Thoughts from the work bench

Carving out some crafting time has been a little more difficult this past week - the taller half is in off the boat for his 14 off rotation. I don't how he can fill up so much of the house simply with his presence. The cats are always glad to see him but little red dog still gets nervous when he's in the room. She's been with us 2 months now and is much calmer but still leery of men - especially large, loud ones with foreign accents.

I did manage to get an afternoon alone on Sunday and was able to use some lovely sponge coral beads I recently got from Fire Mountain http://www.firemountaingems.com/details.asp?PN=H207704CL . The idea came from a piece I saw in the latest BeadStyle magazine http://www.beadstylemag.com/bds/Default.aspx?c=i&issue=34&current=true&id=35 I used a large piece of chalk turquoise to make the pendant.

There has been talk on the Etsy fora about whether or not it is acceptable to use ideas and/or patterns from the beading publications. I don't why it wouldn't be okay. Someone commented that she got ideas from the Sundance catalog - I do too. Many times I use the latest catalogs and department store flyers as a source for ideas on color and what is in style at the moment. I think as long as you are not copy-catting another artist's work from their shop - only using craft publications and advertising materials, it should be perfectly fine. I'd like to address this in the Etsy fora, but lately there has been a too much negativity and snarky commenting for me to feel brave enough to broach the subject. As to the fora content lately, I'll write about that later. It's a whole post unto itself.