Easter Weekend

Here are my two little loves, on the hunt for Easter eggs in the backyard. O was most helpful in pointing his sister toward eggs once he hit his gathering limit. I love that they are friends and work together. Sometimes.


And here begins my playtime at the torch from Saturday. I spent multiple 30 minute chunks in my studio melting glass between hanging out with the Grandparents and snuggling the kids before Todd and I went out on a date (woo hoo! a kids free evening). I logged maybe 3 hours total on the torch, but had a most enjoyable time playing with new color combinations and a new color....

Lake Geneva which is polka dotted on the ivory beads below. The transparent rod is a deep royal blue, but on white it becomes a light blue. On ivory, it is a deeper blue. It turns into a greenish hue when I reduce the flame to eliminate oxygen. The ivory always reacts excellently with glass that has silver in it. Here you can see the dark rings around the Geneva, which a thin white outline separating the dark rings from the interior color.


These beads have a white core underneath a layer of pinks that I "painted" on by dipping a hot rod of clear into the frit jar before melting it around the white. Then I heavily encased the beads in clear to magnify the pinks. They look like candy to me.
I like these purple beads. I used a purple frit with Gaffer clear, which produced a nice range of purples (the frit had a nice color combination, the Gaffer makes them stand out by being the marvelous clear that it is). But I also worked it a little too hot, so the purple devitrified in spots (you might be able to see the chalky white if you look closely) and a little boiling/pitting which mars the smooth surface.

And here is a pendant necklace I just made for a Twitter friend's weight loss challenge...Aweigh. Heather of Sentimental Journey has pulled in some really cool donations to give as award prizes each week to the participant who has lost the most weight. I had already been experimenting with larger beads to be used as either worry stones or birthing necklace beads (to focus on during labor), so it only took me a few tries before I decided on the combination that I thought would be great for this leather focal necklace. This bead comfortably fits in the palm of my hand and is smooth on the back side. I encased it in clear, but didn't melt it in completely on the front so the fingers would know without even looking which side is facing out. I used a sterling silver hook & eye clasp and a little SS tear drop to dangle beneath my bead. I'm sad to see this one leave so quickly....a winner has already been chosen for the week. I'll just have to make more of these big beads!

No climbing poles for me!

Here is my only shot at climbing phone poles...training in Dallas two weeks ago. While the union did not come to an agreement with my company on a new contract, they did agree to continue business as usual until they do come to an agreement. For me, this means I do NOT have to go to Oklahoma to work as a field technician (ie. climbing poles, descending into manholes or installing/repairing phone lines for the locals).

I have spent 300+ hours over the past several months taking 57 training courses. It has been stressful working 50+ hour work weeks for months on top of my normal job, as well as thinking of the possibility of leaving my family for an unknown amount of time to perform strike duty. My time on the torch considerably decreased as a result to spend my evenings in online training. My beloved torch and source of sanity renewal, oh how I have missed you! I am extremely thankful that the union agreed to not strike and that I may stay home. With my family. With free evenings to now return to my torch or my husband's side on the sofa when he's not playing tennis. I can get caught up on 24 and American Idol. I can again make commitments on Etsy and know I can fulfill them. On time.

It is the simple things that I am returning to and that I am now running toward with open arms. I have been doing heel clicks all day in thanks & happiness :)

And an added bonus? My Dad can finally stop singing Wichita Lineman to me everytime we talk!

Eagan, MN artist - Sherry Ehret of JitterJewels

Sherry is a fantastic jewelry designer and is living the dream! She has been working full-time, designing jewelry for years. What would be her formal living room in her home is actually her studio and showroom. When I visited Sherry last summer, I was in awe of her designs, workmanship and the sheer quantity of pieces displayed. It was like I had walked into an upscale boutique off Main Street because there was soooo much to look at and touch and look at some more :)


Sherry has a great eye for design and color combinations. Her work ranges from simply subtle to complex and elegant to bold and flashy. I'm sure you can find a piece for any occasion, whether you're dressing down for the beach or up for a formal ball. I LOVE how she can take so many different components and put them all together to make stunning jewelry that anyone can wear!


And you might have noticed some of my beads in her jewelry, which I think is so cool. I enjoy watching my beads 'grow up' and live new & different lives in ways I would never dream up. Like the etched green & yellow beads in the bracelet above. I loved these beads, but I could never figure out what to do with them. Sherry created this bracelet and now I can't imagine a more perfect design with these colors!


