When Things Fall Apart

This also happens to be the title of a book I'm reading as I try to carry on, and it also includes my Battle of the Beadsmith piece, which has taken a brand-new direction.

The first piece that I envisioned for this competition was nothing like the one I'm currently working on. I spent over $100 on metallic seed beads, a brass necklace form, bead embroidery backing... And then it just didn't work out.

Over and over and over again, I started beading on the base. But it just didn't work out.

I started to panic with the deadline approaching - what was I going to do? But once I finally admitted that this piece was just falling apart and that there was no way I was going to be able to pull it together in the time left, something happened.

While cleaning up and sorting beads, I started digging through a big bag of beads, and out came a handful of beads that I had set aside for something else.

To be fair, I wasn't sure what else I was going to do with these particular beads. But they looked nice together. Even though I didn't have a finished design in mind, I loved the way the colors and the shapes looked together.

And that was when...it hit me. I knew what I wanted to do, and I knew I could make it spectacular for this Battle of the Beadsmith.

With just over 10 days to go before the deadline (eeps!), I've been beading furiously, and I've the Band-Aids on the fingers of my right hand to prove it. (Fireline hurts.)

This is all you get to see, for now.

What struck me as I was giggling to myself over this new design is how perfectly it all came together, just as I was starting to despair over the first piece falling apart.

Sometimes, things fall apart for a reason. And when they do, we have to figure out how to accept it with grace and strength. It helps to keep in mind that when things fall apart, sometimes they come back together even better than they were before.