Creative Cross-Training

My current beading project

 

Did you all see the latest Weekly Challenge from Kamrah? If not, go read it before you continue with this post.

This was a perfectly timed challenge for me, because I not only have a whole bunch of beautiful new beads that I purchased at the gem/bead shows last week, but I also woke up this morning in the mood to write. Not blog, but actually go back to writing fiction. So this week's challenge for me will be not just getting back into dance practice, but also making sure to give myself time to work on jewelry every day and get back into the in-progress novel that I abandoned a few years ago (yikes!). All that and laundry too!

Not only do I think it's a good idea to stretch my brain in different directions to improve my creativity, but I think that dance really swallowed my life last year and I have not been beading much at all. As I was putting on jewelry to go to work each day*, I found that a lot of what I was wearing was years old, and most of the new stuff had been made right after gem show 2013 when I was feeling excited to use all my new stuff.

Well, now I have more new stuff that I'm excited to work with, but also a lot of stuff leftover from last year. And the year before that. And so on, reaching back to the late 90s. Wow! I need to make good use of these beads!