Tear necklace

Posted on December 11, 2013 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

Shortly after my parents died, I took to expressing myself primarily with beads. I had learned to work with beads when I was in my early 20s when I worked at the Kennedy Center. I had no idea that a few years later beads would be therapeutic for me.
Talking about my grief only seemed to make it worse. Nobody was around to help me know how to process my pain and loss. I was raised in a family that wasn’t very good at expressing feelings anyway. A lot of “friends” left after both my parents died, saying they didn’t know how to help me. It made an awful situation terrible.
I took to beads. Beads have their own rhythm and harmony and logic. Putting beads in order is like putting the world in order, one piece at a time. It gave my hands something to do and my mind something to focus on. One bead, then another, then another. Somehow I made it through. It wasn’t perfect – there was a lot still stuck in my head that I didn’t know how to deal with, but it there was less of it after I made jewelry. And, I made a little extra money by selling what I made.
Beads have a lot of symbolism. Sometimes it is because of the materials, sometimes where they were bought, and sometimes because of how they were made. A lot can be expressed with beads that isn’t obvious to the casual observer. They just see something pretty. Me, I see layers of meaning. A good necklace can tell a story to rival any piece of fiction. A good necklace can exorcise the demons like no crucifix can.
I don’t do this as often now. I’ve found that walking, writing, and yoga help keep me on an even keel. I make jewelry, sure, because I still enjoy it. I just don’t use the beads in the same way as often.
This weekend was hard. I made a necklace. Well, to be honest, I made the pendants on Sunday, and I made the necklace last night. The pendants are “tears”. I didn’t use my full complement of bead-symbolism tricks on this design.
I’d gotten a bag of beads a few weeks ago from a local bead store. The whole bag was only $3, and it had enough beads to make maybe 5 necklaces if you added in others to space them out. The bag was full of blue beads in different shapes – all Czech glass. Sure, I could have used just the beads from the bag to make necklaces, but all of one color in a necklace is a little much and the design tends to get lost.
The bag had lots of these little teardrop shaped beads in it, and I’d wondered what to do with them. I could create a pattern with two of them, round end facing each other, with a larger rounder bead in the center. That didn’t really appeal at the time. The beads were sitting in a saucer near me when I was having a down day on Sunday (hooray for the holidays!) so I started working with them. One of my favorite things to do is work with copper wire. I pulled it and the beads out and started making pendants. By the time I was done I felt better. Probably the fact that I was discussing how I felt with my husband at the same time had something to do with it. I still think the beads helped too. They are like a security blanket.
Last night I put it all together. The other blue beads are from the same bag. The tiny “11s”, the white beads, are from a separate purchase. I like how it came out. Some people turn lemons into lemonade. I turn pain into jewelry.

Victim beads part two – a month later.

Posted on December 10, 2013 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

I made a victim bracelet after I went to visit my spiritual director last month. She wanted me to focus on my pain and those people who have harmed me. I’m opposed to this. I want to rush right ahead to the “forgive and forget” part.

Mostly the forget part.

But, she hasn’t steered me wrong yet, so I’m giving it a try. She didn’t recommend making a bracelet to help me remember. That is just something I do. This way, all day long I have a reminder to think about this. Beads are good tools for me.

I made it, with a bead for each person who came to mind. This was a month ago, and I’m discovering that I can’t remember who each bead refers to. A girl I went to high school with. My aunt. The former branch manager of the library I work at. My mom. A lady in a social group I was in. My brother, of course. But I’m having a hard time remembering everybody else. It isn’t easy.

Perhaps Jesus is getting on there and healing the broken bits.

I don’t want to focus on my pain, but I know it is important. You can’t heal what you don’t know is broken. Emotional pain is harder to work on. You can see a cut on your arm. It is easy to spot. Just put a bit of Neosporin on it and a Band-Aid and you are good.

But emotional hurts are harder to spot. The longer they aren’t tended to, the deeper they go. The deeper they go, the harder they are to dig up and get out. They tend to erupt in ugly ways. They tend to come up like privet in your yard, unwanted, unsightly, and well entrenched.

I want to forgive them. They didn’t know better. They didn’t know they were hurting me. I didn’t tell them. They didn’t mean to be mean and thoughtless and cruel. I want to let them off the hook and be done with it. I don’t want to wear this bracelet because it seems like I’m advertising my pain.

But I’m not, not really. Nobody knows what this bracelet is about. It is private. It is just a bunch of beads. Nobody knows they have meaning.

