How I learned to add images to my blog >:-\

Good lord. I thought this should be easier and it would have been if I'd seen the pop up window to add images!
Eye candy! These are the images that I submitted to The Flow. Photographs by www.davidorrphotography.com

2 years later alive and kickin … sort of.

There must be something about the new year, that compels me to find the blog I started 3 years ago and managed to only eek out 2 postings. Then, spend hours trying to remember how to log into my account with now defunct email accounts and passwords. Of note I had the same email for almost 8 years. I don't like to let things go. Mostly because I'm lazy and a participant of an almost victimless crime…inertia.

So what does it all mean? I dunno. A few years ago I had a bit of a nervous breakdown. A midlife crisis. I awoke from a self-induced coma and found I was drastically unhappy. I blamed it on the fact that I was only a few years away from being 45! OMG my life is OVER! (even worse now that I'm 44 and a half. There I just admitted my age which I don't like doing.) So what could I do about not being young anymore? I decided to focus on my appearance. Which i had just spent all of my life not thinking about. I decided to work out and to lose weight to appear more youthful. Fast Forward a couple of years and I managed to lose up to 52 pounds... put almost 10 of that back on depending on the week. Darn it. But I still have a net loss of about 42 pounds. Not bad. But I would like to lose about 40 more. I don't care about health benefits. I want to look hot! Here's to losing the rest of it in 2011.

During this time of trying to find who am I, what the hell will make me happy, and finding out I had no clue, I injured my knee working out. That was fun. 8-9-09 I had 180 pounds of leg press fall on me at the gym. I was out of work for 3 weeks. Infuriated that my weight loss goals were stalled and had no idea how long it would take me to recover and get back in the saddle. But it was a nice break from my job. Sort of.

I've found lately I have regrets and my regrets are nothing I can do much about except really figure out how to let things go. I'm in a period of mourning things. My lost youth. My incredibly massively low self esteem that for years hampered more than I had a clue. Never being the "pretty girl". The problem is, looking at my High School photo... I was a pretty girl. Thus my anger at myself for beating myself up all those years and thinking I was hideous. Shame. A lot of wasted time. I was miserable and unhappy and didn't know how to make it stop. That is my biggest regret. Not having more fun, not relishing the adventures ahead, that are now behind me. I guess in letting go, perhaps I can try to find enthusiasm for the adventures left ahead of me now.

One thing that does continue to bring me happiness is creating and developing new friendships, learning new things and being creative. I have to create or I believe my soul is destroyed. I took a very long break from doing something that brought me pleasure and that was designing jewelry. Part of that was on purpose. In 2009 I was burnt out. I had put a lot of work in and didn't see a lot of return. I also figured I needed to come up with something new and different and to focus on making my beads better. I decided to let my etsy shop go dormant and focusing on improving my craftsmanship in my flame worked beads. Nothing was selling online and the economy desintergrated. Then I injured my knee. Then I got sick with H1N1. For 6 weeks. That was thrilling. I've never been so sick I don't think. Then I had job changes. I continue to have job changes. And those have made me not happy.

But as I've been unhappy with my professional life, I have returned to designing jewelry and it has been fun. I did a couple of holiday shows, Glendale Glitters and Mesa Arts Festival. I made A LOT of new pieces. I got many of them on consignment at The Store at the Mesa Arts Center in Mesa, AZ and at Textures Hair Salon in Scottsdale, AZ. I got a bead and a necklace published in The Flow Magazine Winter 2010 Women in Glass edition. I'm on page 8. And finally I'm going to be getting around to doing the work required to get my etsy shop back up and running. And i have a ridiculously long to do list to improve my professional life and my personal life still. Which I intend to work on and forgive myself if it takes a while or sometimes I just don't get to it.

I'm hoping for a much better 2011 for me and everyone out there who has been struggling or facing hardships or have lost their way and are determined to find it again. Like I am.

