Luna's Baublebilities

On Saturday, I taught two jewelry classes in Potsdam for the SLC Arts Council.

We had lots of fun - the best part is that one of my good friends from High School came up for the class.  We have talked over the phone a few times and have re-connected over Facebook but this is the first time in over 20 years that we've been in the same room.  It was great to see her and play sparklies with her!  There's something wonderful about spending time with someone who knew you waaaaaay back when you were young and starry eyed and more than a little stupid.  It is nice to see evidence of how age and experience causes us to evolve into our true selves - and to discover that real friends still recognize and enjoy each others' true selves in spite of the intervening years and different lives. 

I built a nice little bracelet in class and then came home and made a loooooong necklace to match it.  I love these watery blues and coppery browns. 

I also managed to get some photos of new bracelets and beads for my ArtFire Shops.

I've been enjoying working with right Angle weave to make these beautiful cuff bracelets. 



The top one is in a beautiful silver grey peacock bead and the bottom one is in a Jet Iris finish bugle bead.

And I think I've finally got the finishing touch for a special order project I've been working on for months.  I've got extra if you feel a need to splurge on an amazing bead!






Molly took lots of fun photos this weekend.  You can see them at the Beorningstead here and here.

Vacation is over.  Time to get back to work.

I taught a fun class to a great group of women this weekend.  Everyone responded so well to my hand drawn illustrations that I decided to put the PDF file of my tutorial up for sale in my ArtFire shop.  You can now get your own copy of Fringe Benefits here!

I'll be teaching a couple of classes the first weekend of May, too.  Earrings and Bracelets.  Sign up for one or both through the Arts Council.  Suzy made a beautiful poster for my class that's got all the info you need on it.

For my birthday yesterday, I went to work.  That's right - I didn't want to take the day off.  I really enjoy my paid day off every week and I particularly love the Holiday season at the Arts Council.  It was a pretty quiet morning yesterday, Hilary and I focused on staying on top of the inventory pouring in for the holidays and getting it displayed in the store during the morning.  We had a few visitors throughout the day and then something happened at 4:30 and we were inundated with shoppers.  I actually had a LINE at the checkout counter!

Hilarly and I stayed busy 'till after 6:00 wrapping packages (yes, we do free gift wrap for purchases from the gallery) and helping customers check out.  It was a mad house with constant chatter from the credit card processor and tissue paper crinkling non-stop as we stuffed boxes and curled ribbon.  Our little shop did almost $800.00 worth of sales in under 2 hours, most of it through debit and credit cards which add an extra step and a few extra minutes for processing each sale.  This much traffic in a normal retail setting would have been very stressful for both customers and the people running the checkout. 

But not at the Arts Council!  Our customers were all very friendly and chatted with each other while they waited.  I heard strangers giving each other advice on gift giving and talking excitedly about the beautiful things in the shop.   Hugs were ditributed among customers - even I got a hug!   And with every sale I entered in the compuer, I knew that a real person in MY county was getting paid to do something they love.  The work of North Country hands was being validated with evey check written, every nickel dropped into the cash box, every beep from the credit card machine.   Come January, when heating bills are due and winter is making good on its promise to stay, our artists will be getting their Christmas Commission checks and their long winter will suddenly become a little warmer and a little brighter.

The SLC Arts Council Gift shop and Gallery is located at 51 Market Street in Potsdam. It is on the block between Jreck's Subs and the Clarkson University Bookstore (used to be Westons for you old timers) on the same side of the street.  It is the sparkliest window in town and we have beautiful gifts ranging in price from $5.00 to $1,500.00 representing the work of over 240 North Country Artists.  We offer gift certificates that can be used for either goodies from the gift shop or classes offered throughout the year.   You will find pottery, stained glass, jewely, mittens, scarves, hats, woden boxes and bowls, paintings, photographs, quilts, sculpture, lamps, ornaments and magnets and many other lovely things. Normal hours are 10-6 Monday -Friday, 10-4 on Saturdays but we do have a few specail hours for the holidays.  Check them out on the SLC Arts Council's website.

