Canceled class

I just woke up this afternoon to see a note from Chris telling me that 1 Stop called & said my Spiral Infinity amulet bag was canceled.  No one signed up for the two day class.  I don't know if I should be really sad or really happy about this.  Let me talk about why I'm happy first.  Well, I hadn't done the instructions in the first place.  I know...bad teacher!  I guess when I went into the store two weeks ago and saw no one had signed up, I knew right then and there that it would be canceled.  Lisa gave me some advice on how to attract students using expensive silver seed beads or doing whimsical things. Then this Saturday when I went in to take Amy's Cherry Blossom beaded flower class, I once again saw no one had signed up.  The display itself was situated in the back making me realize it wasn't a sample that people wanted to look closer at.  Then yesterday, I burned the tips of three of my fingers causing instant blistering.  How?  Let's say that Dot did not wear her gloves when she reached down to try to fix a stalled lawn mower & the bare skin sizzled on the mower's manifold.  Yes, very bad burn.  I can't feel anything & spent yesterday with a bag of ice wrapped around my hand, but I did manage to make it to work.  So it would have been hard for me to teach this class anyway.

Now for the sad.  I love to teach.  I do it at work all the time, and for me the greatest joy is when someone has that look in their eye of "I GOT IT!".  I like to share my achievements and my mistakes to get another person psyched into creating Art.  I do love doing Square Stitch.  It was my very first bead weaving technique I taught myself.  I went crazy with it in the beginning making bracelets for everyone I knew.  I even sold many of them. Then I made a few amulet bags which I gave away, and started playing with dimensional Square Stitch.  It has never been a very popular bead weaving technique, but it is one that I still enjoy as it has a rhythmic trance producing path that lets me escape into my inner being.  I knew that plus the fact that this was a level three (intermediate) class that might put people off.  Then it was split into two sessions of 2 2 1/2 hours on Friday nights.  Not good either.    So here I am with a big graph and half written instructions.  I am not going to just ditch this project.  I intend to finish it up and maybe send it off to a magazine as it is a very nice design & makes a lovely bag.

So what has this taught me.  Well, first off, I have decided to not submit anything to teach for the Summer.  I really need to take a few steps back and wrap my head all around this.  First off, do I want to continue to try to teach at the local bead store, and if so what do I do to try to build up a student following.

 Lori Anderson during these past month was asking people to send her inspirational photos that helped you beat the Muse and create.  I sent her my picture of Kauai which she used in her new motivational e-book called :  Follow the Path which can be purchased at Lori's website.

 

I read the e-book, and it made me start to think about where exactly do I want to go with this blog. Which made me even think "where do I want to go with my beading career?".  The book gave me lots of ideas and took my brain on one sweet roller coaster of a ride.  I'm still digesting all the information and contemplating where do I want to go from here using her ideas and suggestions.

One thing is that I definitely need a new banner for this blog.  I haven't beaded a beanie in years, and I do love dolls almost as much as beading. But then, I love my Scotties too...and the beautiful city I live in. So like Lori, I'm going to just blog about what I want.  Definitely a new banner is in store!

Second I decided to take this Summer to back track a little with my teaching.  I want to use the advice Lisa gave to me.  I definitely need to scale back my classes to things that people can complete in a weekend or even in the limited time set aside for a class.  I need to also look at whimsical themes as they always attract my attention.  I was trying to go for elegant, when that definitely is NOT me!  I like crazy out of the world or amazingly cute things.  So I'm going to sit down and design easy fun classes for the Fall term.  I know people cannot commit to the tons of hours I do in my personal projects, so I have to do simple things: Fun simple you got to learn to make that things.  I'm going to give it my best try.