My name is Alaina Perry and I am Miss Alaineous (pronounced miscellaneous) because I like to create many things with a variety of materials. My Mother also used to call me Miss Alaineous when I was little, and the name suits me just fine.

They may seem unconnected and disjointed, but that's also who I am. I often get the advice "You should narrow down and focus on only one thing", but there's no way I could drop everything else and focus on just drawing or just working with beads. I'd burn myself out on one subject and I love the things I do too much!

As far as choosing what I do choose to create, it usually comes down to my past experiences as a kid.

Suncatchers

As far as suncatchers and jewelry go, I’ve had beads and made jewelry since I was little. I remember getting a trinket box filled with costume jewelry one christmas, and I loved them so much. One particular necklace of candy colored cracked beads with frilled metal bead caps on them stands out in my mind. The necklace broke a long time ago and the plastic crackle beads weakened and crumbled, but I still have some of those bead caps today. Later on when I was a bit older, I was given a bead kit where you had instructions to create little beaded people. I quickly ran out of all the materials I needed to make more of them, so I began asking my mom if I could get more beads at Pamida, or wherever they had beads, among other things I would always ask for. I had also started scrapbooking back then too, so I always asked for paper kits and, you know, Pokemon cards a staple for kids in the 90’s.

So my love of old jewelry and beads began. There’s always a new shiny element or pretty thing that I’d love to use or repurpose into creating something. I started making necklaces, bracelets, bead rings, the works. The suncatchers came much later after I became an adult and actually started out as kind of an accident. When making too long of a bracelet, trimming parts off, and thinking there has to be a way to use these leftover parts the idea came to me. I was using glass and crystals after all, they sparkle in the sunshine, so why not? My first attempts were pretty bad and getting the technique down took a little bit of trial and error. Eventually I tried to sort parts out into a color scheme or theme, just like you would any other project and they turn out actually really lovely. I enjoy creating suncatchers more than making beaded jewelry now. There’s less worry about sizing something too small or too big. I do still create earrings from time to time.

Now I love to collect old jewelry at rummage sales or broken jewelry boxes and use parts from those to add interest to my suncatchers. There’s just something special about pieces that are unique and generally aren’t made anymore. Or finding something interesting that might be a really cool focal piece and create a theme around that item.

Rings

As I started collecting old jewelry for the beads, some lots came with other larger jewelry like lapel pins or earrings. Sometimes these costume jewelry earrings did not come with a mate or were broken. I started brainstorming ways that I could repurpose some of these pieces and landed on rings. They’re perfect for bringing back a little bit of vintage or showcasing some style and personality without having to wear clip on earrings. Those things hurt! To avoid the same issue I have with sizing necklaces and bracelets, I wanted to avoid sizing issues with rings from the get go. I did some research and eventually found some high quality adjustable ring bases that hid that annoying pinchy part in the back. These ones start where the focal piece is and wrap around to tuck back under the glue pad! Perfect! No one except the wearer would ever know it was adjustable unless you told them.

Coloring Pages

I always doodled as a kid too, little swirls and designs on the sides of my homework and notebooks. I never could break that habit and continued doing it through college and even at work in my meetings notes. I worked as a graphic designer.

One night I was chatting with my husband and somehow the topic of my art came up he asked to see some of my old drawings. I kept all my notebooks and sketchbooks in a box. I brought it out to start showing him and as I was flipping through them, I started thinking that it’s a shame these all go to waste sitting in a box.

I really like to create patterns already, so I bet him and myself that I could use some of these doodles to create a coloring book. As I started working on some pages and started showing him my progress, he suggested that I call it Kaleido-cope, since some of my patterns looked like the could have come from a kaleidoscope and because coloring is supposed to be a good way to relieve some stress. I owe the start of this venture and the title of my series to him.

The first book came out pretty quickly since I had some already made doodles to rely on. The second took a lot more time. My mother suggested I do a heart themed coloring book next. I assume she had wanted it for Valentines day that was coming up, but there was no way I could have made a second coloring book in a month. Just about a year later my second coloring book came out. Kaleido-cope Love. Ever since then I’ve been drawing and creating new coloring pages and coloring projects for people to be able to print off from their computer at home.

Paper Dolls

After doing the first coloring book and bringing some childhood and past years back to life I thought back on some of the other things I used to do. One of the things was, when I was a kid, sick at home nobody to yell at me to get off the computer because they need to make a phone call, I liked to play dress up games. I’d often find paper dolls online and print them out too. Liana’s paper doll blog was by far my favorite. I haven’t seen an update from her since around 2015.

With this memory in mind, I thought, it was such a magical thing in my life, wouldn’t it be cool if I could make my own and somebody else will love them too? I tried it out with a super simple snowman, never thinking anyone would really like him, but they did! So I started drawing a girl to be my next real paper doll.  It took a fair few tries to get her right. Winter was coming up so I thought it’d be cool if she had some of the winter coats I’ll never have but I think are pretty. So the idea of doing a few seasonal collections along with a few more fantasy collections was born!

Eventually I had a few comments that some people don’t have printers at home, but they still really want to collect my paper dolls. After my experience with creating a coloring book, I decided to make the seasons collections available in the same way! I’m so excited to be able to share my third published book.

Wrap up

In the end, I’m a creative person. I’ve dabbled with so much more than I’ve written here. This all just happens to be where my current artistic interests lie. Life is too short to not do what I love. Stick with me through this seemingly chaotic and disjointed journey into being Miss Alaineous and surely you'll see some beautiful things that are made with love in South Dakota. Let me know! Do you like to create things? Do you have many hobbies and passions like I do? Would you rather put all your effort in focus into one subject? Let me know! I’d love to hear about it!