The rest of my day was wonderful, too.  I got more Facebook birthday wishes than I can count, Molly had fun at call backs for her musical - she thinks she might get the part of the Queen - we'll find out today and Maxx had a fun afternoon with gramma and grampa, who picked him up at school so he didn't have to ride the bus.  Bry and the kids took me to dinner at Hotel Grande, where we met Meemo, Nate, Jo and Derek for a wonderful meal.  Hotel Grande is about as close as you can come to 'Mexican' food this far North and the little boys were amazingly well behaved so it was a great meal.   Mom gave me some cash and some chocolate and ran off with the check before Bry could get up to pay for the meal.  Maxx gave me a pair of lovely, warm plum leather gloves which go well with my aubergine winter coat, Molly gave me a beautiful bead from ADKlampwork (another Adirondack glass worker!) and Bry gave me a Llewellen's Witches Calendar which Ive been wanting for years.  It lends some cred to the joke that I want to be a Buddist Mormon Witch when I grow up. 

It was an excellent way to spend my big day.  I'm so grateful for my wonderful family, my perfect job and the sweet friendships I enjoy.






. . . .

Come join us on Friday night at the SLC Arts Council!   

We're throwing a beading party -  Hilary, Donna Schaab and I and a few other jewelry artists will be there to help people make beautiful jewelry projects from 6:00-9:00.

Bring your own beads and findings or you can buy from the supply that will be available there.  Misty Hollow will be loaning us some tools and will have a few supply items available for purchase.

I will be spending the next couple of days going through my Goblins' Market inventory and deciding what I will bring.  I have some pretty lucite flower beads and a few brass bead caps that aren't part of my regular inventory online that I will be bringing.   I probably will never carry these items in my regular inventory because I feel that the prices I get from my Etsy suppliers are so good that I wouldn't want to try to compete!  Bella Noelle sells the lucite flowers I buy and Artful Market has a large selection of lightweight brass findings.

I'll certainly bring a lot of czech glass beads and some of my very fancy filigree items.  Prices will be a little bit lower than online.

People who come can expect to be able to make earrings, pendants, simple strung beadwork necklaces and bracelets and maybe even some brooches if I can find my pin backs.   We probably won't do much with bead weaving because that leaning process is pretty intensive.   We'll have snacks and some music and lots of fun!

There is an entrance fee of $15.00 that goes directly to suport the Arts Council.  We keep experiencing budet cuts even as we are working towards opening a Multi-Arts center in Potsdam so if this evening is sucessful enough, we'll be offering more opportunities like this.

Hope to see you there!  If you can't make it but would like to make a donation to the Arts Council anyway, please visit www.slcartscouncil.org - there is a green button in the margin where you can make a secure online donation.







....

Isn't summer supposed to be peaceful? The days have been just packed here and we're enjoying it a lot. Maxx is having tons of fun with his cousins visiting from Wisconson and is doing very well with his asthma. He is down to just a couple of treatments a day and has been running and playing with all the vigor expected from a 5 year old. I'm so glad that we have medicines that allow him to be healthy and happy.

I'm busy preparing to teach a lot of jewelry classes at the Arts Council this summer - tonight's is on making vintage pearl necklaces (like Lauren's wedding necklace) and another one next week on making a sterling beaded cuff bracelet. Later in the month will be a Vintage brooch class and in August I'll be teaching a beaded bead class (teaching how to make the beads also featured in the post on Lauren's wedding jewelry). You can check out all the classes at the Arts Council on their website classes page - tons of fun stuff going on over there! I've also got a summer art camp coming up and the strawberries at the new house (which still isn't really ours yet but I think we are getting closer!) are coming on strong.

So yesterday, while Bry was helping the menfolk build Jonathan's house and Molly Bryn and Maxx were playing with cousins at Grandma's, I spent some time making samples for my upcoming classes so that we would have photos for publicity. Then I went to pick strawberries with the womenfolk. Mom Burnett, Molly and Nichelle were already out picking berries at Nichelle's when I arrived at 4:30. I helped them finish up there and then we went to the Beorningstead to pick that field. We got at least 30 quarts out of our patch and finished cleaning and bagging them for the freezer around 10:00 last night. I think that the Burnett clan is going to be one very busy (and very well fed) set of agriculturalists when we move into the Beorningstead and add some livestock and a bigger garden to the strawbery yields! It is nice work, though, especially when you have family around to share it with.

Today I'm off and running again - mailing packages, preparing to make jam with the next huge batch of strawberries and gathering up supplies for my class tonight. I hope to spend more time this week with all those cute kids at Gramma's house. It's so fun to see them out running around with each other and I wish they could stick around - maybe someday there will be a great job for their dad here so they can move back to the North Country.

Mothers' day was a pretty low key event here. Bryan was hideously sick and I was tired so we stayed home from Church for a change and watched several segments of Planet Earth. I worked on a bracelet for ME while relaxing next to the fire.



