Studio Time: Create? Administrate?

Help! I can't stop creating long enough to administrate! See all these goodies below? They need to be tagged and stocked in my Artfire shop. But, I can't stop the flow of ideas long enough to do it. I meant to do it tonight. I had my plans: make dinner, study, do some tagging...

Yeah, well, I got dinner in...then I had to divert to play with fire and glass. I was only going to do an hour and well, you know how that goes. Then I went down and cleaned last night's beads and Ideas came gushing out of my head and...well, I just had to keep going!




What's fun for me is the monthly themes I have created have been pushing my brain and I've started seeing a personal style emerge. A style that feels really unique, and really me. It will be really apparent once I can get my act together and finish the administration...then you can see the progression! A little preview is below which is just beginning to segue into next month's theme, "Southwest."

The story for this half-finished piece (I'm undecided on the finish...leather or chain maille...)

I've been doing florals for this month's theme and hit on the floral disk. I'm improving in my skill and execution of the florals. They're getting better, more consistent. Now I'm starting to embellish the disks with frames. One of my neighbors requested a white necklace. Yawn. What can I do to white? Ah! Florals! Of course! So, I do a set of five florals with the intention of creating a convertible necklace that can be worn as one long one or two short ones....(more on that when I actually finish...)

After a series of white beads...MUST DO SOMETHING TO WHITE! Dots! Dalmation dots. I did one bead the first night. It's a Cruella DeVil bead...white on one side and Dalmation dotted on the other. It's not quite a disk, but I'll be using it sometime.

After doing the Dalmation bead, I saw the most delicious shoes. (I miss cute shoes. For the practical girl who didn't have enough money for cute shoes until the last 5 years to go on a starvation diet from cute shoes...it's torture! I try to wear cute shoes, but every time I do, I end up with two feet full of blisters.) I digress...I saw a lady wearing black and white polka-dot shoes with red accents. I've been trying to figure out how to convey that in a bead.

Oila! Below! I'm quite excited with this combo...I think I'm going to call it, The Dalmation Wears Lipstick. I wired up some coordinating spacers on a vine of silver. But, I'm struggling with the finish...

Does the leather bug you? I like it...but, it just doesn't seem right. I was going to fiddle with Double Spiral Chain Maille, but I'm not sure about that either. Or maybe embellished hammered silver wire. Any ideas?