Just a quickie

This morning. I seem to be having one of those incredibly low-energy days - y'all ever have one of those? I think it may be allergies...or maybe just "allergic to Monday morning!" LOL

After previewing the upload of this picture, I see that it's kinda crappy. Sorry about that, and the original is already deleted. Anyway, it's very pretty in person. It's about 1.5 to 1.75" long, ivory base, with a long spiral wrap of goldstone. I then tarted it up with leaves and vines in one of those silvered glasses (you know, the ones that are $100 bucks a pound?!) that turns all kinds of colors in the flame. One of the things I love most about the silvered glass on ivory is how it kind of mottles the ivory in places...

It's Friday!

So, I've spent every evening this week working with beads - last night I finished pricing the sets and focals. At least this is something I can do with a glass of wine in my hand. Well, I can't price and drink at the EXACT SAME TIME, but you get what I mean (although, hmmm....maybe with one of those bendable straws?). This afternoon Tony and I are driving out to Theresa's to pick up my leftovers from her show, then hitting Herbert's for dinner and Eskimo Hut for dessert (said with an evil grin!).

Here are today's beady pictures!

Bead pix as promised!

Remembered to take my camera card home last night - battled my way through a battery disaster - all to bring pictures to YOU! LOL

Today's is just a "teaser:" Here are a couple of shots of the sets I made up on Monday evening. I didn't count, but I'd say somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 sets, maybe? I'll be showcasing some of the sets individually, and I'll also have pictures of the most recent focals in the days leading up to the trunk show at Nomadic Notions. Don't forget - I'll have my torch set up there, and will demo beadmaking most of Saturday and Sunday - please try to stop by to say "hi!"

I hate beads....

I start saying this within a couple of weeks of every show I've ever done. I was sitting last night with a huge pile of beads, ready to be made into sets. When I say huge pile, I mean huge pile - probably around 300-400 beads. Not sorted in any way - "good" beads, "bad" beads, orphan beads, focals, oh my. I've told myself time and time - and time - again, that if I just took care of making sets within a day or two of torching them, my life would be SO MUCH easier. For some reason this is something that I just seem unable to learn. They get torched, they get cleaned, then they sit there. Until a couple of weeks before the show. And on the subject of things I can't learn - to make spacers as I go, too. Now, I ask you. What's hard about sitting down at the torch and making, oh, say a periwinkle and purple set, with touches of goldstone and maybe little yellow flower centers. THEN making a couple of bead-kabobs full of periwinkle and purple beads to use for spacers. Next morning, everything comes out of the kiln and ready to go. But, oh no - I find out when I sit down to make sets that I have to spend the last weekend before the show making dozens of friggin' little, BORING TO MAKE, spacer beads. Sigh. I hate beads.

Finally Friday

It's been one of those weeks - busy busy busy. Work's been crazy, home's been crazy, you get the idea. And everything I've done this week has involved MORE MONEY. Filled up with gasoline - yikes! Got the electricity bill - uh oh. Went to the grocery store - you've GOT to be kidding. I heard a couple of days ago on the news that Prez Bush is sending $1.8 billion in aid to the areas that have been absolutely devastated by floods. Now, that sounds like a pretty good chunk of change, yes? But I decided to see how much Iraq war that same amount would "buy." Wanna take a guess? Try ONE WEEK. So we have hundreds - if not thousands - of Americans without homes, without crops, people whose lives will never be the same - and they're worth about one week of sending money to a foreign country. How would that make YOU feel? The next time you hear somebody (or you yourself) talk about the fiscal irresponsibility of the Democrats, or that only Republicans are "for" the good hardworking Americans of this land - STOP! No, the Democrats may not be any better (hopefully we'll be able to find out in the New Year), but you certainly can NOT say that the Republicans ARE.

Two sides of the same

bead.....





Ivory "guts" with copper mesh, encased with ivory and clear, a little bit of Canyon de Chelle stringer. I fumed the ends with fine silver to give them a little antiquing.....

An almost drive-by post....

I had a couple of emails asking me what to do with the large holed beads - well, they're the "hot thing" in jewelry right now, and go on a "Biagi," "Troll," or "Pandora" bracelet. Do a Google on those terms, and you'll see lots of cute big hole silver "charms" for this type of bracelet as well. Anyway, here are most of the beads from my "I'm trying to get that wispy look" torch session - on my Biagi bracelet.

