Rant, jewellery, lovely calming strawberry flower

Occasionally I get an urge to make jewellery with my beads. I often feel bad about this because a while back some delightful Facebook commenter told me I should stick to making beads and leave the jewellery-making to other people. Wasn't that so very lovely of her? Yeah yeah, love, I know the jewellery I make is the basic-looking, plain-strung, unfancy, not silversmithed, no PMC, no clever knotting, no additional stones or crystals or whatever kind of jewellery, but I make the sort of jewellery that I like to wear, and I have always loved wearing simple and unfussy jewellery, OK?

*clambers 'pon soapbox*

Seriously, people need to think twice before giving unsolicited advice, or passing 'helpful' throwaway comments on the work created by craftspeople and makers. Whatever you think of it, that person has made something with their hands and their heart and they've had the balls to put it out there for the world to see, and therefore judge. Unless the maker is asking for advice or a critique on their work, people shouldn't give them negative feedback. If you have nothing nice or encouraging to say to someone about what they've made, hush up and move on. The brains of creative people are often weird things and they can be pretty flipping sensitive and over-analytical, making their owners doubt themselves and their abilities. Creativity is easily damaged or affected by thoughtless words, including ones about pricing.

*gets off soapbox*

Anyway, I pushed that commenter's words aside in my brain and this weekend I let myself make a couple of bracelets.

For some reason I made even more of those spotty red lentils (I think I'm just in love with their redness) so I decided to turn some of them into a bracelet and matching earrings.

I also made some little 9mm diameter spacer beads in sea glass colours of pale aqua, pale green and clear.

I used hair-fine grey stringer to wrap each one with a trail of glass. The beads were then tumble-etched to a satin finish before I turned them into a bracelet.

All of these pieces are currently in my shop.

Sorry to have got a bit ranty on you there. I didn't intend to. I only sat down to write a blog post to show you my jewellery but I let my fingers type out the festering irkedness I had in my brain about the whole jewellery making thing. Ah well, better out than in and all that.

May your Tuesday be as sunshiny as the one I'm currently experiencing here. I think I'm going to mow the lawn, carefully avoiding the wild strawberries I mentioned in my last post.

I've been reading about how to transplant wild strawberries into pots so I might give that a go too. *Carol Klein face*

Have a good rest of the day!