Luna's Baublebilities

I can feel it.  Spring is coming.  I am crawling out my trench. 

Slowly.

I was sick again last week - but just for one day and it was such a blissfully complete sickness that I didn't even try to function which is preferable to being marginally sick and incompetent for days on end and trying not to be completely useless.  Maxx missed school because I couldn't even get him ready for the bus.  He watched movies all day and drank juice boxes & ate crackers.  I lay on the couch and slept once I dragged myself out of bed to fix the fire.  It was horrible.  And then it was done.

Saturday several men from Church came to help Bry with wallboard in the bathroom because there was some drama with the Housing Council - which is a post for another day at the Beorningstead.  I'll link there when I get it written.  It has been so wonderful to get so much help with the place.  It is so sweet to flick on a light and remember that Karl, Josh, Heather & Joan helped us with wiring last winter or to turn on the water and remember that Ken, Tom & Irene helped us get the well working again in the dead of winter.  Turn on the fireplace and feel the warmth that Meemo wants us to have and enjoy the skeleton of the hearth  nestled between the beams that Brothers Barker & Nason helped Bry & Ken build.   Not to mention hours of help from Jonathan, Cam, Dale, Greg and just about every priesthood holder in our branch and several from the larger district.  Everywhere I look in our house, I can see and touch manifestations of the love & service of others. 

That helps immensely with the long, hard crawl out of the trench.

Another thing that helps is to have projects with deadlines.  I've got a couple of wholesale orders that need to go out soon.  Good stuff.  And I'm helping sew two costumes for Molly's school production of Zombie Prom.  It is set in the 1950's and they need a couple of prom dresses.  These are Vintage Vogue - this top one is Molly's and the bottom one is for the lead girl.  I was intimidated at first, but the muslin for Molly's bodice came together pretty easily and Vogue's instructuions are pretty thorough and the patterns are well made - I think it's gonna be O.K.  If not - it just has to look good from the back row, right?

And my Sister in Law tagged me for a Stylish Blogger award.  I'll cover the details on that later this week - right now I need to go get my little (now blonde) actress and get ready to deliver her to a YW sleepover.














. . . .

In the past few months, I have been engaged in a very frustrating search for beads to keep making my gorgeous Fairy Drop earrings.  I love briolettes, I love the drop and dangle of the pretty beads that I found to make the Fairy Drop earrings.  I love that these earrings are sooo sparkley and elegant and big.  Glass would be too heavy but I found some wonderful packages of acrylic Blue Moon beads from their Manor House line about a year ago that were perfect.  All the earrings I made with those beads are sold.  I have customers who want more.  My beads are gone.  Blue Moon no longer sells them.  I have hunted high and low for a source for them or for beads that are similar.  I can find plenty of teeeneency little glass and acrylic droplets.  I can find West German crystal drops that are huge and gorgeous and weigh about three pounds each.  I have found one or two  Etsy sellers who have similar sized beads but are selling them for between 1 and 2 dollars per bead.   I have not been able to find a wholesale distributer of acrylic beads in this size and shape - until last week. 

I stumbled upon a Chinese manufacturer's website where they have gazillions of acrylic beads in every imaginable size, shape and color - including the droplet beads I have been searching for.  They are insanely affordable.  Until you calculate the shipping.

This discovery presents me with a few dilemmas.

First - do I by plastic stuff directly from China?  I have such a big problem with China - lack of democracy, horrible human rights abuses, poor working conditions, bad environmental record - etc, etc . . .     But they do plastic well.   That's their thing, right?

Second - do I use plastic in my designs?  I've been leaning more and more toward glass in recent years - it is more ecologically sound as a design component than either plastic or gemstone.  There's a little less "rape of the earth" going on to produce spectacular glass.

I ordered a "small" quantity of the beads.  Only about 1,800 of them in 8 different colors.  I'll see how they work for me and how I feel about them when I hold them in my hands.  If they are less than wonderful or if they 'feel' bad then I will not purchase any more.

BUT the biggest frustration I've uncovered here is related to other suppliers' dishonesty.  For several years, I've been ordering small quantities of spectacular "vintage" acrylic and lucite beads from other Etsy suppliers to use in my designs.  I was feeling O.K. about using plastic in these cases because the beads were vintage, right?  I was not contributing to the plastic mania or using up more fossil fuels to design with these beads - in fact, I was saving them from going into landfills or into the great Pacific Gyre, right?

Ummm.  No.  Just about all of those fabulous "vintage" faceted transparent acrylic and lucite beads that I'm in love with over on Etsy are produced & sold right at this big huge massive Chinese plastic place.  There are a few designs that I haven't been able to locate yet but this website is so huge, I'm quite sure that I will find them at some point if I keep looking.  Gah.  I'm pretty sure that my favorite Etsy sellers are not deliberately lying to me.  I think they get their wares through some middle man who is peddling these beads as "vintage" bt it doesn't make me any less frustrated.

I guess the lesson here is - if it looks too new to be old, it is.