Bead Crochet: A Beadwork How-To Book (Beadwork How-To series) by Bethany Barry
I bought this book a year or two ago, based on the picture on the cover, which I think is really beautiful. I personally like freeform designs, and the necklace pictured incorporates lots of color in what looks like a semi-random mix, but done [...]

A couple of my favorite art/craft/creativity blogs have great new posts in the past week.
First, if you have some time, here’s a long post on creativity, prioritizing, and all kinds of issues related to living a creative lifestyle on In A Minute Ago. Sharon also mentiones an older post she wrote on visual journals, which [...]

I’ve started felting - the picture above is of a pile of wool felted beads I made (a few of them are now pendants and earrings, and I have plans for some necklaces and other things too).
I was reading a blog I like, In A Minute Ago, and came across a link to a felt [...]

The NY Times ran an article earlier this week about copyright laws and how they apply to fashion. Since I’ve written about copying a couple of times now, I was very interested to read about some of the legal issues. The article talks about clothing designs being copied, but the same issues apply to jewelry.
Apparently, [...]

Whenever the debate about creativity, copying, and inspiration comes up on jewelry forums, it gets heated right around the time someone says that “everything has been done already anyway” or “there’s nothing new under the sun”.
People (myself included) don’t want this to be true, because we consider ourselves to be creative, and even on some [...]

For the past few months, I’ve been collaborating with a talented group of artists - both jewelry makers and artists who normally work in other mediums - on a collaborative charm necklace, which will be auctioned off to a charity working on breast cancer research.
Before the necklace is auctioned off, everyone who participated (by contributing [...]

Thanks to Karen Hung, of KH Metalwork for pointing me to this article:
I’m Feeling Lucky
The article is full of links to articles on creativity, some of which are really interesting. At least one was the result of typing “creativity slump” into Google and hitting the “I Feel Lucky” button. Another has a downloadable free ebook [...]

Creative people all have slumps - periods of time where nothing seems new or exciting. This can be really depressing, and for people who depend on their creativity to earn a living, it can have financial consequences as well.
Something that is easy to forget as an artist is that what we do is work too, [...]

One of my favorite parts of designing and making jewelry is when “happy accidents” happen when I’m testing a new idea.
I’m sure there are many artists and jewelry makers out there who can relate to the frustration of trying out a great idea that just doesn’t work. You have this great image in your [...]

Some artists (jewelry and otherwise) have gotten together and formed a “Carnival of Creators” which is a monthly blog posting with links to interesting art and creativity blog postings. Every month, a different person hosts the carnival. This month, it was hosted at Gracklestew.
I found some really interesting articles through browsing the links. Luann Udell [...]