To see what was selling I tracked the inventory, and one ring in particular (R114)  sold as fast as he could make it. It was, no doubt, a beautiful ring, with  four hand carved leaves that tapered off into the band of the ring. The leaves "held" a gemstone, most often a ruby cabochon, or an emerald. This ring sold every time we cast one, and sold, and sold, and kept on selling (and still sells today, at The Gallery in Round Top). Jim made a mold so that the ring could be reproduced. At that time, however, we had a host of employees to assist us, including a bench jeweler who could cast and refinish the continuing trail of R114′s.

Jim’s  lovely little ring was one of our "bread and butter" items, something we could count on to sell, and help pay the rent (and the employees). The sales of R114 allowed me to allow Jim to be creative, and experiment with other ideas, new designs – designs that might or might not sell. In the stores, we also stocked some basic rings, basic necklaces, chains, etc. that could also always be counted on to sell. Because we had a "nut to crack", (as we used to say) – rent to pay, employees to pay, light bills, advertising bills, phone bills – well, you get the idea. So, the sales of those basic items kept us afloat and in business. And back at the bench, in the wee hours of a quiet weekend,  that gave Jim the freedom to play with his  sketchpad, his wax, and his gold – and be creative.

So now, here we are, after a long hiatus sailing around the world, and back in business again. Because, as we discovered, it was way too early to retire – too few dollars in the bank, too many expenses on land. But being in business, with a nut to crack, is demanding – there in lies the problem, the question that so often  deters my creativity – Will it sell?

Should I make more of what I know sells – or let loose and go where the glass calls? The temptation  keep reproducing the beads that I know have sold before  is great- and that’s not to say that I can’t or don’t enjoy making them. But, but —

I long to  sit down at the torch without that little voice over saying, "Well, you need to make earring pairs – they’ll sell." Or, "You should make some more bubble beads, they always sell".

Yes, its true – but the further truth, the larger, bigger, truth,  is that shutting off that voice over, and allowing myself   freedom to create anew, freshly, freely, will enable me to arrive at something new, something different,- something else that will, because it arrived out of love,  sell.

Here’s a  necklace  full of leaf beads I recently made -without worrying about " Will it sell?"

I took the lampworked glass beads I made the other day (the group inspired by the painting I mentioned here) and sat them on my bead board for a while, just to see if they spoke to me.

Meanwhile, I’ve been experimenting with scraps from a recently purchased assortment of silk fabric leftover from old handmade Japanese kimonos and making cords for my beads. A brilliant fuchsia ikat woven piece called to me even before the beads did, so the largest of the beads made its way into this necklace ( for sale on etsy). Ah, those colors, they speak to me – loudly!

Using the remaining beads from the set, I made earrings, another pendant, and a necklace with sterling silver links in between the beads. I track my inventory using photos and numbers, but etsy wants names. What to name these pieces? The black twisties I made out of my larger rods of glass looked like zebras – crazy zebras, but zebras to me – so, "Purple Zebra" series, welcome to the world!

   Ideas and inspirations for creating beads and jewelry come to me from all sorts of places.  I buy  inexpensive spiral bound notebooks  and fill them with ideas.  The blank pages are great for drawing , or pasting photos into. I can even tear a  perforated page out and  stick it on a clipboard   I keep in my torching area. I’ve filled this stack of  note books in the last 3 years.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night from a dream about a  finished piece of jewelry – I get up and  tiptoe into my studio and sketch the idea. I rip  pages out of magazines ( I’m the one that wrecks those stacks of magazines in the doctors office)  -   pictures of inspiring rooms, people, clothing, food -  and paste them into the current notebook. My digital camera goes everywhere, for photos  of shapes I like, colors, textures. Music inspires me.  I listen to KUT, the NPR station in Austin, or  KUHF in Houston. One day the opera La Boheme was broadcast, and the commentator  translated the Italian before each act. I understood the story line  for the first time, and the music evoked a powerful reaction that translated into shapes and colors.   I put down the glass rods I was working with, picked out the new color scheme, and created the beads in this strand by the time the opera was over. 

A few months ago while staying in a hotel during a selling trip we just stumbled onto Julie Taymor’s dazzling production of The Magic Flute on television. Oh, how I wished we had been at home and able to record the show, because both Jim and I went wild over about the costumes and sets . (Too bad there is no CD yet. )We filled up the hotel note pad with sketches and as soon as we could went to work translating what we had seen into jewelry.

  Jim brings me design sketches, so sometimes I take his idea, and   make beads in shapes and colors for his creation.  Other times, he just pokes through my beads, finds one he likes, and takes it over to his bench to make  a silver setting something  for it  -a fish bead (for sale on etsy) I made to go with his "waves" of silver. 