Who took the prop wax?

Thought I needed to start whetting appetites for the trunk show at Nomadic Notions, so I'm trying to take and post a few pictures. This one came out nice, but it really needs to be displayed "standing up," and the prop wax was nowhere to be found...



It used to make me just crazy to not be able to find something. I'm well-organized, and our house is tiny. So, my thinking was always, "Okay, how hard can it be to find in a house this small - even IF I didn't put it away where it belonged?!" It finally dawned on me that the reason things go missing is precisely because my house is so small. Essentially, there's no room for error (no pun intended). I have tiny designated spaces for things, but it's just too easy for whatever I'm working on at the moment to encroach on the space designated for something else...and whatever it is that I'm looking for gets covered up, pushed aside, etc. etc.....And that prop wax container is about 1" square....Poor me - right?

When is copying okay?

I open with that question today because I have a copy for you:



I truly love Amy Kinsch's large holed beads - particularly the wispy little "clouds" she gets. (Here's a link to her Etsy: AK Designs.) I posed a question on Lampwork Etc a couple of weeks ago, asking for tips on getting those cute little wisps. No answers. Well, not any answers that were helpful. So, last weekend, I sat down and experimented, and came up with this - which is pretty darn close. Today on LE there is a huge discussion on copying....in this case REAL copying, as the copy-er is posting and selling on eBay essentially the same beads as originally sold by the copy-ee on eBay. I'm sure you can imagine the discussion - if you're an artist, or even follow bead and/or bead-related forums, then you've seen the same discussion over and over again. But, these discussions always interest me. I remember taking oil painting lessons from a woman who was quite well known in this area. In her studio was a magnificent "copy" of Van Gogh's Sunflowers, which she displayed proudly. Why? Well, in her day as an art student (and she was close to 80 when I took from her, so we're talking a quite a few years here) they would let art students go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and copy the masters. If the copy was good enough - as judged by the museum's curators - they would "certify" it as an acceptable copy. Which Della's was. And, in fact, this is exactly the way most masters learned - from copying. EXACT copying. I guess the difference is that Della wasn't offering the painting up for sale...anyway, I wound up making quite a few beads in the "Amy-style," which I'll wear with delight. I'll try to put a twist on them, and perhaps even sell them as large-hole beads....Here's something else I did with what I'd learned from my experiments, and it's very different:



Pretty, isn't it? The wispies are only in the center row - it's a pretty big bead, probably close to 25mm to 30mm....

Metals 101

Pictures today are some of the stuff I made in the class I took with Lydia and Gwen of Hill Country Artisan Retreats. It was the first class of this kind I've taken, and I really enjoyed it. I can't see myself using it a LOT, but I definitely took away some useful things...and you might see a bit of it popping up in my bead sets.

This will be a pendant (sorry, still haven't gotten around to purchasing findings...). Note the CUTE CUTE CUTE little paw prints on the inner piece!



Next is what will be a pair of earrings, which I'll never wear...LOL I envision some kind of little dangly things on the bottom...



Last, but certainly not least, is a ring. The only "catch" here is that it's assembled with a very long, very tiny bolt...for which there is essentially no source. Don't you just HATE that?! Anybody have any tiny bolts they want to part with? Anyway, too bad, because this definitely has possibilities, especially as it can use a lampwork bead.



If anybody has any questions about how any of this stuff was made, let me know, and I'll answer as best I can.

Feast or famine

I know I've been promising pictures forEVER - and finally had a chance to take some this weekend. The problem now? Do I flood you with pictures, or do I dole them out, one or two at a time? As it may be a while before the camera comes out again, I'm betting you know the answer!

So, first, I'll post a couple of pictures from the class I took at Heritage Glass a couple of weeks ago. These are from the "Mick class." Really just some simple wire wrapping, but I like the way they came out. As a lot of the stuff in my closet is pink and black or pink and brown (and is truly determined pretty much by the color pants that I choose to wear LOL!), I made two bracelets, one in each color. Got one on today - brown pants, peachy-colored linen tank and shirt - can you guess which one I'm wearing? And, it's makes a lovely jangly noise...