TGIF Randomness!

I am so thankful today is Friday.

I think I am going to start shooting for a theme each week when making new beads.

Swirls one week.

Nuggets the next.

I have already started beads for the update after tomorrow.

 I think they will all mostly be etched.

My shop has been low on etched beads for quite awhile.

I haven't made sea glass beads in ages.  So there will definitely be a few sets of those.

My goal is to also continue to update the shop with eggs at least once each month.

And new buttons with each update.

I'm liking this little button.  Because of how I squashed her, her holes are aligned a little differently than the others.  Must make more of these.

We are in the middle of a week of temps in the 70s and glances of the sun.  I'm so happy.  This weekend will be filled with trips to local parks for the kids to play and wear themselves out.

Check out my shop tomorrow after 2pm EST to see all the beads above get listed.

Have a great weekend everyone!

More Buttons and Headpins for the Shop

These two buttons will be going into the shop tomorrow.

As well as these headpins.  Thought you should see the sets they will be in together.  :)

And this set of eggs :)

And this focal bead that I made in Sara Sally LaGrand's class last month.  I won't be making any more like this one again.

Today is my last day with longish hair for awhile.  I'm getting it chopped off tomorrow.  Not sure how much or what I want, but it will be at my jaw or above (right now, it is almost shoulder length).  I get maybe two haircuts each year and normally go in and tell her to do what she wants because I honestly don't care.  I'm looking for low maintenance and something that isn't going to look crazy as it grows out, thus requiring more hair cuts.  Or be too crazy for corporate America, because I do occasionally have face-to-face customer meetings.  Which definitely means no pink hair for me. ;)

My Mom and Grandma will be coming over tomorrow afternoon so I can take pictures of two of her cameras that she wants to sell, as well as some of her Great Aunt's silverware.  And a rifle that belonged to her brother and is 50-80 years old (it could have possibly been her Dad's as a child) that is in good condition.  How does one even go about selling rifles?  I know so little about weapons.  Over 12 years ago, I dated a police officer and he took me to a shooting range a couple of times.  I don't remember how badly I sucked at hitting the target...I just remember how extremely loud it was, even with the protective ear covers.

Sunday afternoon will be filled with the kids making Valentine's cards for their classmates.  And relaxing, enjoying the good weather (we're supposed to have SUN and temps in the high 40s). 

I hope you all have a fabulous weekend!  I'll be getting everything listed around 1pm EST tomorrow in my Etsy shop.

New Focals

Here are the focals I made last week and over the weekend that will be going into the shop this weekend.  

I like the softness of the yellow on the seafoam green near the top.  But what I really like, it the unintentional little wisp of smoke coming up from the bottom.  Like a fire is going to start up any moment.

Hard to capture, but all of these spots are very metallic.

I'm digging the hints of purple coming out from the green glass spiraling around the black base.

With all the clear, the light really shines through this one.  LOVE!

After making a set of little pink beads with my garden frit, I needed to make a focal to match.  :)

There may be more coming into the shop on Saturday, besides these focals and what I showed you yesterday.  Will just depend on how much time I get to clean and photograph the rest of the beads coming out of the kiln this week.

Beads Going in the Shop Tomorrow

here are close ups of all the beads going into my shop tomorrow, starting at 1pm-ish Eastern time.  pay no mind to lack of capitalization, punctuation or poor grammar throughout this post.  all my effort went into making beads and corralling my children.  there is little energy left for following writing rules.

two sets of etched raku on black

merlot swirls

age of aquarius speckles on clear

merlot focal.  my new favorite

hidden depth swirls

storms of jupiter focal.  another new favorite

merlot speckles on clear

turtle prints focal, on ivory and encased

can you see me now?

sandstorm swirls

turtle tracks

ivory spacers.  I always love the crackling that happens with ivory in the flame and felt I needed to make a set of spacers.  because it has been years.

inverness spiral focal

awhile ago, I asked for suggestions on what to make the next time I sat down at the torch.  Erin asked for a combo of purple and gunmetal.  I tried dipping my clear rod in purple frit and swirling outwards, so the base beads were a deep, transparent purple.  then I dotted the gunmetal glass around the belts of the purple beads.  I was not expecting this cool reaction when I amped up the fuel to reduce the gunmetal dots.  instead of the gunmetal turning into a matte metallic, the purple glass turned a metallic gold and the dots became even blacker.  a most unexpected reaction, but I think they turned out pretty cool.  the purple can still be seen (more easily when the sun is shining through them, but I only had clouds for this little photo shoot).

azure reflections focal

sandstone rounds.  I love how different shades come out of one rod of glass.

raku in clear hollow

orbital blues focal

Sneak Peek - Friday Update

Yes, I will just disappear for almost two weeks without a word and then come back only to show a pic of everything being listed in the beads shop on Friday.  :)

More pics tomorrow of the individual sets and focal beads.  Then I'll work towards catching you up on what has been keeping me busy.

I hope you all had the Merriest of Christmases.  My boy child declared this the best one yet.  I agreed with him.  :)

Everybody's Workin for the Weekend!

I am so glad the weekend is almost here.  I have spent too many nights working until midnight and last night was another.  For this reason, I'm ready for fall to come (whoever thought I'd say that?  I freeze when it goes under 85F) to help bring a close to summer storms and construction that wreak havoc on phone company networks.

This time next Friday, I will be headed to the airport with Cassandra to fly up to Philadelphia.  Lorelei and Nancy will be driving down from New York to pick us up before heading to BeadFest 2010!!!  I know there will be tons of vendors and I'm really looking forward to meeting so many new people and folks I know only online.  Give me a shout out if you're going to be there next weekend.  I would LOVE to meet you!

I had wanted to get on the torch last night, but it was thundering and that made me nervous about having my kiln turned on.  So I skipped torching and got those two focals above listed in my Etsy shop.  Since I was already up so late for work, I thought I would sit outside before going to bed to look for the Perseids.  But all I saw was tons of stars and a coupla of airplanes flying low.  Maybe I will be luckier this weekend.

I plan on being on the torch tonight after I get the kids in bed.  Onto Gigi's eggs!  And hoping for more torch time this weekend to make even more eggs.  My goal is to get caught up on that wait list before I leave next Friday, but I think that might be unrealistic....we'll see. :)

With that, I will leave you with this 80s music video of Everybody's Workin for the Weekend.  It gets me jumping and dancing, full of energy and ready to start this weekend!  Tomorrow night I am having dinner out with my Mom and then we are going to see Eat Pray Love.  Woot!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!  I should have lots of new egg pics to show you on Monday!

The Shelves - Finished!

I finished the second coat of white on the shelves yesterday morning and sponged on the purple last night before I went to bed.  Early early this morning, the boy child helped apply the yellow to the front.  

 

Todd helped me move the shelves out of the garage and upstairs.  We moved the bottom section into place and left the top section out in the hall.  Henry had to supervise.

 

Then Todd took the kids to a Bounce House to burn off some energy before taking them out for pizza.  I spent close to four hours getting Owen's shelves set up, bolted to the wall, arranged and then cleaning/organizing both his room and Chloe's.  Both rooms look so much better and I feel like I accomplished soooooo much between Friday and today!  

Owen was thrilled with how the shelves turned out once he came home :)

My Mom painted those O-W-E-N letters and gave them as a Christmas present to the boy.  I finally got them hung up today.  That is my old roll top desk and my Mom made the quilt hanging behind it for Owen.  I just love it.  It makes me smile every time I walk into his room.

I built those shelves to the right of the desk when we lived in our last house.  They held all of my craft supplies and fabrics, but I think they work better now in Owen's room.  I had to cut off a couple inches on the top so they would fit in his room.  What I'm loving the most right now is that I can see the carpet at the base of those shelves!

And here are pics of some of the beads that I made Friday night after the kids went to bed and the new tank of gas was hooked back up.  These are being made into a pair of earrings for an upcoming giveaway on a friend's blog.

This is a focal bead with a burst bubble.  I liked the texture inside it (which I really struggled to adequately photograph) and decided not to melt it closed before annealing.