She even makes name and birthstone bracelets similar to the one above. Sherry made one that says GRANDMA for Sharon (my mom-in-law) that she wears ALL. THE. TIME. And I got Sherry to make a bracelet for one of my good friend's with her son's name and birthstones (which she LOVED!). Just send her an email if you want something specific, Sherry takes on custom work all the time :)

You can visit Sherry's Jitter Jewels shop on Etsy at JitterJewels.etsy.com

My Honeys

Yesterday afternoon as my husband and I were instant messaging back/forth on Yahoo, he typed the most romantic thing. He told me we were meant to be together.

Now granted, it was after we had been discussing what to have for dinner and we simultaneously suggested grilled cheese samiches and soup. But still. He said it. He meant it. And I'll take it. I love this man more than anything!

On another note, I have been completely swamped with getting my training completed in case our union goes on strike and I get shipped off to Durant, Oklahoma. Swamped equates to 12 hour days in front of the computer learning about test sets, ground faults, dial tone generation, pole climbing, aerial lift trucks and 37 other courses. Yes, I really have completed 42 courses. I have 8 more to go and they will likely take another 50 hours of my time. Sadly, this means no torch time for me. And really, not any blogging time either.

But I was going mad with training and I needed (yes, NEEDED) to take this five minute break and share with everyone about my wonderful husband.

South Bend, IN artist - Beatrice Studio

I bought this clutch from Beatrice Studio at the end of last week and it arrived on Monday while I was in Dallas for training with work. While Anna's photographs are awesome (note-to-self, find out what she uses for lighting), the purse is even better in person! I was so excited to get home after being gone three days to find this waiting for me. Her packaging was great (it arrived like a birthday present wrapped in a green bow & tissue paper), but the colors of the fabric and her workmanship are most excellent!!! The big square button is too cool :)



Again, love her photography. Digging the button used with these green zebra stripes.

And her stash of uber-cool fabrics. LOVE the bright, cheery colors! I know where I'll be getting some of my Christmas shopping completed this year for fam/best friends!

You can buy Anna's great items in her Etsy shop at www.beatricestudio.etsy.com. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/beatricestudio. Beatrice Studio also keeps her blog current at http://beatricestudio.wordpress.com.

Or her number one location with the easiest url to remember at www.beatricestudio.com.

New bead pics

Too tired to write much, but wanted to share pics before I go to bed so I can say I accomplished something tonight ;)

Here is a new CiM color I just bought recently called Plum. Love this purple as it is nothing like any other shade I have worked with...not really lavender or violet or purple....more plum. It is a bit of a milky transparent. Not exactly opaque, but definitely not a transparent, either.


Now start the pics of beads with Taxco Silver Turquoise. In rod form, it is a transparent teal/blue. Put it on an opaque which reacts well to metals (like ivory & a handful of other colors) and it turns into a bit of an opaque itself.


LOVE the silver outline followed by a black outline touching the yellow glass in these beads. It does the same on the ivory, but seems more pronounced to me on the yellow....


And here we have the Taxco Silver Turquoise on opaque turquoise beads (it remains a transparent), on Uranium Yellow (where it turns a transparent green) and in a twisty with ivory around a clear bead (where it looks almost completely black). All of these beads were etched. I think the twisty on clear is my favorite because the clear glass appears more grey/silver once etched.

New listings

I got my new photo tent/cube & put it to good use today. Not so thrilled with the lights that came with it that were supposed to be oh-so-super.

But the tent worked great when I took it out to my deck for mid-day photography session over my lunch hour today.


I got all of these listed in my Etsy shop tonight before 24 started! :)

Let me know what you think of the photography and/or the beads.

Toggle Clasps & Big Hole Mandrels

These are the beads/clasps I made in Amy's Toggle Clasp class last Monday in Brea, California. We used 5/8ths mandrels to make the ring part of the clasp. I didn't melt the dots in all the way on the purple or green for a more funky finish.
For the toggle/bar part of the clasp, we either cut rods into small sections & melted them to small spacer beads or we heated them to bend into V's and attached those to small spacers. My favorite is the shape of the V that I made with the red glass.


Here is a pic of the big hole beads on the mandrel, although I used three separate mandrels to make them....one for each bead. These beads take up much more surface area on the mandrel and are often very difficult to remove after being annealed.

My secret for easily removing beads from mandrels is to cut up these Scotch-Brite pads into 2x4" rectangles to hold onto the beads and twist them back & forth while I hold the other end of a mandrel still with a pair of pliers. The beads twist off like a piece of cake (normally!).

California

It was a stressful trip, or rather a much dreaded event for the two weeks leading up to it. In my stomach, I knew I would not be returning home to my family. My flight was canceled last Sunday (as were all flights leaving Atlanta) when the Blizzard of 2009 hit us with 4-6 inches of snow before the afternoon had barely arrived. I arrived at John Wayne airport in Orange County on Monday morning after catching the first non-stop out of ATL.

