More February musings on my mind

Thinking all day (which is a scarey thing for me to do) as we do when we are in the phases of the moon (not the Phases of the Moose which is a bead embroidery piece of mine) , I realized that when I was a beginner beader, I wanted it all, but there wasn't much all on the internet.

It was 1996, and the internet was really beginning to take shape.  I wanted patterns for everything that I saw, and when I did find one, I printed it and put it in a folder.  After a while, I became friends with beaders who had a little more income than I did and they bought pattern books - O.M.G.  Books?  With beading patterns.  And they let me make copies.  Wow - could life be much better?  Free beading patterns and copyright be damned.

Fast forward many, many years as I was clearing out the closet in my studio of items that I haven't touched in a long, long, long time.  I ran across a stack of those patterns.  From many of the names that I now recognize and count amongst my friends.  Shameful behavior on my part.  One of the things I really noticed?  I made few, if any, of the pieces from these free/illegal patterns.  The few items that I did make, I went to the web page and spent my $7 to $20 and bought patterns.  Why after several years?  Because it's the right thing to do.

As I continue to clear out boxes, I toss the patterns in the recycle bin, shake my head and wonder what planet I was from.  Then I purchase patterns,  Yes, I still purchase patterns.  And books.  I buy books with patterns that I may never make.  Because now I want to support my friends and colleagues.  Who, someday, may support me.

Now, as I start on my teaching career with beads, I completely understand that what I did was incorrect.  Wrong.  WRONG.  Will it happen to me.  Of course it will. I'd be pretty naive to think that it wouldn't happen.  I will just hope that several years down the road, this unknown beader will have the same epithany that I did.  And buy my patterns.

Now, if I could just come up with a name for the Etsy store, I could really start this phase of my life.

February 2015 Musings

We have all heard that the world gets crazy when there is a full moon (luna-tics, right?), but there is the same affect when there is a new moon - and it's been out in force.  Less than tasteful posts on Facebook (which, sadly, has become an important way to keep in touch with friends and family around the world or just a few miles away),  I turned off notifications to social media last night, watched a less than wonderful movie called "The Corsican Brothers" with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and spent some time with my beads and wondering about copying, derivatives, and when it stops being a copy or a derivative and starts being my own design.

Many of my designs have been heavily influenced by my friend and mentor, Marcia Decoster.  Marcia and I worked closely for many years and I took what I learned to heart.  Did I copy from her?  Yes, there are portions of my work where you can see what I learned from her.  But an actual copy of a design.  No.  I don't believe that I did.

Above is a piece that I call "Hever Castle" - the netting around the crystals is netting, it's been done before and will be done again.  The bail (top) and the connection between the crystals is a modified Right Angle Weave (raw) that I learned from her many years ago in her Romantica necklace, you can see the same thing in neckstrap.  But because the pieces are so different, it's not a copy, but influenced by or a derivative of her necklace, but still my design.

I also bought a pattern by Shelley Pleines Nybakke - her Tennis Anyone bracelet, pictured below on the left.  These are pieces made from a pattern, a copy.  The Tiara Necklace on the right is very similar except that it's cubic right angle weave, not a three sided RAW as the bracelets are.  This is not a copy, my design, but using a technique from another instructor.

Thinking about it, I learned cubic right angle weave from Huib Peterson, so I was influenced by what he also taught me.

In your heart, a person knows if they copied another artists design.  When I was just starting to make patterns, I had a dancing moose pattern - resembling a kokopelli, but it was a moose dancing.  I walked into my local bead store at the time, and there was a woman who was wearing a necklace with MY moose on it.  At first I was tickled that she liked it enough to make it.  She told me that she took the picture from the internet, enlarge it so that she could see the peyote pattern in it, and then she beaded it.  But then, the more that I thought about it, she couldn't be bothered to spend the $5 for the pattern.  THAT's copying.

Bottom line - you know if what you are doing is right or wrong.  If doing wrong doesn't bother you, nothing that I can do or say will make you change your mind.

But enough about that!!