A little behind the scenes

Something I have been needing to do for a long time, is to figure out a good way to organize some of my beads so that the process of designing new pieces of jewelry is easier. I LOVE organizing, but for some reason, trying to discover a way to get my tiniest beads in order has eluded me. So they have lived in a bit of chaos within a drawer and that has been their home. It’s made new ideas have a difficult time with flow, it’s like they are there but just right beyond my reach most of the time. There are too many store labels hiding the beads, bar codes, prices, website addresses, store branding, bead numbers, more numbers, these bits of ephemera that all combine to something that just made a mess in my creative mind. Plus, the inability to really lay them all out by hue was stifling, too… color organization on a palette is incredibly important!

Workflow in any endeavor is a thing!

A very small selection of the beads, in typical disarray

Putting to use my recent rebirth into the technology world, alongside the incredible, creative and brilliant mind of my loved one, we came up with a plan!

The first idea involved designing a container system to display all the beads on my workbench, arranged by hue, to optimize the design process and arrange the palette much like you do when painting!

Then we got to brainstorming…

It’s very nice to love technology again. I spent many years despising it after burning out in the tech industry. Now it’s fun and a whole new world!

We ordered a bunch of tubes to get all of the beads into uniform containers. We ended up getting a lot more than we ordered, and it’s funny how MANY there are! So… this project will extend to ALL of my seed beads now and not just the tiniest ones.

The rainbow on my workbench will be mighty! Thank you, fairies!

Very many tubes

I was simply going to write the bead numbers on labels or with sharpie on the bottoms of the tubes, for reordering purposes. It’s super important to always keep track of these numbers, especially if reordering online, because otherwise you’re left to try and pick out a bead based on picture. And the bead world is a multi-thousand-year-old black hole of types of beads, where upon entry you descend into seed beads, and then you find there is another black hole within the original black hole of the lighting in which pictures are shot making it very easy to pick the wrong color, and… yes, more chaos, spiraling forever.

So: Numbers as guides! Most important!

Numbers to keep track of

On my labeling idea, “We could etch them with the laser engraver, and it’ll be really nice” he said. Something I had not even in my wildest dreams considered. We worked together to get a whole lot of bead numbers translated to that amazing machine… I went into spreadsheet mode and he went into programming mode until we had one file to rule them all!

We also needed to make a jig to hold the tubes in the engraver, so he designed that in his 3d software! We could then send it to his 3d printer, a marvel in itself!

3d printers are magic

I love this little robot so much! This jig was our first attempt and ultimately the printing placement on the tops of the tubes didn’t work out. That’s okay, experimenting is fun.

This time we would try printing on the sides of the tubes. When we went back to redesigning, I was excited and forgot to get a picture of the second one we made, but you’ll see this one in the engraver below, because it worked perfectly!

Getting ready to engrave

After some time spent getting the lasers aligned properly on the tubes, we had bead numbers beautifully engraved on them!

In my experience over the last near decade of jewelry making, the item numbers on these beads does not change (deep thanks to Japanese organization minds) so having such a permanent way of identification is okay here. And anyway, we can replace the tubes and engrave new numbers down the road if needed.

Perfectly legible and waiting to be filled with color!

Then came the fun part of putting all of the beautiful beads in their new homes! We ran with the box of tubes back to our studio laboratory very eager for this! It was really fun to both be so excited over this.

With just this change, there was a rush of creative energy. Experiencing the raw material, the enchanting beads, without all the distracting elements that were there before was just hypnotizing. A new canvas! A clean slate! They looked even more beautiful, clear, and ready to be woven into jewels!

Sparkling beauties

Okay, let’s get crazy and organize them by hue!!

Ah, that is very good!

Voila! Ideas are so much easier to extract and develop now.

And it was a wonderful case of teamwork, with productive outcomes for both of us. I can focus to make many more beaded jewelry pieces, and he has an automation process for numbering, that he devised via programming, to be used in many other applications on the engraver. Working together like this to make brand new things is a beautiful, fun way to coexist and like wildfire, it fuels even more inspiration. That blending of two minds, to me is Magic!

Next up I’ll show the container system we’ve invented for all of the bead tubes, and how it works on my bench! Another very exciting thing!