Training ended early and I found that Amy was instructing a class in a nearby town only 20 miles away. We had previously agreed to meet for coffee one afternoon, but finding out about her class and that it had an opening was an unexpected thrill. I have admired her work ever since I started up my Etsy shop a year ago and have enjoyed exchanging tweets with her on Twitter. In her class, I learned how to make a toggle clasp out of glass. My efforts aren't that pretty, but then I was focusing more on technique than color combinations & decorations. I'll post pics tomorrow. Before I left, Amy gave me one of her signature droplet beads :)


When driving back to my hotel after the class, American Pie came on the radio singing to me that this would be the day that I die. A quick push of the seek button to the next radio station landed me in the middle of a rage on Revelations from a Christian radio station. Off went the radio and the hands gripped the 2 and 10 positions on my steering wheel for the next 30 minutes.


During the course of my training class, I learned how to use various test sets for finding troubles on phone/data lines in the field. I climbed down into a manhole and I raised myself 40 feet in the air on a bucket truck extension arm. The view of the San Bernardino mountains was awesome, although I didn't have my camera with me.


The highlights of the trip were taking Amy's class (was totally unprepared for any torch time!), hanging out with her for a coupla hours in Starbucks the next day, driving to San Clemente down the Coastal Hwy (all the above pics were taken on my drive to SC or on their pier), dinner with Level 3 friends of Todd's in San Clemente, training ending a day early and getting a 3 hour layover in Salt Lake City where my best friend from the 2nd grade picked me up & hung out with me over dessert. This was the first time I have seen Becky in 25 years. How fun to catch up face-to-face after so many years and now be moms.

So. Very. Thankful. To. Be. Home. Safe.

With my husband and kids. They are the absolute best things I have going on in my life!

Travel

No, I don't have any new bead pics to share. I'm sorry. I did make 40+ beads on Friday night. And I did make another 40+ beads yesterday. I even got all the beads from Friday night cleaned out and ready to photograph. The beads from yesterday are still on mandrels standing up on display on my kitchen window sill. I'll get the pics taken next weekend. When I get back home from California.

If only I had known that leaving the house at 10am today was a fruitless decision. Then I would have stayed home. Snuggled with the kids. Snuggled with my wonderful husband who offered to keep me company while I sat at the torch & melted glass the other night. And taken bead pics on the back porch while the sky was white with snow.


Instead, I stood in line at Hartsfield for four hours. FOUR HOURS, people! For just a few inches of snow that has all melted, but single-handedly destroyed the entire flight schedule at the Atlanta airport and canceled all flights for today. They changed me to a non-stop flight that leaves at 8:25am tomorrow. Which means I need to get up & leave before the crack of dawn. In fact, I'll need to be at the AIRPORT before the crack of dawn. So I can wait again because there will likely be ice somewhere in Georgia causing problems. Not necessarily at Hartsfield, but somewhere. They have already started closing schools in/around Atlanta. So when you think of me tomorrow, I'll just be waiting...

Back from vacation & making new beads

I've only been back from vacation for a few days and had to replace a propane tank before firing up my torch again. That has created a separate set of challenges which I won't go into here, so I'll just stick to showing you pics of my latest beads :)

Below are some black base beads with white dots covered in cranberry fuschia swirls. Has been awhile since I've done the white dots on black, but this is the first time I have used frit on clear to swirl over the white dots instead of plain-Jane transparent rods. I like the end result very much!


Some old Spiral Dance frit used in these beads with the same technique as above. I like the glittery, sparklies that came out :)

Some of Val Cox's Gypsy Skirt frit helped make these beads. Instead of clear, I used a pale transparent pink. But I think the pinkness of these beads came more from the frit than the glass.

And lastly a set of cranberry swirls with white cores that Cristi asked me to wrap in silver dots by using fine silver wire (the silver is 99.99999% pure). Lemme know how you think I did, ok?

Arizona - February 2009

Ok, a quick post with a few pics from our trip because I know some of you want to see :)

My two favorite guys when we ate lunch at the Farm in Tempe. Great little sandwich shop in the middle of a pecan grove. They also had a great artist's studio & small farm for produce & chickens at the end of the orchard. Fun afternoon!

Who knew midgets from my family would ever be able to jump on their own to reach the monkey bars?! My boy did and he was able to swing his way all the way across!!!

The kids took turns sleeping in our room or on the floor with the Grandparents in their room. Bean insisted on moving the sleeping bag into the closet when she slept with us in our room :)

Owen playing the archeologist at the Southwest Science Museum in Mesa. He had fun brushing aside all the rubber pellets before finding several 'fossils'.

