How I survive

Two posts in two days?  It's like Christmas, I know!!!

One of the more difficult things for me when it comes to being a production tatter, is when I end up having to make the same things over and over and over.  And Over.  You get my drift.  Certain designs in certain colors just fly off my displays and it's hard to not get bored at times.  My strategy to combat the tatting doldrums has been to add some new aspect to what I do every now and then, something to re-spark my interest and creativity.  This year, I took myself up to Fusion Beads in Seattle, and purchase the tools and materials to start doing some wire work, and also make my own custom findings.  So far, I've been playing around with brass, copper, and bronze.  Eventually I will add some precious metals into the mix.  It's been fun, and here is one of my experiments-

 Kinda hard to see, but the bead hangs forward of the flower. It looks better worn I think.

 Terrible Iphone pictures, I apologize.  Below is me playing with some patina solution on brass.  More fun.  Still learning.

  One good thing has come from all this metal work... I'm just a terrible snarly beast once every 28 days...ehem, and beating on the bench block has become a very theraputic solution for me hahah!

Also, all this metal makes me want butane torch to do some more damage with.  Perhaps a metalsmithing class is in order before I go that far.  Or not. :-P