When Creativity Sparks...

While everyone else was celebrating our independence day, I was in creative mode. While everyone else was grilling, putting together bowls of potato and macaroni salads, and getting ready for the fireworks shows from shore to shore, I was frantically putting together beads. It was frantic because I was fighting the sun setting and losing daylight. I needed to bead.

Now for those of you who aren't bead junkies, this doesn't seem like a bad thing. But for those of you who are bead junkies--and I'm proudly in those ranks--the need to bead becomes an obsession. The more you aren't able to bead, the more it fixates in your brain. The more you look at beads, the more clever ideas you could put together--if you only had: 
1) time 
2) didn't have these papers that needed to be graded last week  
3) and a gazillion household chores weren't insidiously chanting your name and begging to be done and 
4) you didn't have other depending on you for their needs...in my case...the cats and students. 

So while you all were out celebrating our nation's birth of independence, I was beading. 

A sample of what I put together...

 Yep--that's 11 pairs of earrings. But I wasn't done yet...

 There's three more pairs of earrings. But don't hang up the phone just yet...

 The two on the left are added to the count. I added the two pairs on the right to balance out the shot, but I beaded them back in late May or early June. So look but don't count them in the total--which we are up to 16 pairs of earrings.

 Seventeen, eighteen....

 Nineteen pairs of earrings! 

And it didn't stop there...I had to finish this necklace for my sister-in-law, who is remarkably talented herself.  

Later that night, while I watched a movie to help keep the cats calmed during the fireworks display booming across our town, I discovered I was still in creative mode so I finished this for my newest grand-niece--her baby poncho. Last night I finished the cap. I fondly remember Paddington Bear and loved his hat...I tried to style her little cap in that fashion.

 I'm good for now.  I think.