Uncle Mike with my Grandma Eloise

Home Sweet Home

We were in Arizona for a whole week and loved every minute of it with our family in the warmer/drier temps. The grandparents (Todd's folks) spoiled the kids rotten with love and daily trips to the swimming pool. Todd and I got plenty of time to rest & get our health back from the flu. We shared delicious dinners with my Uncle Mike, Aunt Gail and cousins on several different evenings. And my cousin Jesse schooled Owen in the fine art of winning at Super Mario Kart.

We (all of the girls --> moi, Chloe, Grandma Eloise, Grandma Sharon, Grandma Suzanney and Aunt Gail) went to the Great Fair in Fountain Hills yesterday where there were 400+ vendors/artists. It was a lot of fun and great weather for walking around all afternoon. Chloe picked out tie-dyed hats for Owen & herself, but I didn't find anything to buy other than Dippin Dots, Funnel Cakes and Ginormous Hot Dogs. It was a fun day! I wish I had a pic of the fountain that went off for ten minutes at the top of every hour. I'm betting it shot up a couple hundred feet into the air.

We are home now and the kids are in bed. Glad we have a day to rest & unpack before getting into the daily grind of work & school again. Although it would be nice if we had another week of vacation to spend in Arizona with our fam or just chilling on the homefront. It has been close to 3 weeks since I've been on the torch and I am suffering serious withdrawal. First on the agenda tomorrow is to change out propane tanks when I run up to the grocery store to buy milk & cereal for the kidlets.

I am determined to get a coupla hours on the torch tomorrow making beads with new/different techniques. I have long been wanting to make black beads with white dots covered by transparents. Those have been on the mental To Do list for months (ok, years) and I just haven't gotten around to it. Not a particularly difficult technique, but they look so cool. I want to make some new color combo twisties. And I want to play with more of my frit that I bought a month ago from Val Cox.

I just bought a TON of frit last night from her and I'm so excited because Sabrina said she was shipping it out today. She ships Priority USPS, so it might come Monday if I'm lucky or Tuesday at the latest. I can't wait!

After I get the camera unpacked & pics downloaded, I'll post a new blog with pics of beads made by ASGB (Arizona Society of Glass Beadmakers) artists that inspired me. :)

Raising Arizona

We made it out to Phoenix as a family, without eating our children on the plane. Todd was just too exhausted and I worked on blocking out the five screaming bebes in the surrounding rows. The girl child is back to her normal self and the boy child ditched his fever as of this morning. Both make a concerted effort to tell me their strep throat is ALL GONE, so they don't need to take any more medicine. Granted, if I was having to chew up those fowl smelling amoxycillin tablets, I'd be campaigning an end to the meds, too. Todd is still hacking & coughing and my fever disappears for only a few hours before returning. Blech. At least we are with a wonderful set of grandparents to help watch & entertain the kids while we crawl back into bed and sleep.

In spite of remaining under the weather, we have immensely enjoyed the excellent Phoenix weather and spending time with family. Sunday night we went over to my Uncle Mike & Aunt Gail's home for dinner and hung out with the cousins. Yes, that's my Aunt Gail on the very left in the green shirt & specs who taught me how to melt glass back in 2005. She was the instigator of my addiction to playing with fire and making beads....I can't thank her enough for igniting this passion! My cousins and J's girlfriend are on the left. My Grandma Eloise (she doesn't look 90, does she?) and my Mom are front/center with Uncle Mike in the middle looking over Grandma while we're holding up the squirmers on the right.

We got massages tonight which were awesome. If you live in the Mesa area, or even within a 45 minute driving radius....you should make an appointment at Simple Cure Massage Therapy. Their hour long massages were forty five bucks and the massages were really an hour long (ok, both therapists went closer to 70 minutes with both of us). It was a small shop with only two massage rooms, but the therapists delivered phenomenal massages!

Leaving on a Jet Plane....well, maybe

our bags aren't packed and laundry has yet to be completed. This is typical the night before leaving on vacation.

But Todd caught the flu, spiked a 104+ fever on Monday, got rid of it on Tuesday, it came back to 103+ on Wednesday leading to a trip to the doctor for a shot in the butt and a 5 day supply of Tami-Flu. Last night, the girl child revved up a little fever and earned herself to a trip to the doctor's office this morning and a positive Strep Throat test. Tonight, the boy child sported a temperature climbing over 100 and a sore throat. I have felt like crap since Monday, with sporadic fevers and negative energy, which surprisingly returned today (perhaps from drinking all of Mary's highly touted Hot Lemony Pledge...aka TheraFlu). All of the above health issues one on top of another....not so typical. Vacation or not. None of it typical. Todd NEVER gets sick. Never.