Bead Weaving, Life Weaving

A lot has happened already this year. For one: I have a little room to work in, in a new place! It is an incredible gift. Here I’m finding some much needed focus, quiet time, and new inspiration. When I found out I was going to be able to use this new space, I made sure I didn’t overpack and bring too many projects, because it’s so easy to become distracted that way and then nothing gets done! Story of my life.

Doo doo doo, Lookin’ out my back door

My little work area for beading and painting small paintings

Peaceful vibes

I only brought seed beads, the kind I create my beaded earrings with. And I brought acrylic + gouache paint. I’m going to practice learning acrylic for some paintings I’ve been dreaming of making for quite awhile now… acrylics are very hard for me, but they’re so portable and easy to setup and clean up, with no solvents to worry about, so I’d love to become proficient with them! And that is all I brought… okay besides some yarn, only one bag of skeins, because I cannot ever stop crocheting or knitting!

Working working, it feels so great to focus and product finished things!

Next task is figuring out how to effectively photograph the level of shine on these magical beings!

Now, with that small collection of materials, I have made a lot of beaded earrings!! And I will continue to make them. I so love the process of sitting at my quiet table, with some beads and string, a needle and a candle, and some gentle music. It is simple, and peaceful. The color palette is seemingly infinite and it is never boring that way. I LOVE colors, all of them, and being able to spend time with whatever colors I am desiring in a particular moment is one of the best feelings I know. And then some beautiful earrings are the result, and they are so magical on whoever wears them! I love making them and giving them to the world.

I will be photographing them and putting them here on my website over the next couple of weeks! Then I hope to attend some local markets in the spring and offer them there, too. I love the new space, it makes me very happy, and I get to be with a person I love very much, where we just spend our time making all kinds of things! It’s wonderful! A long awaited dream come true. Maybe I will write more about that.

Skylight, window portal, supreme light for creating in a room!

Always need to have fire power

Design mode, making a bunch of singles. Then I go back when I feel satisfied, and complete the pair!

The Cycle of Art

As you might have noticed, there’s been a bit more energy put into posting photos, updates, videos, and writing around here lately. I have really missed doing all of that! I took last year, 2022, to focus on art markets, galleries, and doing things in person. That world, and the internet world, both take a lot of time and effort to have a good go at it. And I always give things I care about my best! So I went all in with that and took a break from the internet world.

My market booth

When 2023 began, I was sort of burnt out on the market thing. I had participated in them almost every single weekend for a year, and they were a lot of fun. But with the new year, even though I tried for a few months into 2023, I just couldn’t find the energy to keep down that path. I felt like I was giving up too easily, but over the spring and summer I got seriously sidetracked with painting, photography, and writing! It was all I could think about and do, so I worked on that stuff very intensely and was just in a groove with that.

I did a lot of small gouache paintings of New Mexico flowers and animals. I started a daily writing practice in March that is still going very strong! I did some oil paintings of sky and landscapes, which I will paint in much larger versions when I have the space—I long to do that so very much, there are no words! And I took an incredible amount of photos of, well, everything! But the truth is, I am always doing that. I’m very excited to make a series of prints from those works when money for materials allows.

In 2024, I would like to find a balance with all of this; attending the markets only less frequently, maintaining an online presence, getting deeper into painting, flowing with the jewelry + photography, and continuing the writing! That would be grand.

Some of the gouache paintings, I think would make a lovely set of greeting cards!

My gouache setup was so much fun. I expect next spring I’ll become obsessed with it again.

I made a little case to travel around with paints and a sketchbook.

Painting and drawing outside during the warm spring was one of the best parts!

Sketching along the river at Chimayo

Driving to Chimayo

Paintings in progress. I just let my creative spirit fly and worked on a bunch of stuff all at once in a fury to get it out.

Playing with color, texture, and finding a flow

As I have found in many other areas of life, things ebb and flow. And as time goes by, I find cycles repeating themselves, and I am learning how to ride along with them.

When the fall season came, I was hit with this incredible urge to revisit my jewel cave and make some new jewels! When I would sit and think on new ideas, I kept returning to pieces I made some years ago. I remember the way the creative process felt then. It was very pure in the way I made pieces that were simply what I felt most inspired to make. They were untouched by expectations and demands of a market and buyers. I know, that is how you run a business. But creativity needs chances to be free and go its own way, too. It really loves that.

