Life as a Lefty

bandaged wrist (I'm sparing you the gross pics of my cut)

I've been out of commission for a couple from carpal tunnel release surgery. I have developed a new appreciation for my right hand, and some new motor skills using my left hand! The down time has been extremely frustrating for an artsy gal, like myself. My days have become marked with small triumphs, like buttoning my jeans or tying my shoes by myself. One of the weirdest things was having my husband assist with washing my hair. He didn't really understand how to wash such a large amount of hair. Then there was the day I asked him to help me put my hair in a ponytail. He was completely at a loss. It's pretty funny how these things that are second nature for all women take a step-by-step instructional for men. :) I do have to give Ron credit for being an amazing help since the surgery though.My padded glove

I'm taking baby steps towards getting back into my crafts. The stitches are out now & I have to wear this funky padded glove, like a weightlifting or biking glove. I have tried a little machine sewing, but the hand sewing & cutting are no fun. I think I could manage a little painting this week if I can grip the brush properly.

I have an exciting opportunity Saturday the 21st. My friend, Erin, is hosting an open house for me in Kansas City. I'm going to set up all my stuff in her house & do a little private show for our friends & families, and coworkers. I haven't been able to prepare much in advance, but I will be taking all my stock pile from the past shows & my Etsy site. There are several new felt friends & sock buddies that will make their debut, as well.

Post Indie Jag

My Booth

I survived another craft show! Those things are exhausting, but exhilarating at the same time.... Indie Emporium was a great show. This was my first time there. The venue was rather small, but not as overwhelming to the shopper as a giant expo center is. I nearly sold out of all my sock buddies! I only have two left from my original stockpile & I made one after the Friday night rush. 11 of my little friends have new homes now. I also sold out of all the cute pillows I had made. They are now residing on my friend, Jenni's, sunroom loveseat. I'm sure her cat, Mousse, is thoroughly enjoying them. :) A big thanks to Jenni's mom for being my biggest customer of the weekend.

Tony, Beth, & Heather, the Aaron Co. Designers, united again!

Tony kept me company throughout the show with his craziness, and I purchased one of his fabulous brooches to dress up my winter wardrobe. (thetonyliproject.com) He also had these neat hoodie/scarves that he knitted for his fashion show, but decided to sell on a lark. Of course they went in about 10 minutes...now I have to special order one. I also came away with a fun feather headband from Feather by Feather. I went back for Tony's fashion show Sat. night, and it was amazing. Unfortunately, I couldn't find my camera in all the post show craziness, so I missed out on getting any snapshots of the collection. The other collections were definitely not as professionally tailored as Tony's collection was. The vintage clothing was kind of neat, and The Girl with the Red Kerchief showed her cute 50's style aprons.

I will have all the Halloween stuff that didn't sell on sale in my Etsy shop, as well as anything that I haven't listed yet from the show. If you saw something you wanted at the show, but didn't buy it please email me! Thanks to everyone who came out to shop!

Indie Emporium Craft Show

Well, it's finally here! I'm still making last minute adorable items to show, as usual. I had planned on being very prepared this time because I had a huge stockpile, but then I decided I wanted to do a bunch of new stuff & now I'm extremely sleep deprived with sore hands. Hopefully it will pay off...maybe....

I'm adding a few things I haven't had before, like some adorable throw pillows, and many new plush friends. There are several new wall hangings & jewelry, as well.

I will be entering 3 paintings into the art gallery show, and donating one piece to the Tulsa Food Bank art auction.

I hope there's a great turnout. If you're in Tulsa, come on down to the VFW on 6th street & see all the great handmade goodies. I will be next to my buddies, Heather, Tony, & Holly, so it should be a great spot. I'm sure Tony will be well stocked with Red Bull & bottled water to keep us going. :) Wish me luck!

Socks on the Brain

Well, I've been absent from the blogosphere for a month it seems...again...oops. I have been very busy sewing away on my new friends, the sock buddies. I've completed five of them now and they're getting more and more fun to make! I have also been hard at work making some little Halloween softies. Here are my little creations:

I had a show over the weekend in Stillwater, OK. It was kind of a gamble b/c I knew it would be an older, more traditionally crafty crowd. And boy was it.... However, I did manage to sell a little bit more than I did at the Deluxe show in OKC thanks to some last minute purchases by some nice people. :) I only sold one of these precious plush pals though! The large blue sock buddy, that I did at my parents' house over Labor Day weekend. His name is Linus. Now he has a new home. It's really bizarre how attached I get to my crafts. I was actually sad to see someone carry him away in a bag, his little ears bobbing up and down....


On a sadder note...I learned last weekend that a good friend from high school was injured in Afghanistan. He is a Navy SEAL, so he is kind of a real life super hero. He's been transported back to D.C. now, but he lost both legs due to this IED that he stepped on while scouting out a mission. It is so sad, but I'm confident that he will be up and running in no time with some new titanium legs, or whatever they use now days. I think I will send him one of my sock buddies to keep him company, and a good book b/c he loves reading classics.


I'm now gearing up for my next show in October. I am really excited about this one since it's going to be more of my style of consumers, hopefully. You can check out the details at:
www.indieemporium.com. I will be having a booth & entering the art gallery show that will be juried. I've been working on some interesting paintings for that using the new paint I got from my cousin, Grant, while in Seattle. His wife works for Dale Chihuly, famed glass artist. He's apparently, very fickle, so when the paint doesn't squirt out to his liking he just tosses it away. Grant had loads of discards that he couldn't use, so he let me take some home. The airport security was a little disturbed by the ducktaped 60's style suitcase full of tubes of paint. Oops. :)

The paint is all these amazing bright neon & metallic colors. So far I've made two paintings with it.
I put a lot of my pieces in my Etsy store on sale today, so go check it out! artbybethany.etsy.com

Sock Creatures & Other Cute Things

I got it in my head a few months ago that I wanted to try to make some of those cute stuffed monsters that are all the rage. I got a cute book called Softies. I took it to my mom's house during a visit b/c she is a master seamstress...I am not! After much laboring, we managed to finish two softies. One is a "Treeling" and the other is called "Lonely Dollop." (Use your imagination!) They are both in my Etsy Shop.