And why would I care what others think? When was I taught shame for these feelings? How much of this is the old idea of keeping the family name, the family honor clean, unbesmirched? Stiff upper lip, and all that. Don’t air your dirty laundry.

I always feel a sense of betrayal when I talk about these things. Not that I was betrayed, but that I am betraying them. This is especially true when I mention my parents. Don’t speak ill of the dead, you know.

How bad is it when the victim is the one blaming the victim?

So I wear this bracelet sometimes to work on these feelings, and ask Jesus into them. This is still a foreign idea. I wasn’t raised with the idea of Jesus as being real, and present, and my best friend. Jesus was a guy back then and out there, not somebody right now and right here.

I’m catching glimpses of this Jesus, and I think I like him.

Victim beads

Posted on November 26, 2013 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

The last time I went to my spiritual director, we talked a lot about the people who have harmed me in my past. This wasn’t really what I wanted to talk about. I’d rather just jump right ahead into forgiving them. She wants me to pick open that wound and study it for a bit. She wants me to dig down to what I’m feeling. Then dig down below that.

Anger, sure. But beneath anger is sadness, and grief. It is a sense of loss, of not-having, of never-will. It is a sense of something that I think should be mine, isn’t.

This is a foreign feeling, and even more foreign that an expert is telling me to stay with this feeling. Surely I should “turn the other cheek,” right? Surely I should “forgive and forget,” right?

But she says to stick with it. Every month I come back and I’m ready to forgive and she thinks I’m not ready yet.

So, par the course for me I made a bracelet to help me remember. I put a bead to remind me of each person who has harmed me. I did this fairly fast, so there are some I’m forgetting, I’m sure, but fast work means that I don’t overanalyze it.

I’ve also been writing about how I was harmed by my parents, and also my brother. Writing about it is hard. I don’t want to dig up these old bones. She had me look at that feeling – why do I not want to talk about it? In part it is because I feel like I am betraying them. I feel like I’m being disloyal to them. We aren’t supposed to speak ill of the dead. Nothing is stronger than blood, right?

I say that they meant well, that they didn’t know any better, that they themselves were raised badly. She says those are covers. That there is something I’m not looking at. That I need to focus on how I was harmed. I need to focus on that I was harmed.

There is certainly a bit of shame that comes in the mix when using the word “victim.” Am I to blame for what happened to me? Is it my fault? Could I have stood up for myself? Was I too passive? By not speaking up for myself, I allowed it to happen. They couldn’t have known they were harming me unless I said something. To not speak up is to give acceptance.

I hate going to the spiritual director’s. Every month, about a week before, I start to dread it. I don’t want to talk about what she wants to talk about because it is going to be hard. I want to make a list and tell her what we are going to talk about and use up all the time so that I don’t have anything hard to talk about.

But then that wastes the whole point of going. It is like going to a personal trainer at the gym and saying all I want to do is jumping jacks for an hour. I’m not going to work on anything meaningful that way. I’ll have wasted my time and my money. She’s like a personal trainer for my soul. We dig down to uncover broken pieces and blockages.

I read once that the goal in life isn’t to learn how to love. It is to remove all the barriers we have put up against love. I think the person quoted Rumi. I’m sure he said it better.

But look, here I go, walking away from the topic again. I’m a wiggly one, always trying to get away from what bothers me. I guess that is normal human nature. We often try to anesthetize ourselves or run away.

Let’s try again.

It is important to acknowledge loss. It is important to admit that it happened. To heal it, you have to know it is there. And that means a lot of digging.

So while I’m constructing the victim bracelet, I’m realizing that these are all people who have sinned against me. And then I think – what about all the people I have sinned against?

Am I justifying? Am I putting the blame back on me? Am I letting them off the hook? Am I avoiding the problem? Sounds like it.

So I’m staying with this. I’m not through it. I certainly want to be. I want this to be over and done and healed and let’s go on to the next thing and make it a happy one, please.

And I’m running away again.

I’ve heard that grief takes a long time. I’ve heard that you grieve for half the amount of time that you’ve known the person. This is grief. This is going to take a long time. It has grown down deep. And just like digging out privet in the back yard, this is going to take a lot of work and some special tools to get all of it out. Leave just a little bit of privet root and it will come back next year. Cut it down at the top and it will get even stronger and root down further. The only way to get it out is to dig it up, all of it. And the only way to do that is to work on it patiently and thoroughly.

Multi-faith prayer beads.

Posted on November 25, 2013 by betsybeadhead | 1 Comment

This is a new creation. These are prayer beads, in a whole new way.