Bryan never sits in front of the TV unless he is very sick and I almost never keep the jewelry that I make so it was a very unusual day.

Here's the bracelet that I made - a herringbone stitch cuff in Peacock colors. Isn't it gorgeous???

I'm teaching a class next month over at the SLC Arts Council on making these bracelets and this is one colorway option. The others are Into the Fire and Ocean. (below)

I'm trying something different with this class. I usually let my students rummage through my beads and choose what colors they want to work with - which is fine for a design class. Experimenting and learning to choose colors, findings and bead shapes that work well together is the whole point of that sort of class. Beadweaving is more technically complicated and past experience has shown that if I let people rummage through beads, we end up using half the class time doing that and some people go home not feeling confident with the stitch.

This time, I'm putting the kits together and people will choose a colorway before they get to class. I need to work up samples for these other two options soon so that everyone can see them clearly. The colors look different when they are worked together in the stitch than they do loose or on the hank. When the class is over, I will probably also offer the kits with written instructions over at Goblins Market.



















. . . . .

Another post with no photos - this just in from St. Lawrence County Arts Council:

ARTS ALERT!!
We're telling all our friends in the arts that Governor Patterson is still planning to cut $7 million dollars from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) from the remainder of the 2008/09 budget. This proposed cut is located in the "Deficit Reduction Plan", attached to the '09/10 budget.

If this cut goes through it will have a severe effect on the SLC Arts Council and many other arts organizations around the North Country. This cut would slash the remainder of NYSCA's funds for the 08/09 year, so organizations that were waiting for decisions on grants would receive zero funding for those grants. This will severely hurt many arts projects, programs, and operating budgets across NY State in 2009.

Over 600 organizations statewide will be hurt by this decision. In the North Country fifteen organizations were expecting funding decisions in October or December. (See list below).

In the case of the St. Lawrence County Arts Council our request for $39,000 for a general operating support grant for 2009 is in jeopardy. Without these funds we will have a very difficult year and may have to limit the services and programs we are able to provide. This, in turn, will have a negative effect on all the artists, organizations, and individuals we serve.

We are asking everyone who cares about the arts in New York and in the North Country to Speak up for the Arts! Tell your legislators that arts organizations and cultural services in our region are an essential part of our daily life. The arts are key to the economic development and vitality of our communities. The Governor's proposed cut to NYSCA would have immediate and profound negative effects on jobs and services here in the North Country.

Please speak up for the arts! We need your voice.

Hilary Oak
Executive Director
SLC Arts Council

From my letter to Gov. Patterson in October:

Dear Governor Paterson and staff,

Thank you for providing a simple way to contact you regarding this issue.
I am writing because I am very distressed to learn about the proposed budget cuts to NYSCA this year. If this proposal goes through, it will directly and negatively affect my family's ability to get by financially and will have a tremendous negative effect on many people in our region.
I work one day a week at the SLC Arts Council as the class coordinator. My income is quite small but very important as my husband's position at BOCES was cut last year and he is now working part time as a pre-GED instructor. If NYSCA's budget is cut, our organization will lose valuable funding that allows us to pay support staff and run community programs, like the arts classes that I schedule. I will lose my job.

With my job gone, no one will be around at the Arts Council to contact teachers, manage the classroom schedule and distribute publicity about our class offerings. Our community arts teachers will lose the income ($30.00 per teaching hour) they have been enjoying as teachers. For most of our arts teachers, this income is "extra" on top of pay from a regular job or supplement to a spouse's income but it is often the little extra that helps them get by at the end of the month.
The children and adults who attend our classes will miss out the enriching atmosphere of our classes. We have over 30 teachers who offer a tremendous variety of classes in multiple disciplines including watercolor painting, guitar, jewelry making, textile arts, drawing, harmonica, photography and a multitude of childrens' classes. These classes are much more than the crafty "make and takes" that people can participate in at a local Michael's or Joanne fabrics. These are two to three hour long sessions where students are taught and guided in a small group atmosphere by experts in their field. More than one former student has gone on to start their own successful small business based on skills and passions they discovered in our classroom.

In my own family, the results of NYSCA cuts could be devastating. With my job gone, our family may be forced to turn to government agencies to meet our financial needs this year. If the SLC Arts Council is forced to close its doors, I will lose my most important local market for my handmade wearables. The loss of that small cash flow would make it very difficult to sustain my new online venture selling my work and handmade jewelry supplies online.

