Fair Belle Maidens aka my friends.....

I just wanted to speak this morning about friendship and business. As I have been posting I am working on a project which finally will come to fruition this Sunday. This project is an accumulation of many things I love. Most of all my friends..... I have been an artist for many years in one way or another. Trying many forms of art but never quite finding "my thing".  My mother was a very talented seamstress and so many many years ago when I was in the middle of my first divorce I had to take a forced road trip and found my way to her house in Maryland. I had not seen my mother for a very long time and when I got there I discovered magic. My mother had this teeny little workshop behind her house and there she had set up a sewing machine. On that trip we spent many hours in her "studio". Now my mom being old school, would laugh at the word studio but that is what it was. It was filled with bits and pieces of her and the things that she loved. Fabrics, trims and ribbon..... things that had such beauty just as they were but when she combined them it was true magic. I learned then that in times of trouble I could get lost and forget everything around me except for what I was creating and the friendship it brought between people. The bond that would last a lifetime..... Fast forward many years and one day when my now x-husband (yes I am sad to say I have several of them) was in Iraq I found myself wondering the book store. As usual I was in the art section and picked up a book by Sally Jean Alexander called "Pretty Little Things". The only word I can think of was mesmerized. I sat in the book store and studied this book for a couple of hours. I was hooked. The whole year and a half my husband was gone I spent many many long hours into the night learning to solder. I adored it. Making something form from a liquid seemed impossible but there it was..... unlimited. Oh yeah you bet I cussed many a night, burnt my legs up when I would drop the solder as I would try to hold the object I was working on oh so perfectly. But boy was the finished piece worth it. I would polish it up and somehow when I would look at it I forgot for the moment that the man I loved was gone and how I missed him so. Fast forward again to now. I have finally put the love of my two passions together. And to me it is time.... timing means a lot. The past few years has been a time of healing and as hurtful and uncomfortable as it as been it has brought me to the now. The NOW my friends is amazing not just for the art I create but the friends I have made and the bond that I truly believe will never be broken with some of them. So many doors have opened and I see so many ahead. Is it scary? Hell yeah its scary but even scarier is not to walk through them. I can sew and solder and hope that I will continue to grow but within this growth process I will always remember my friends. The friends that have come to support me in my craziness and have the courage to tell me when I have gone to far.

I hope you will join me and my friends as I fly by the seat of pants this Sunday at a photo shoot for my new line of saloon slips and jewelry "Fair Belle Maidens". As always I will keep moving forward a true gyspy girl at heart.

xoxoxo Juju