Tag: creative madness

  • Gallifrey One 2024 Art Show Preview by KC Dragonfly and TisforTardis

    Gallifrey One 2024 Art Show Preview by KC Dragonfly and TisforTardis

  • First Beaded Project of the Year – Stage One is Done

    First Beaded Project of the Year – Stage One is Done

    A peyote stitch beadwork project for my kitchen motif. It’s for a food that starts with the letter “P”. Can you guess what it is?

    More updates and pics to come. Stay tuned.

  • A Study of The Fab Four

    A Study of The Fab Four

    Someone challenged me to create the famous “Fab Four” (i.e. The Beatles) in pen wraps, so here they are.

  • Wax Seals and New Packaging Playtime

    Wax Seals and New Packaging Playtime

    Playtime at the House of Beads

    With the uptick in sales at The Ears Have It, I’ve had some time to play with packaging lately. A customer recently made a note on their order to mark their package fragile because their post office apparently is pretty brutal. So when I picked up some heavy-duty mailers, I also thought, “Why not look into some other unique gift packaging for the holidays?”

    I found some net bags in a variety of pretty autumn colors at my bead store and that got me thinking, what else can I do to give – as my husband puts it – some devil in the details and make my package something unique on the outside as well as what’s on the inside?

    As some of you already know, I am going to be the Guest of Honor at Loscon, our local literary science fiction convention over Thanksgiving weekend. I’m going all out on plans to do cosplay for the characters in my series of novels, The Dragonfly Temple Chronicles. To this end, I have been ordering several props for a book trailer/music video and one of these things is a sealing wax kit.

    I’ve been fascinated with the art of letter-writing since I was a child, from the first time I got a letter done in calligraphy from my beloved sister Leslie. I taught myself calligraphy and gathered together a small collection of sealing wax impressions as well as a variety of colors of wax. The art seemed to wane with the advent of emails, but you wouldn’t know that on Etsy. There are many sellers of sealing wax in a rainbow of colors never before available when I was a kid, packaged in beautiful, personalized wooden boxes, along with a new way to melt the wax using a tea light over a spoon housed in a metal and/or wooden casing – like a mini furnace. 

    Seeing this got me really excited about the possibility of ordering a customized wax seal impression of the emblem of my character’s house – a triple dragonfly set against a Celtic knot backdrop. While I am awaiting my order, I have been playing with various wax colors I already have, and a simple dragonfly wax impression I bought on Etsy last year and using this as a finishing touch on the packaging on my orders.

    So what do you think? Is this something that would get you excited about getting your order, seeing this on the outside of a plain, ordinary mailer? I’d love to know and if you have any other ideas to spruce up packaging. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

  • New Product – Mermaid Sunset

    New Product – Mermaid Sunset

    Happy Saturday, everyone. A couple of housekeeping items here as I put my latest beadwork project’s delicas back to stock and think about what my next design will be.

    Wednesday’s WIP post was about my newest design, which I can now reveal is Mermaid Sunset.

    I immediately fell in love with this image as soon as I saw it and knew that one way or another, I would bead it. It was a great opportunity to perfect and expand my skills at creating sunsets and luckily, I had all the colors already in stock to accomplish it.

    Save Money on Beads – Buy TWO

    Dragonfly Sunset Pen Wrap even count by KC Dragonfly

    If you have already purchased the Dragonfly Sunset pen wrap and began or finished beading it, you’ll probably notice right away that there are quite a few similar colors between these two patterns just by looking at these images and you would be right. They share SEVEN identical colors. Being ever cost-conscious, this was intentional on my part to save money, but also benefits those who buy both patterns. I know it’s fun going on a hunt for new colors to add to your stock. It’s even more fun to still do that, discover you already have these colors in your stash AND save money. Everyone wins in the end.

    So pick up our newest sunset theme and the Dragonfly Sunset and you’ll never have to wait for an actual sunset again to enjoy their firey light show. Here are the links to both patterns:

    Mermaid Sunset
    Dragonfly Sunset

    Happy Beading!

    Kristine
    The Bead Whore

  • I’m Alive…Kinda…Sorta…8/15/21

    I’m Alive…Kinda…Sorta…8/15/21

    Whelp, I’m back at the beadboard and glad for it! Last week’s pen wrap project was a fun custom design for a gal whose granddaughter loves The Beatles. Here’s the WIP from the beta tester’s pics:

    Pretty awesome, right? I want to give a shout-out to my beta gal Tina whose work has been both quickly turned around and very well done. She has impeccable thread tension – something all-important in this type of craft. With her invaluable help, I am planning to be more productive by putting out new patterns more quickly in the future. I already have a new, original pattern drafted out and going into production today as I watch my weekend cartoons.