I know that things are difficult everywhere but please understand that the Upstate economy is incredibly fragile. The proposed NYSCA cuts will affect 15 different arts organizations in Upstate NY in much the same way that they will affect the SLC Arts Council. Real families will lose important sources of income. Arts organizations will lose support staff that perform valuable service in their communities. Artists, teachers and performers will lose opportunities to earn their living through the performances, classes and exhibitions that these support staff manage. Children and adults in our communities will miss out on enriching and potentially profitable arts related experiences.

These jobs and these experiences are not expendable. They are essential to the social and economic well being of our region. The return within our communities on the investment for funding NYSCA is immeasurable. Please do not cut NYSCA's budget. If you do, it truly will be a cold and cheerless winter for the North Country.

Thank you.
Virginia Burnett


The following organizations in Upstate will be hurt if those funds are cut:

In Clinton county:
North Country Cultural Center for the Arts
Hill and Hollow Music
In Essex county:
Adirondack Film Society
Arts Council of the Northern Adirondacks ( Essex Arts Council),
Essex County Historical Society
In Franklin county:
Akwesasne Cultural Center
Franklin County Historical and Museum Society
Natural History Museum of the Adirondacks
In Hamilton county:
Adirondack Historical Association
Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts
In Jefferson county:
Jefferson County Historical Society
In St. Lawrence county:
St. Lawrence County Arts Council
WSLU-FM - North Country Public Radio


You can go to these sites to read more information about Gov. Paterson's Budget and to voice your opinion.

http://capwiz.com/artsusa/ny/state/main/?state=NY

http://publications.budget.state.ny.us/eBudget0910/ExecutiveBudget.html

One of this month's themes for the Etsy Bloggers' Team is to write about our jobs other than arts and crafting. My "other" job is at the St. Lawrence County Arts Council.

I work one day a week as the Class Coordinator for our Arts Council and the job is so enjoyable that I jokingly call it my "paid day off." It truly is a sanity saver for me.



For one day a week, I don't have to debate with myself what the most important piority is for the day, I don't have to be constantly interrupted by children, I don't have to step over the messes in my livingroom or work around the piles of dirty dishes in my kitchen.

I go to work in a gorgeous gallery space with happy, upbeat people who are as interested in the arts as I am. I get to talk with artists about the sorts of classes they would like to offer in our community. I get to meet great community members who are interested in art and have plenty of opportunities to help educate the public about the importance of buying local and the value of supporting the arts and artists in our small, rural county. I get to meet other artists with all sorts of facinating skills and backgrounds every week.

I am always learning something new from and am constantly being challenged and encouraged by our director, Hilary Oak.

I get to teach other people's children about arts through my three kids' art series: Art for Small People, Teen Jewelry Club and Art Afternoons. These Kids' Arts classes help me remember to do art with my own kids because I test drive all of my projects on them.



I also get to schedule time for teaching adult arts classes in jewelry, complex cloth, silk fusion, etc . . . These adult classes give me a great excuse for making the investements necessary to learn new crafts and techniques so that I can offer classes in them It keeps my skill set constantly growing.




Working in the gallery once a week helps me monitor my inventory very consistently - I know what is selling at any given point of the season and I can watch what people are interested in to gauge the most popular colors and trends for our community.


The fact that this is a once a week job allows me to concentrate most of my energies where they should be right now - with my family and especially with my growing Maxx, who is not coping well with Pre-K. I don't have to harbor any guilt about "neglecting" my kids for the sake of my career and yet I have no worries that my skills as an organizer, a salesperson, a teacher, a writer or promoter are getting rusty or being wasted.





I recognize that I am abundantly blessed to have this job. The income is quite tiny, considering how few hours I put in, but the benefits in terms of my own professional development, income from teaching classes and the regular relief from daily homemaking drudgery are immeasureable.

In speaking about my job, I have to say a bit about my boss, Hilary. I'm very grateful the one day, about seven years ago, Hilary asked me if I would like to work part time in the arts gallery she was managing back then. When Hilary left that shop to open the Arts Council's gallery and gift shop and focus more of her energies on providing greater services for artists in St. Lawrence County, she brought me along for the "ride." Hilary took a small, inexperienced and somewhat reluctant board, one very part time employee and a cash flow of about 300 bucks a year and has turned it into a thriving organization with a full staff (!) that organizes classses, an annual studio tour, a cultural resources directory, the annual Arts Show for the Remington Festival, the NYSCA Arts Decentralization Grants program for 3 counties, multiple gallery exhibits throughout the year, a Live Music Fridays informal concert series, a quarterly newsletter and is about to host the first Cultural Blueprints Meeting for 7 counties in the Northern NY area this month! She has done all of this in the space of 3 years. There are lots of other things that happen at the Arts Council but I simply am running out of time to tell you about all of them! I am constanly awed at how much she can get done and by the fact that she has never given up. What a hero!