How on earth are we going to all make it to the airport tomorrow evening to fly out to Phoenix for a week??? That remains up in the air. In the meantime, please think good thoughts for us with better health and safe travels.

Aaaaaaaannnnnnd, check out S. Kate's FaNtAsTiC copper work in the pics below. She is a prominent stitch marker designer/seller on Etsy as Spindle Cat Studios and has recently opened a new shop called Copper Musings.

Kate made my day today...she sent an unsolicited, surprise gift! It was a pin similar to the one in the pic below (I had wanted to take a pic of it today because the sun was out, but work was crazy and I didn't catch a break after getting back from the doctor's office with C this morning). It was the first pin that Kate made with one of my beads and she said she felt it should live with me. I was so touched! You can bet your ass I'll be proudly wearing this flying out to Phoenix, whenever that might be :)

Granted, she has recently bought a TON of my beads which is thrilling in itself, AND requested custom beads which were fun challenges, but Kate has sent me pics of so many of her new creations using my beads. I have fallen in love with her work & really enjoy seeing my beads used so differently than how I would ever put them into jewelry.

I am in awe of her wire wrapping skills. I have tried my hand at it and know 1.) how difficult it is and 2.) that I supremely suck at it. LOVE LOVE LOVE the pair of earrings she made below: I can't wear earrings, but if I did...these would be an absolute favorite worn ALL The time!!!!

This Weekend

Here are two sets of beads I have been busy making for Kat.  I love the look of raku on black, especially when it is etched.  I varied my technique a little this time and ended up with more blues :)

Kat also wanted the raku on beige.  What do you think...does this qualify as beige?

I LOVE this purple frit from Val Cox and melted it into clear rods to wrap around the light sky blue beads.  This was a color combination request from Chloe this past week...

More of Val's purple frit, but melted on top of white frit before swirling through clear beads.

And then silver melted on top of a Vetrofond Strawberry glass.  Quite a reaction happened between the silver and the glass, which you can see in the dark lines connecting the dots where the silver wire melted in.  This was a practice round at re-familiarizing myself with melting silver wire in the flame before I make a set for Cristi.  Hoping to get time on the torch to do that this week before we leave for Phoenix on the 14th (can't wait!)

We had temps in the high 60s with sun most of the weekend (cept for when I took pics this afternoon!  grrrr), but I took advantage of the warmer weather to 1. open the windows in the house and 2. take pics of beads to list in Etsy this week.

Counting down the days

Just eight more days until we head to Phoenix for a WHOLE WEEK with family and I am so excited!  I can't decide if I'm more thrilled about the warmer temps (in the 70-80s!!!) or seeing our fam....I'm leaning toward the latter, but the 80s are a close runner up if you know how I freeze, dress in layers and blast my space heater every year when Atlanta weather drops into the 50s or below.  I'm such a wimp.

Here is my Bean child from last weekend when she wasn't sporting hives.  Which is to say, she hadn't been at school that day because it was Sunday.  The hives have reappeared every day after being in her classroom for a few hours.  Every day since Jan 26th, the girl child has popped unbelievable hives from eating pineapple in her fruit cocktail (school didn't realize the new brand had pineapple in it).  She got a double whammy that day because her teacher brought in a fresh pineapple, chopped the top off it and stuck it in a petri dish on one of the kids tables.  Anyone who knows four year olds think that they would be inclined to touch something new?  Didn't think so.  Four year olds just don't touch new items.  I didn't see that until Tuesday night, so she had a good two school days to soak it in and play in it.  Gah!I think all of the kids rolled in it & then touched EVERYTHING in the classroom.  Kudos go to the assistant teachers for cleaning EVERY surface in the classroom to help get rid of the pineapple & stop her hives.  Tomorrow I take her to my doctor who eliminated ALL of my food and animal allergies through accupressure.  Yep.  All of them.  They haven't come back in over four years.

I have been playing with adding silver wire/drops to my beads and expect to have pics this weekend for an updated blog.  Right now, they are hanging out on a mandrel over my kitchen sink.  I take longer washing my hands just so I can look at them :)

Today is my Friday.  Taking a vacation day tomorrow to become reacquainted with my torch in the morning before I take Chloe to the doctor.  Thinking torch time in the afternoon is out as the girl child is begging to watch Sound of Music after her nap tomorrow.  Which is cool.  Any day watching Julie Andrews is a good day.  Sure beats work!