A design from 2017 that has stuck in my mind, like a guidestone

The King Stag Pendant, set with a moonstone

Back then I visited worlds I love to get lost in: mythology, astrology, fairy- and folktales. It was just the most fun I’ve had making jewelry. And since then, I have been longing to get back on that current. I wondered if it would still be there for me to ride. It turns out that it is—in new and marvelous ways! It feels like I am starting over again, but the learning curve has passed through the subsequent years of work, so my skills are more refined now. And this time around, I am incorporating much more photography and video to tell the story of The Jewels!

In other words, I am having a great time!

Current creative life in a nutshell

There’s some great news in all of this: I’ll have some new jewels in the shop very soon!

Until then, you can follow along on my “What’s New” page, join my Email Newsletter, check out my Instagram page, or simply check in here whenever you feel the call.

Thank you for being here,
Christi

A bit of soldering

Brand new silver rings are in the works

Rings in the afternoon light, awaiting the next steps of their process

A Small Knit and Why I'm Making It

When I was ten years old, I watched a movie that, to this day, is still my favorite. And perhaps it will always be. The little girl in it was also ten years old. For reasons I am still uncovering, this movie entwined around my heart like the vines in its gardens. I am talking about the 1993 version of The Secret Garden.

It is an incredible story, really. To me, it is a tale of real magic and the ways we encounter it at various points in our lives. I didn’t read the book as a child, I only saw the movie. But I definitely have a lovely copy of the book now. It is one of those stories that is always with me, in so much of what I do in the world.

So, the magic! I would say my inner child related most to this story. The soft, sensitive, raw, frightening, “other”, wild one no one fully saw—I could not find where that part of me fit into our human world so it went away. For the character of Mary, this was represented through her outer being and experience, so that idea is a little more concrete and tangible for the audience. After she navigated an early childhood of death, confusion, displacement, and loneliness, it was a magnificent garden, its enchanting animals, and the true love of others’ that healed her. They made the world a place where she felt she belonged again.

Scenes from the film

If there is one thing I know now, decades later, it is this: The natural world, and love—they are high magic. They are potent beyond our imagining. When we fall into them, they change us and remind us what is real. Our time on this earth gives us the gift of endless opportunities to find our way back to them. A beautiful, quiet, gothic English story captured these ideas where they will always sit, waiting for whoever watches or reads. Yes, magic indeed.

I dearly love the romantic imagery from the late 19th + early 20th centuries—late Victorian, Edwardian—another story unto itself. That is the time period of The Secret Garden so the clothing and setting is absolutely a dream. Mary wore a series of excellent hats, and one of them simply popped into my head recently, bright and fresh as if I just saw it. It was a rusty red tam that she wore when it was cold, adventuring around the foggy labyrinth of Misselthwaite, when she first found the garden. I am going to knit one as a little gift for my inner child, to remind her that the garden always awaits her flourishing.

An Equinox Wellspring

Today I had planned the dreadfully boring tasks of sorting and filing papers, cleaning some sweaters, and sewing a curtain. This is still in the name of getting my life and studio organized.

But then I sat outside in the sun with my coffee, as I do each morning, welcoming the equinox, and I encountered some sort of invisible wellspring of ideas for Lumino!

• Marketing ideas, which I know zero about, flooded in. I wrote them down to research.

• Then I became inspired to begin the layout for my book! I realized I have so many photos and words compiled that it actually frightened me, I had a feeling of standing in front of a giant tower that I must climb before it tips over! So I worked on that.

• I saw a multitude of ideas for a line of jewelry I am intending to make this winter, just drawing themselves in my mind—and ways to reproduce them should they ever grow to more than I can make myself.

• Later, I felt like sitting at the computer, and I must always take advantage of that because most days I do not! So I spent time working on my website tidying the pages here, making them look as awesome as I can manage. The About pages got a lot of love… About Lumino Shoppe and About Christi, if you’d like to take a peek.

• I explored some more with my logo, which I have not been totally happy with for years now. It has changed a few times, as do we all. I want to get something solid, though, so I can have a stamp created to use on silver jewelry as my maker’s mark. I like the current incarnation more than the others. I need to write a post of its meaning if I decide to keep it. It’s hanging out at the top of my website now for a test run.

I did not get the tasks on my to do list finished, or even started, but some things I have been stuck on for a long time just answered themselves in the day’s light. I think that is a better to do list, anyway.

Gratitude for little miracles.

Blessed equinox to you~