I took three different sets of prayer beads, broke them apart, and then put them back together again. There is no centerpiece, and there is no beginning or end. They are all connected, and they are all one. I have included a fourth faith tradition as well with the number of beads that I used.

I have Hindu prayer beads, made with rudraksha seeds, said to be the face of Shiva. These are the knobbly brown beads.

I have Christian prayer beads, from a Catholic rosary. These are the ones that are made with iridescent faceted glass.

I have Buddhist prayer beads, made with bone that has been dyed with the OM symbol, to reference the mantra “Om Mani Padme Hum”

Then I have put them all together so that there are three sets of 11 beads, so there are 33. This references Islamic prayer beads, which sometimes have 33 beads, which are said three times to complete the 99 names of God.

Four faiths, in one chain, hand linked with copper wire, because it is a conductor of electricity and power.

We are all one. We are all searching for connection with our Creator. We seek unity.

Here, now, is a visual symbol of it.

Forward progress -beads and good habits

Posted on October 26, 2013 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

Part of my blog is about the lessons that I’ve learned from beading. One of the most valuable lessons I learned was when I was making a rosary. It took forever to work on, and I took a lot of time in between. I’d work on it, get bored, or my hands would hurt, and I’d put it aside. I finally realized that when I got back to it, nothing had come by and taken away the work that I’d done. No “rosary elves” had shortened my project by five links. What I had done was still there. The same is true of our good deeds.

Any forward progress is forward progress, no matter how slow.

The only difference with good deeds is we don’t have something to look at to see our progress, so we tend to forget. We look at the time we took off, rather than the work we’ve already done. We look at the fact that we stopped, rather than the fact that we started again.

When we are trying to start a good habit, like sitting up straight, we will find ourselves hunched over, and suddenly remember to straighten. Then, five or ten minutes later, we are back, hunched over. This is normal. We straighten again, and we tend to think “Ugh! Why do I keep hunching over?” It is healthier to think “Hey! I remembered to sit up straight!”

Focus on what is working. Focus on what you are doing right. Ignore the mistakes and the pauses. That is part of the package deal of being human. It will become habit to do the right thing, but it takes a while. All good habits are learned, just like bad habits.

Having patience with the process is part of the process.

Special orders

Posted on October 22, 2013 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

I’m not a fan of special orders. I’d rather people buy what I have created. But I understand the need for special orders. People want something they have in mind, but they don’t know how to do it themselves.
Special orders are hard because people don’t really know how to ask for what they want. They don’t know the range of beads that are available, and the range that isn’t. I’ve been making jewelry for over 20 years and there are many beads I’ve only seen once. If I buy them and use them, I can’t find them again. They may exist, but I don’t know where. Going back to the same store doesn’t help. They may be sold out and their supplier can’t get any more.
That is part of what makes beading exciting. It is fun to find something that other people will love and is unique. It is also part of what makes it frustrating.
It is sometimes very hard to understand exactly what someone wants when they ask for something special. When Sally asks for a green necklace – what does she mean? Opaque? Translucent? What shade of green – olive, emerald, avocado, mint…? There are hundreds of shades of color. And then what shape? Round, faceted, tube, flat…? Then what size – tiny, medium, large?
The best is when a customer sets some parameters and trusts me with the rest, and are willing to pay for whatever I make. The worst is when they say “surprise me” and really they mean “read my mind”. Once a necklace is created, it can’t be easily modified. Sure, beads aren’t like paint. I can take the whole thing apart and reuse the beads. I haven’t wasted my money on the beads. But I still have to take the thing apart. If it is too long or too short, or the pattern isn’t what they expected, then what was wasted is my time, and that is very valuable to me.
I’ve made necklaces for people I’ve not met. I’ve not even talked to them. There was a lady who I knew over the phone. She wanted a necklace for her Mom. She described her Mom and I made a necklace and she was thrilled. Rarely is it this simple.
Sometimes I’ll pull together beads that are in the neighborhood of what the person wants, and let them look at them first. This seems to save a lot of frustration. I get a better idea of what they mean. The problem is that sometimes that doesn’t work, because the beads they have in mind aren’t ones that I have access to. I’ve got a lot of beads, and there are some pretty amazing bead stores here, but they don’t have everything.
Ideally, people would buy what I made. Barring that, in the second best situation they’d say something like “I’d like a red necklace that is 22 inches long” and let me figure out the rest. Otherwise, it isn’t worth it. The joy of making is the joy of discovering. It is hard to discover with a lot of limitations. When that starts happening, it would be easier to just teach them how to make their own jewelry.
I do teach people how to make jewelry, but not a lot. Nobody taught me. I took apart old necklaces from thrift stores and figured it out. I tried stuff and learned what worked and what didn’t. Bead books didn’t exist when I started making jewelry, and bead stores were few and far between. Now anybody can figure it out easily with YouTube and beading books from the library, but they still ask me. I can teach the mechanics of it, but I can’t teach design. That is something I just know, and I’m not sure how to teach it.

Thoughts on jewelry making – price and selling.

Posted on October 1, 2013 by betsybeadhead | 4 Comments

It is really hard to price my work. Do I price it based on how much I love it, how much the materials cost, or how much I think I can get for it? Often it is a combination of all of these.
Sometimes I have something I call “the annoyment factor” to deal with. In part that refers to how annoying it was to make. Either it took me a lot of time because the process is fiddly or the materials are hard to work with. Stringing things on Tigertail is easy and cheap. Using the same beads but using copper wire, where I have to hand link is hard. I love making jewelry this way but very few people appreciate the labor involved.
Sometimes the annoying part is the person. The beads might be inexpensive and the process might be easy, but the person might be difficult. Sometimes it costs me a lot of energy to deal with certain people. I want to be reimbursed for that. Sometimes I don’t want to ever deal with that person again and so I put a high price on my work.
Sometimes I have the “don’t blink” price. I’ll have a really high price on something and I know that the people looking at it don’t know what was involved. For instance, I made a bead once that looked like a woman. Because I was working with MAPP gas and not oxy-propane it was even more difficult. I had only 40 minutes to finish it, rather than hours. I could only make it an inch long. There are a lot of limitations working with that medium, but it is a lot safer and cheaper than the other. People tried to bargain down the price I quoted and I didn’t budge. I stood with the price because I knew the amount of effort involved.
I don’t make jewelry as my job. I do it for fun. I’d like to get at least the price of the beads back. I certainly want to get paid for my time and my creativity. I’d also appreciate getting paid for my knowledge too.
I put a lot of energy into making jewelry. I read books about beads and gemstones. I know the hidden meaning and I’m aware of the history and energy behind the beads. I don’t just string beads. I create. I shape. I like to think of it as something like a shaman’s work. When I’m making something for a specific person I match the beads to them not just by color but by intent. For instance, a bead may be black, but it is also made of lava, and as such has deep significance.
One time a guy was asking about the price of some beads I had made. I used to do lampworking, so these were unique beads. He had an assortment of them picked out. I wanted to give him a good price that was fair to both of us. Because I’d made them at work the only investment I had in them was my time and ability. The glass and gas were free to me. I said “How about $23?” He countered with “How about $20? He thought when I said “How about…” that meant that there was wiggle room, but he was wrong. I got very cold and said “How about $25?” That surprised him. I don’t like being insulted about my work. I’d given him a very reasonable price, in fact far too low for the time I’d spent.
I don’t really want to take the time necessary to teach people about beads. I want them to appreciate the value that they have, but they don’t. In order to get the price I’m asking I have to teach them and be patient. I got great prices when I bought necklaces at thrift stores and then redesigned them. A 25¢ necklace could be remade into a $15 necklace with a little time and a few extra beads. But now I’m going to bead shows and getting strands that are imported and sometimes antique, so the prices have to go up. I don’t have a wholesale license, and I really don’t want one. That would take some of the fun out of it.
One person messaged me about a necklace on my Etsy page. She wanted me to either drop the shipping cost or lower the price of the necklace. If the necklace had been full price I would have worked with her, but it was just $5 over the price of the beads as it was. My shopping charge isn’t high. It is the price of the packing material and the average shipping price. I decided that I would rather not sell it at all than feel like I’m being insulted.
Some shops on Etsy offer free shipping but really nothing is free. The cost is always factored in somewhere. I’d rather be honest and charge a fair shipping charge than have to raise my prices to cover it.
Sometimes people want a high price. They think it has more value if it is high. Maybe I should raise all my prices so people value my work. They certainly aren’t buying as is – I might as well get a good price when they do. Perhaps they will take my work seriously if it costs more.
Then sometimes people will want to trade beads for beads. I’ll do this occasionally, but they better be beads I can use. Plastic beads are never considered. Weird shapes, the same. Otherwise I have beads that I can’t use taking up space in my bins.
Consignment is the worst. I understand how it benefits the shop – they don’t have to pay anything for the merchandise until it sells. Too often, I get stuff lost or stolen, and I’m out money. It requires too much effort to keep up with.