    It has been a GRUELING past two months, lemme tell ya. After a disastrous two caregiving jobs in a row and a week-long stretch of unemployment with only sporadic jobs to keep us alive, I nearly had a nervous breakdown. The only thing that has kept me out of the funny farm has been a rock-solid, supportive husband, probiotics that have a wonderful calming effect (for some weird reason), and the afore-mentioned, half-day job and new client case for a dear, long-time friend. And it hasn’t helped that job-hunting and catching up on doctor’s appointments and overdue errands have kept me from doing what I truly love – writing and beadwork. Such chaos kept me off-kilter and scattered until yesterday when a writing-industry marketing specialist reminded me of the importance of having an effective marketing campaign. The discipline and focus to pull off such a feat is also what allows a crafter to keep their audience entertained with new goodies on a regular, consistent basis when applied as the benchmark for their production schedule.

    This is my new goal in my business – to be more consistent and disciplined in both creating and marketing from now on.

    And speaking of such, I’m off to bead. The first time in way too long. Wish me luck!

    Kristine, the Getting Back Into It Bead Whore

    End note – if you like this style of “I Love” pen wrap pattern, email me with your custom request idea for your own personalized pattern through the Contact Me form. The basic color palette is as pictured below, using a flat black, a gloss/shiny white, and a shiny metallic red for the heart. This template typically has a seven-character limit, though it is possible to add more words/characters by shrinking the text, so don’t be shy. I might be able to make it work for you!

    Here’s another example of an “I Love” pen wrap pattern using the above colors:

  • New Products – Cats and Doctor Who

    New Products – Cats and Doctor Who

    Heh, we all know there are two things very prevalent in the science fiction fandom community – cat owners and Doctor Who fans. This week we are bringing you both!

    Remember this mystery piece from last month’s blog post?

    KC Dragonfly - Cats Leave WIP 1

    Well, here it is in all its glory

    You can pick up your own digital download pattern for Cats Leave Pawprints on our Hearts here

    And for the Doctor Who fans we know (and there certainly are a lot of you!), here’s a Pilot G2 Pen Wrap project for you as well

    And this digital download pattern is available here

  • How to Embellish a Finished Peyote Stitch Pen Wrap

    How to Embellish a Finished Peyote Stitch Pen Wrap

  • Behind the Bead Board: Gallifrey One, On Site Sales and our Next Projects

    Poll is Still Open

    Hi all. I’m keeping my peyote stitch bracelet poll open for now until I run out of ideas. Not surprisingly, “This Is The Way” from Disney’s series, “The Mandalorian” won the vote when I posted it back in late January. What did surprise me is that the Cat Pawprints didn’t tie it or at least garner any more votes since cats are so universally liked in fandom, especially amongst my personal friends.

    What Next?

    I will continue to work on new designs for Doctor Who bracelets, patterns and kits. There are a ton of ideas out there I have on backlog and not enough time in this lifetime to get to them. To mix it up a little, however, I will also be doing pagan themed bracelets and My Little Pony – the latter hopefully in time for the premiere of the new generation in March.

    Gallifrey One Commissions Closed and On-Site Purchases Open

    Commissions are closed for deliveries to our customers at Gallifrey One, which is in TWO DAYS. Man, after the Christmas season died down, #gally1 sure came at us like a freight train! I will have patterns, kits and fully-made bracelets on ‘site if you want to purchase them and will have my credit card processing chip on me at all times if you don’t have the cash flow to do an impulse purchase. Here are the items that will be available for on ‘site sales:

    Bracelets – $80.00

    Patterns Only – $6.00

    Bracelet Kits – $65.00

    If you would like to catch up with me at the convention, the quickest (and surest) way to get a hold of me if you don’t have my phone number is to direct message me on Twitter. Be sure to follow me first, then after I follow you, you can send a direct message. You can do the same on Facebook Messenger. My profile is here. Thanks!

     

  • My Next Peyote Stitch Beadwork Pattern Should Be…

    Please vote. I can’t decide!

    [poll id=”2″]