While I was on vacation, I saw another book I just had to have in a gift shop, so I ordered it from Amazon. Today was the first day I had a chance to make anything from it. This one is called Sock Creatures. My first attempt took me all afternoon! My hands are fairly paralyzed at this point....I think I'll call him Marvin. Hopefully the next one will be faster & cuter!




I've also been busy painting some little nursery wall hangings for baby gifts. I love making these. They're relatively fast & so fun. Everyone is having babies this year it seems. Ron's cousin had little boy, Zachary, in June. We just got to see him in Seattle. So cute! I made this for him:

And Ron's friends Rob & Michelle had a little boy named Liam, also in June. They are avid bike racers, so I made this for him:

Dallas Adventures

Well, another road trip last week to search for a car for Ron. We've been searching for months and months to replace Ron's '96 Camry and it never works out. Ron has changed his mind on what he wants so many times that we never can find what he wants the day he wants it! He did decide on a Mazda Tribute several weeks ago over an Escape or other small SUV. Finally we had some luck at Freeman Mazda/Hyundai in Irving. We normally go down there to shop for books anyway, so we thought we could make a double agenda this time. We got an amazing deal at a newly renovated Holiday Inn Express from Priceline, Ron's favorite hotel site. I think it was $33/night for a nice suite with king bed. I was hoping to stay at my friend, Jenny's, fav place, Nylo, but by the time we booked their rates were up to $130/night. Maybe next time.


So, Ron had a minor setback finding some article online that made him change his mind on what car he wanted. That lasted for about a day, but then we went to look a few more brands and he went back to the Tribute. I did like the Hyundai Santa Fe, but gas mileage and Ron being too large for it, did not work in our favor. So, there was were many phone calls and mechanic searches. Got to love searching for cars in 105 degree Texas heat. Yeah! I thought I was going to melt right into the car lot asphalt. This definitely made Ron not want leather seats...alas, no seat warmers for Beth. :(

After we decided to take home a cute, silver Tribute to test overnight, Ron found a mechanic to check it over. There were a couple minor things we needed fixed. This resulted in many hours at the dealership bickering over details. After I had finished half the daily crossword, at last we came to a deal "we could both live with" with Bret, the very nice car dealer we worked with. I was starving by the time we left at 4:00 after getting there around 1:00. A late lunch/early dinner awaited us at Pappasito's near the hotel. Thanks to our TomTom, I was able to navigate the streets of Dallas, however, Ron did not fair so well with his iPhone GPS that we can never seem to read.

Ron's new (used) car! It looks like the big brother of my silver Protege. :)

After filling up the new car with many boxes of books we parted ways. I had to stop by IKEA before racing home to catch the 8:00pm Harry Potter with Jenni! I had to do some serious power shopping, but came away with more shelving and a little end table for the living room, plus many picture frames and the IKEA chocolate bar I always get.

I found this sweet shelf on sale for $20. It's a little large for the guest bathroom, but it has a cool sliding mirror. How could I pass it up?! I got this fun, bright shower curtain at a garage sale for $2. I've looked for about 2 years for one to match this room...


I also got some cute pillows and this end table for the living room:
I got it to go by our recliner, but that will require much rearranging that Ron did not want to do yet, so it's kind of squished on the end of our couch for now.


I did make it to the Cinemark by 7:15 after getting lost several times in Dallas, despite the GPS, nearly have a breakdown searching for turnpike fees in my car, skipping lunch and dinner, and stopping once to relieve myself at Ron's parents house in Norman.


Thanks to Jenni, I did not have to wait in line for over an hour b/c they saved me a spot and preordered my ticket. Whew. I'm kind of an HP nut, so I've been listening to the audio books of 6 & 7 to refresh my memory before the movie release. Unfortunately, that just reminds me of how much they left out of the movie! I was pretty disappointed at some of the key scenes that were not in the movie and some random scenes that weren't in the book at all. This will not be one of my favorite HP movies, but I'm still excited to see number 7 even though it's the same director. Part I is slated for release on 19 November 2010, and Part II on 15 July 2011. I'll be such an old nerd by then. :(

Summer Adventures

Ron & I at Niagra Falls

I've been running around so much this summer my posts have been few and far between. Ron & I went on a vacation to Pennsylvania the middle of June to visit his friend from Asbury Seminary, Jeff. He lived in the middle of nowhere (Johnsonburg), so we literally had to drive 3 hours to go to any significant cities. He basically lives in the Allegheny forest. I think I spent about 30 hours in the back of Jeff's Honda Element. It was beautiful around there and the weather was amazing. I think it was in the low 80's a couple times, but mostly 70's. Meanwhile, back in OK, it was 100!

We got to see a ton of PA, but we didn't go to Philly this time. We hit Hershey, for some chocolate, Harrisburg, for my obsession with capitol buildings, Gettysburg, for my obsession with the Civil War, Scranton, for some Office pics, Erie, for some homecookin' from Jeff's mom and to see the great lake, saw a friend in Binghamton, NY, and we flew out of Pittsburgh. We did some hiking in Cook's Forest, which was very neat, and elk watching in Elk County. The finale was Niagra Falls, NY at the end of the trip. So gorgeous. We even got a rainbow on the Falls picture, and walked over to Canada for a bit.


Some favorite pictures: