La Dama, Where Are You?

For the past few days, I've gone into my studio with basically no plan and just start working on what ever grabs my attention first. Let me tell you, that is the worst way to try to get things done, especially for scatterbrained me. With a plan in place, I function like a well-oiled machine, without a plan I am lost. This heat wave has messed with my mind, not to mention my schedule, and I'm struggling to get back on track.

Friday I was in my studio resining tiles and sweating my ass off. I have to do it in a controlled area with no dust blowing around. so no open windows or doors and no fans. It was hot as hell in there that day. I had so much sweat inside my gloves that my fingers were all pruned up. Not fun.

Today I had a plan: go to the store, go to the library, come home and resin before the studio gets too hot. Simple. Checked off numbers one and two, no problem, but when it came time to resin...problem. First of all, one of my tiles turned out like shit so I had to re-do it before I could resin, then as I was counting out tiles to resin I noticed one was missing. I count the tiles multiple times during the long process of making the bracelet because the little buggers get separated from their bracelet partners on a regular basis. Like today, I needed to resin two tiles of a nine tiles bracelet because the resin started to get unworkable and I've learned it is better to stop at that point because any tiles resined at that point look like crap and have to be redone. That's why I started making bottle cap rings. I hated wasting that much resin (sometimes almost half of what I prepared) every time I finished tiles. So today I counted one set, two sets, and the third set came up short. Fricking annoying, since I have made great effort to keep my workspace tidy & somewhat organized. I counted all the tiles again to be sure I had not made a mistake. Still short. I looked carefully at the tiles to see if I could tell which one was missing, and also to make sure I had actually made nine in the first place. Amazingly, I was able to figure out the missing tile was 'La Dama', one of the Loteria cards, now if only I could find the dang thing.  Distracted from my plan, I searched high and low for that tile and did not find it. I began to doubt my memory that I had really made it. I thought about making a new one but I just know as soon as I do the original 'La Dama' is going to show up and really piss me off. So I am moving on to "Plan B", which is string tiles into bracelets. That should keep me busy for a while and give 'La Dama' a chance to reveal herself.