lampwork

Purple

 Z-99 headpin/thingamajigs. Building up inventory for BABE! 2011.

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life in general

Life regularly gets in the way of best intentions, here’s a recap of the last couple of months:

-hubby is home safe- yipppee!
-been scrabbling to get work ready for the Louisville Gathering for the ISGB.

-attended the Gathering for the first time, although I’ve been a member of the ISGB for 5 years.

-had a table at the Gathering and sold my work, how wonderously fabulous it was although I felt like a chicken running around w/o its head getting set up..it was a tragic comedy of errors that probably had my booth mates shaking their heads at this frenetic and weird woman talking a mile a minute. (special thanks to Cherine and Hannah..and Mary and Barb, lol)

-met so many people I’ve admired for years and can’t wait to attend next year’s 20th Anniversary in Seattle.

-my baby boy turned 3!

-visited with my family.

here’s a few pics:

(blogger is fighting me, so this is all for now)


New Work

I’ve been in a metal etching fog the last few days and here are some of the beads that benefited from it:This first set will be going up on Etsy soon, I’ll post an update when it goes in the shop. The two little clear beads are solid but they look so sharp capped and cored, the beadcaps are out of Copprclay that I made ages ago and found them in a container and picked some beads to fit- voila!
This trio will be getting shipped shortly to somewhere special and I’ll list (or re-list in the case of the mustard bead) them on Etsy when I get them back.

Shop Update for Apr. 1st and 2nd

New work going up shortly in the shop:Surely I’m not the only one who loves the colors together in this trio? *slurp* These will be slightly discounted since the two smaller ones were chipped due to my aggressive cleaning..d’oh! Doesn’t affect the bead, just makes them less than perfect. Oh, oh- love the bead caps on this one and the crackling is superb. Had a hard time letting go of these capped and cored hollows, so luscious but hard to capture on camera.

Shop Update for Mar. 28/29th

Are you still there? Have I scared you away due to my poor, neglected shop never being open? If not, great! I’ll be adding new work over these next few days by editing in batches the hundreds of pictures of beads that have been languishing in wait for me to get the shop re-opened. Here is a quick review of this set that will be listing tonight and into tomorrow, time permitting:

And Another

pic by my wonderful Sis-in-Law:I’m not sure how everyone else who sells online does it- when you take pics do you also think of how the layout will look on business cards, postcards, etc? Since Etsy uses square images for the products, that is the way my pics usually end up cropped. Or maybe you take one or two pics that is a little more..artsy? The plan is to try and take a couple different layout shots for the sets/focals that really set my heart aflutter and save them for business cards..after all, who doesn’t like options?

Translation from Mind to Making..

My mind is a sometimes dizzy place, with way too many thoughts bouncing around and then going off on tangents..which then forces me to work backwards towards my original thought similar to that guy in Memoir.

This idea of ‘leveling up’ (Scott Pilgrim reference, sorry lol) has been on my mind and using raking w/ stringers has been something on the back burner for a while now.

I finally decided, “what can it hurt?”, and just jumped in w/ no planning. Turns out, for me at least, that every d’oh! moment eventually leads to improving my technique. The first d’oh! happened when I dropped one of my brass micro shapers on the concrete, and wouldn’t you know it, it was the supa sharp pointy tip that hit the concrete and caused a slight kink on the end. Which worked great at raking the stringers today!

The next time was when I blew a hole out on a hollow big hole bead and I was determined not to chuck it since I’d already spent 20 min. making it. Once I patched the hole, it had an interesting raked edge that my squirrely brain stored as an idea for later on. There’s been a few other instances but I don’t want to bore you or me listing them all.
While the execution of the idea is still a little rough, perseverance will now be my friend until I’m satisfied.
I’ll try and get pics tomorrow after they’re done tumbling.