Summer is officially over. Today, Bry had to be in at work at 8:00 am for "coffee and conversation" prior to long drawn out meetings with and lectures from various administrators at his new job. Do administrators know how much teachers hate these things? Don't they realize that, for the most part, this time would be better spent working in the classroom?

Be nice to teachers. They are tired.

August was a hectic month. I had a successful day at the Music Heard Up North concert and art show Asgaard Farms. The weather was beautiful, the crowd was friendly and outgoing, everyone who stopped at the Arts Council booth (as seen in this lovely photograph) was interested in local art and handmade gifts. I sold many scarves and earrings and learned a lot more about the local fashion climate than any magazine article or "color forecast" map could have told me.

For instance, earlier this summer I dyed a few scarves in my Cebola Church Pallette (wheat and sage ribbon below) because it looked so pretty on the ribbons. I was a bit worried, wondering if they were going to be a miserable mistake but these scarves were the first to go and while they were in the booth, they were the first thing that most people coming in touched. I probably could have sold 10 of them. So, Molly and I will be mixing up some more of those colors this week!


In the same dyeing session, I had attempted to dye some scarves in my Sea Poppies pallette but they turned out very strange with an icy greyed out brown accent instead of a nice, rich black plum. I was very disappointed and was ready to toss them and call them a loss but Molly Bryn advised me to keep them and people loved those, too. Unfortunately, I can't figure out whet went wrong with that dye lot so I can't reproduce it. Aaargh! I still have a couple of those and will post photos as soon as I can get them taken.











The Saturday before last, we climbed Mt. Azure with Bry's sister, Molly, her 5 kids and our cousin, Karen and her two oldest. Maxx made it all the way to the top on his own. He is such a big boy! He also helped with haying yesterday at Grandma & Grandpa's. He's still too little to drive the tractor but he was helping throw bales around in the hay loft. He will make a great Farm Boy when he gets bigger.
























Here's a photo of everyone but me and Devon on the big rock at the top of Mt. Azure. Apparently, it is traditional for everyone to pile up onto this big rock for a photo when you reach the top. Devon and I don't buy into the tradition. I took the photos while Devon whacked bits of moss with a stick.


Maxx starts pre-K on Thursday. I have been very stressed about this because of Maxx's shyness and his attachment issues but when we visited the room and met his teacher last week, he really enjoyed being there with the other kids and the toys. His teacher was great about spending some time with us talking about his food allergies and his needs in terms of attachment issues and assured us that she would work with the school counselor and us to help Maxx with adjusting. Best of all, she made a special effort to engage Maxx and took the time needed to coax intelligible answers out of him in a friendly way. I think things will work out well. IF I can get him on the bus Thursday morning! Our neighbor's son will also be attending Pre-K and is in Maxx's class so that will make everything easier for all of us, I hope.

Current projects:

I'm trying to make a miniature soft sculpture barn swallow in flight. What a nightmare! I've been through 3 models and they are all atrocities. I've ordered a book on sewn soft sculpture that I'm hoping will help.

I need to dye more scarves in preparation for the holiday season!

Earlier this summer I bought some seed beads of various sizes and shapes all in one color - a beautiful matte metallic plum/gold shade - that I'm dyeing to work with. I've done an experimental sampler in peyote stitch that turned out very nicely and now I want to construct a beaded medallion with a fuchsia rivoli in the center. That will take some time. I'll post some photos of all of these in the next few days - I hope!

It has been a very busy week. My grandmother passed away last Wednesday and our household has been in a bit of a funk since. I have not been very productive and it shows the minute you step into the house!


Today I broke out some studio supplies to work on two bags. The canvas shopping bags were donated to the St. Lawrence County Arts Council by a former board member who thought they might be useful for a class or a fund raiser. The Arts Council is distributing them to local artists to be decorated and returned to the gallery where they will be offered for sale. My simple bags project utilized fabric painting and stamping & stenciling with home made stamps & stencils. I intended to add beads but the more I worked with the canvas fabric, the more I worried about attaching them securely. I'll sleep on it tonight and see if I wake up with any inspiration. I took photos during the process for a tutorial that I will put up as soon as I get an opportunity.

Anyone interested in buying a bag can contact the S.L.C. Arts Council. All proceeds will go to support the Arts Council.