Egyptian Steampunk

Posted on September 3, 2013 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

What I made on Monday. Steampunk meets Egyptian. Copper, peridot, Peruvian opal, ocean jasper, rhyolite in both, with unakite and glass as well in the smaller one. The larger one was made first, then the smaller one was made to use up the rest of the materials. I’d planned on using them all up in the first one but the pattern wouldn’t allow it. So the second one was a real bear.

I made four necklaces in the past weekend. Two of them I had to take apart and redesign. If I’d had enough beads I would have kept all of these patterns. They were all beautiful. But if I’d had enough beads I wouldn’t have had to take them apart so often, so I wouldn’t have discovered all these other patterns.

The numbers didn’t work out. I had 5 where I needed 9. Or I had 12 but I discovered 3 were broken when I got into it. I couldn’t go get more. Some of the beads I bought twenty years ago, God knows where. Some I bought at a bead show and the vendor is long gone, like with a traveling carnival.

Part of the deal, the nature of making jewelry, is you need only half the strand but you have to buy the whole thing. So you have leftovers. Recently I’ve started teaching beading classes in part to use up these beads. But sometimes I’ll make limitations on myself to force myself to think differently. Sometimes that means I can only use beads from two random bead bins my husband picks out for me. Sometimes I’ll use an assortment of “leftover” beads. I have to work it so I use all of them up in one strand. I end up with some amazing things this way, but getting there is a real pain.

I could have a really awesome pattern at the front of the necklace, and then use filler beads to finish it out. Sometimes this looks like I forgot something, or I made two necklaces and put them together. This weekend it was going that way. I decided to redesign and adapt, and it took four times to get a good working pattern that would extend the whole length of the necklace.

I’m very pleased with how it turned out. It looks Egyptian, yet it also looks Steampunk. It reminds me of the jewels in old pocketwatches. It is intricate and delicate. And in the meantime I learned something about working with limitations.

Beads are prayers

Posted on March 29, 2013 by betsybeadhead | 4 Comments

The English word “bead” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word “biddan” meaning “to pray.” A woman was said to be “doing her beads” when she was using her rosary. Beads and prayers are the same thing. Sometimes I like to express certain religious ideas in bead form. This was the original intent of this blog, but I couldn’t figure out how to add pictures. Thanks to help from a coworker and some dogged persistence on my part (and no thanks to two different WordPress books), I’ve figured out how to marry up words and pictures. Here are two examples of how I speak in bead, when it comes to religious topics.

This necklace is referencing two verses from the Gospels. The fish refer to when Jesus said to his new-found disciples “I will make you fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19). The grape leaf and the purple bead together (a symbolic grape) refer to when He said “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) (translations from the New International Version)

I also like the medal. It is a Sacred Heart medal. Rather than being a crucifix that depicts Christ’s agony on the cross, the Sacred Heart shows us the depth of His love for us. It also reminds us that we are to create within our own hearts a sanctuary for Jesus.

This bracelet depicts the world before and after Jesus. Start at the bottom at the 6 o’clock position and go counter-clockwise to follow the story. The small dark green bead represents the beginning of the Jewish people. The large green bead (both are antique watermelon beads) represents their many years waiting for a Messiah. Then the red bead is for the Holy Spirit, next to the blue bead for Mary. This combination symbolizes humanity saying Yes to God’s requests for us to bring forth His love into this world. The following bead has all three colors of green, red, and blue. It is the merging of history and destiny – Jesus as the culmination.

I believe it is good to have prayers made visible.

The History of the Church, in beads.

Posted on March 29, 2013 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

I’m attempting to explain the history of the Church in bead form. I apologize for the dark pictures – this is a work in progress. (edit – I’ve added new pictures that are brighter. )

Here is a picture that gives an idea of what the whole thing looks like.

And another –

It all starts with the cross.

Then the large fancy beads near it represent the Byzantine era. I chose blue, purple, and red because those were the colors God said to use for the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.

This section represents the Middle Ages. One church, so one unifying pattern. Lapis lazuli represents the material used by monks in their illuminated manuscripts. The red is antique “white hearts” from the African trade to remind us of history and time.

Here is another picture of this section –

This section has the three colors of the temple, but it is casual and a little jumbled. There is a pattern if you look hard. This is now, the age of strip-mall churches and Mega churches.

And also here –

Pure and unadorned, the color in this section has the best of blue and purple to it, and was started off with red, the color of the Holy Spirit. Blue is also the color of Mary – a human being who said Yes to God and allowed The Divine to work through her to bring forth healing and redemption to our world. This is the future. This is what we as the Church are being called to.