Honey I'm Hoooommmmmeeee

So this is amazing. Almost one year later and I'm gong to do a brief update on this here blog. Alternate working title: I Don't Have Time to Blog. I'm still going to get back to what are lampwork beads and why should I care but for the moment, back to the Blog. It sounds so swampy. The word Blog. I'm thinking of Bog which is also perfect because we get bogged down with things and STILL don't have time to blog. There is a Dr. Seuss rhyme in there somewhere but it's late and I really need to go to bed. So you, dear reader (and it probably is singular), will have to make your own rhyme.

So what have I been doing? Uh, mostly working. I do have a day job. I transferred from catalog design to email/web page design and have many, many, many things to learn. So that took up a lot of my time. Alternately I just got done with my holiday show season. I did 4 weekends of shows and was really hoping to ratchet up my sales for this year (by doing more shows) when the economy did a swan dive from 50,000 feet. Guess it wasn't a good year for hopes and dreams.

So that brings me to today. It's 2009 I just got done doing paperwork for sales tax for 2 cities and the state. Ow my head hurts and wow did that take a long time and I'm IMing my friend who keeps telling me I need to twitter on top of blogging. I don't have time to blog, so how should I fit in twittering? So I'm looking at site trying to figure out how to use it. Thank god for my friend because she had the LINK to my blog and I was fortunate enough to remember my log in and password. It's a miracle. Which brings me to my other point. Which I'm really just making now. She sells products for men. Which is a great niche because other than meat and sporting goods, nobody really caters to men. Especially with skin and hair care. So she makes this wonderful stache wax so where does she hang out? Sites/twitters/blogs that cater to men's beards. I hate her. Please tell me the site for well to do chicks (or dudes who buy for their chicks) who like handcrafted beaded jewelry? I need that site.

Hi, my name is Michele and… I'm a beadaholic.

Ok the title of this probably gave away the plot, but I am completely obsessed with BEADS.

Many years ago a friend of mine asked if I wanted to go to a "bead store". I thought she was insane and did not understand that an entire store could be devoted to beads. I had always loved semi-precious gemstones and used to buy those little boxes of tumbled polished stones. But there wasn't much I could do with them other than poke them or let them sit around gathering dust. My aha moment occurred when all those pretty tumbled rocks turned into BEADS, at the BEAD STORE. It was then that I began to design and sell jewelry made of these gemstones and other materials. So it's really my friends fault I'm like this now. Completely and totally.

I took a hiatus from jewelry design when I moved to Arizona in 1994. Around 2002, I rediscovered my need to create in this medium. About this time I also discovered artisan made lampwork beads, which set off a parallel, yet new obsession with these intriguing glass beads. It took some time to find a teacher and to get into classes but I began my journey of learning to make my own glass beads in 2003. Since then I have been working on craftsmanship and technique to create my own glass beads to use in my jewelry designs. I have to make beads. I always am thinking of new techniques or materials I want to incorporate with the glass. At least most of the time. Some nights I sit there after I get all my stuff out and I stare at the torch like now what. But, most of the time I don't turn it off. The obsession. I can't.

I work with Italian soda lime (soft) glass and have a variety of tools besides the glass itself to poke, prod and move the glass where I’d prefer it to go. Sometimes it doesn’t “cooperate” and I have to see what new direction the glass takes me. It took me a long time to except this.

I also enjoy knowing that I am carrying on a tradition that dates back thousands of years. Techniques taught today are the same techniques used long ago when glass beads were first made in the ancient east. I am honored to carry on these traditions today.

Stay tuned for What is Lampworking Anyways and Why Should I Care?

My first blog ever...

So as the title suggests, this is my first blog ever. I'm actually learning how to set this bad boy up and what all the features are. I just discovered they have drag and drop. Niiiiice.

So if I build a blog, will they come? Can I blog about blogging or would that be redundant?

Coming soon Hi , My name is Michele and... I'm a beadaholic.