My Creative Space

I've been putting my creative space to use this week, in several different ways. I've been writing my Krez story and doodling in my sketchbooks, working on little projects (like painting stones) and special orders and SMASH*ing away. I even broke out my beading supplies the other day, something I haven't done in months!

I broke my key fob a couple months ago and have been meaning to make myself something cute as a replacement. Also, probably close to a year ago, someone told me I should bead some Chakra pieces... so that's what I did:

Chakras are something I first learned about when researching into yoga. They are centers in the body from which one can collect energy. They are typically associated with vital points on the body, as well as certain characteristics and colours. Depending on what ancient texts you're reading, there are different numbers of stated Chakras - but the most well known in the Western world are the following seven:

1. Crown - white or violet - pure consciousness
2. Third eye or brow - purple or indigo - intuition, visual consciousness
3. Throat - blue - communication
4. Heart - green or pink - complex emotions like compassion and love
5. Solar Plexus - yellow - personal power, simple and complex emotions like anxiety and fear
6. Sacral - orange - reproduction, relationships, creativity
7. Root - black or red - sexuality, stability

Certain stones have also been associated with each chakra, and I tried to find these in my bead collection. Specifically, I wanted to use stones, not coloured glass or plastic. I came pretty close - those in bold are what I used (those after a hyphen are stones that haven't been associated with the Chakra, but were the right colour in my collection):

1. clear quartz or amethyst - white agate
2. amethyst - crazy lace agate
3. sodalite
4. rose quartz, malachite - green adventurine
5. citrine
6. carnelian
7. hematite, garnet, smoky quartz

For the heart Chakra, I did have rose quartz, but I preferred the look of the green adventurine. Since this is a key chain and needs to be durable, I wire-wrapped each link. I used a fancy headpin for the smoky quartz link at the end and added a bead cap "crown" to the first link. I'm really happy with how it turned out; it will definitely come in handy when my keys are floating around in a giant purse!

You can find more creative spaces here.