I have a degree in Art Education, and have been an artist all of my adult life – all of my life, really. Years of drawing, painting, working as a fiber artist, designing stores, and  designing jewelry, all led to my approach  of  "painting with glass".  So paintings that I like are a great source of inspiration.   The muse I called upon in called upon in the last few days was this painting by artist Wesley Rusnell: Reclining Nude, Violet.   I love those intense blocks of color. I rarely use gray glass, but this painting inspired me to try gray with red and purple.

Rods of glass I chose, and the beads I made  using them. I’ll show you the finished jewelry I make from the beads in a few days. Maybe you’ll be inspired!

“Well”, I told myself, “I’m creating on a grand scale; my palette is merchandise, my canvas is large, dimensional spaces (the three stores), and my artistic creation changes every day as customers purchase the products, and new ones enter the mix.”

I managed 14 employees, orchestrated the buying of all the merchandise we sold that we did not create, and shuffled whatever was needed to keep the stores profitable. I was a fiber artist when I met Jim. I also designed and created one of a kind necklaces using antique beads from an extensive collection I had amassed since the 1960′s.

Customers often came into the jewelry store bringing estate pieces for repair – lapis necklaces missing a clasp, a strand of carved turquoise beads with worn silk threads, enameled fish with broken fins, or fine pearls from the South Seas that needed setting. So I designed new pieces for them, and for the store. When I could get Jim to make something other than rings, I put his gold pendants or other creations together with pearls, or gemstones, or some beads from my colletion. My fiber work fell by the wayside as the businesses grew, but I kept my hand in the bead box, my little link in the strand of my artistic life.

We sold the stores and most of our possessions when we moved aboard the sailboat in 1990. But I kept six precious boxes of my bead collection, and a bag of my beading tools: silk threads, clasps, pliers, needles, special glues. My bead board was too big for the boat,so when I made jewelry on board the boat I spread a white towel down to keep the beads from escaping from the tiny navigation station desk. I didn’t get to bead very much – a rolling boat is not an ideal platform for tiny, mostly round, objects. But when in port, I unpacked my treasures from the locker they were wedged into, and created jewelry.

As we slowly sailed our way around the world, the quest of finding and buying beads led us on lots of inland journeys. (I learned the word for “Beads” in eight languages). Using my on board laptop, I connected when I could, and set up a web site, printed some business cards and price tags, and “Bead Safari” was born. Every year when we flew back to the United States I tucked finished jewelry into my carry on bag, and sold it to stores in California. Back on Sanctuary (our boat) we made booths out of borrowed tables, displays out of cardboard, and found objects, and sold at any art fairs we could find whereever we were. The languages of beads and jewelry were universal, and except for Africa (where I thought it would have been ridiculous to sell beads – I bought everything I could afford), I found customers and buyers in every country we visited.

By the time we sailed back to America, my bead collection had ebbed and flowed, and my bead boxes had transformed into the biggest fishing tackle box I could fit into the bottom of our one hanging clothing locker. The necklaces and bracelets I made from my worldwide collection filled a duffle bag. We sold our sailboat, but didn’t know where we were going to live – or how.

We were debt free, and had a small income from some investments we’d made when we sold our businesses and possessions back in 1990. But expenses aboard a small sailboat docked in a third world country with third world prices was very different than expenses in the Seattle area – we were driving a gas guzzling van, drinking Starbucks coffees, eating designer vegetables, buying new warm clothing, and contributing to household expenses at our friend Mary Anne’s house where we lived in a basement bedroom. We needed a larger monthly income – Bead Safari had to get serious.

So we set up an art show schedule, created a booth, and took Bead Safari on the road. And the road led to Texas: my mother lived there, my sister and brother -in-law lived there, and most importantly, Jim’s neurologist was in Houston (Jim has Parkinson Disease, a progressive, incurable, brain disorder).

We rented a 2 room cabin in Round Top, Texas, bought six acres of land, and started building a house. We had definitely “swallowed the hook.” A year flew by – Bead Safari took off, and we settled into a “one art/craft show a month” schedule in Texas. I was running out of special beads – and needed to fly back to a few places where I had bought a lot of beads, find an importer on the Internet , or …?

While deciding what to do about my dwindling bead supply, I realized our “Market Days” show schedule wasn’t really the best. My jewelry needed a different audience and more discerning customer. I applied to several high end shows, but was rejected. My favorite show, The Winedale Texas Crafts Exhibition, also rejected my application. One juror took the time to write to me, saying, “Your work is very special, but since you don’t make your beads it is only assemblage.”

I’d bought some great raku beads when we were in Greece , and thought they would be fun to make – but I couldn’t find a teacher nearby. The other newer beads I liked a lot were the glass ones from Italy, often just called “Murano”. I searched the Internet, and found a class here in Texas offering glass beadmaking (I learned it was called “Lampworking“). Using a torch scared me, and I spent most of the first day of the class just trying to control my shaking hands. But by the end of the second day I was hooked. I bought the rods of glass, the stainless steel mandrels, the hot head torch, a kiln – and set off to change my life – again.