New Eggs

More eggs out of the kiln!  I really like these rosy speckles on the beige over on the left.  Also that swirly red over on the right.  The sun was toying with me, so it's not the best lighting.  But I wanted to share with you all so you could see the latest.

On an exciting note (at least for me), my beads were used in Tari Kahrs' necklace featured in Stringing magazine that just came out this past week.  It was really cool seeing how my beads grew up this time.  Mrs. Pearl and Pebble had me make these beads for her months ago, but I had no idea how she would use them.  Fantastic piece and congrats on getting published, Tari!!!

Aaaaaannnd, I also got a little advertising spot in the Artisan's Village section.  Woot!  

My little ad is right next to LeAnn's of Summers Studio.  I love being in good company!

Also featured in this issue are necklaces by Lisa Petrillo of Lucid Moon Studio and Lorelei!  And if you flip to the very back page, you can read an interview with Lorelei.  Go ladies!  How much do you ALL rock?!

More Eggs

Lots of Sandstone eggs in this batch!  The leftover cobalts and lapis are in here, so someone soon may get lucky with these.

More eggs in the kiln tonight and hopefully pics coming tomorrow.

We brought home a new kitteh today.  She is a little 8 month old tortie and has only one eye because someone left her on the front step of the vet's office with a bad eye infection.  It didn't respond to treatment, so they had to remove it.  No pics to share yet, but soooooon.  She is also still waiting for a name.  The vet warned us she is smart and knows how to open cabinets and will likely figure out her way into any room or closet.  She is making herself at home in our guest room tonight, standing on our shoulders and licking our socks (our socks! what kind of cat licks socks?!). 

I leave in three days for Philadelphia for Beadfest and I am soooo excited!  Looking forward to a girls' weekend, cake and beads!!!

New Look on Etsy

So what do you guys think of the new shop look?

It is going to take some getting used to for me to see the menu on the left, instead of the right.  I'm not thrilled with the shop announcement being shortened.  I kinda liked for people to be able to immediately see recent feedback and the link to my blog.  Hmmm.  May have to work on re-wording the announcement to get people's attention so they click on the Read More link.

But what I REALLY REALLY like about the new shop front is that I can now feature FOUR items at the top of my shop, instead of just three.  That's pretty cool, right?!  So.  What do you all think of the new look on Etsy?  Do you like?  Have I missed other changes that you LOVE/LOATHE?

There will be another post coming tonight showing off the eggs I made last night, so check back :) 

Friday Night Eggs

This weekend did not go quite as planned, but not in a bad way.  Just extremely busy.  I did not get on the torch like I had planned, so I only have these eggs to show from Friday night.  They are awaiting the next batch before I etch them for that matte finish that so many of you love.

What?  You want to see a better shot of the eggs than crammed into a little tupperware container?  Okay.  Here they are.  :)  One sandstone with swirls and the rest with different kinds of speckles.

I will be back on the torch tonight making more eggs after the kids are in bed.  Yay for playing with fire!  Unfortunately, I know now I won't be caught up on egg orders before I leave on Friday for Philadelphia.  Thank you to the latest folks who jumped on that wait list at the top of this blog.  You guys rock!

Now, go check out Lune Designs' latest bracelet!  She used my light blue beads with the green speckles.  She has held onto these babies for several months, waiting for the right inspiration to strike.  I'm glad she waited because I think this end result is just fabulous!

Bike Ride Benefit for Kylan Warren

Kylan was working in a Georgia Power bucket truck and jumped out to avoid an explosion when co-workers accidentally drilled into a gas line one month ago. He was only 25 and died yesterday morning before the ride began.  He had only been married for three months.  My heart breaks for his wife.  Coworkers and fellow bikers from Georgia Power organized this ride. In the planning process, coworker Michael Hyde was in a motorcycle accident and his wife died.  Here are a few pics of close to 60 bikes waiting in a nearby town, ready to join the big procession that started in downtown Atlanta and rode up to Ellijay (a North Georgia town).

This was the fun part...photographing all the bikes and seeing what made each one unique.  I overheard a few conversations contemplating whether or not I would be riding a bike with them, or if I was not really the biker type.  I think the general consensus was I was not the biker type.  I just smiled. 

Hmmmm, this would safely hold a camera....

Can you tell they are passionate about their bikes?

Seriously, if you can't trust a biker, who can you trust?

I spy.....Kelley?

Before they roared up their bikes, Tabitha and I took off and drove up the highway a mile or so.  We took some test shots and scoped out the area to see where the best vantage point might be.

This was emotionally overwhelming watching 300+ bikers drive by and so many of them waving thanks for coming out. Their sense of community for each other was amazing.  Well over a dozen police escorted this ride from the start to the back end.  This Frito Lay truck pulled over at the start and stayed put until the last police car drove by.  How respectful?!

I was lying on my stomach on the shoulder of the highway to take pics.  I used my elbows for a tripod to steady my camera and now have some nice scrapes.  They functioned ok for a tripod, but it was hard to keep myself together.  With every wave and passing biker, I cried harder and struggled to see through my viewfinder.  What an incredible celebration of Kylan's life with hundreds of men and women participating in a ride, doing something that Kylan loved.

I bet in real life, this lady is a hoot to be around.  Can you see her long braids coming out of the helmet?

I didn't realize there were any children on the ride until I uploaded this picture.  I found even more people waving in the pics than I had seen at the time.

I felt privileged to be there to capture these moments.  Since I have posted pics on facebook, I have received thank you notes and friend requests from folks who were there on the ride.  I was so touched.  Apparently they were, too.

My Bead All Grown Up

I was just snooping around shops and wanted to show off the work of one of my customers.  She primarily makes and sells stitch markers for knitters, but occasionally Spindle Cat Studio makes pins that I think are so lovely.  She sent one to me once as a BIG Thank You and now it goes with me everywhere on my bag.  For her artsy creations, she sells in her Copper Musings shop on Etsy.

Isn't her copper twirling most excellent on this pin?  I love her work!  Here is a close up of my bead.  This is still one of my favorites.  I love the teal and then the thin outline of silver before the dark outline against the ivory base.

If you are a knitter, you should definitely check out her Spindle Cat Studio shop for well-made stitch markers (she's been featured in different knitting magazines and you can see by her sales that she is quite the busy shop owner).  But my favorite (since I'm not a knitter) is the yarn she dyes.  It is heavenly in the colors she creates!

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!

Honesty, Inspiration and Celebration of Self

Or more appropriately named.... 

My Thursday Ramblings.

Honesty and integrity are extremely important to me.

Both in my personal and professional life.  

I can't stand dishonesty.  

I lose sleep over it.  

It makes me rat myself out to friends sometimes, when I'm planning a surprise for them.

Tabitha, please don't hit me too hard when we go rafting at the end of this month, ok?

And it also makes me do things like remove people from the eggs list who blatantly and bead-for-bead copied the work of other jewelry designers.  On multiple pieces.

I struggled with this.  I never want to say "No" to a customer.

I'm not good at saying No.

I know it is not my place to judge others or their actions.  I try very hard to understand others' perspectives and what it is like to be in their shoes.  But I couldn't on this.  So I removed the name and sent an email to the person about why I did this, apologized for not following through on the custom order and hoped that s/he would understand.

This generated a big discussion at our dinner table with the family.  We talked about cheaters in school and that when you work really hard to learn different concepts, it's not really fair for others to be allowed to copy your work and get the same nice grades.  When we talked about this, it was interesting to see the change in my kids' facial expressions as they grasped this concept.  And they agreed as they thought about all their hard work these last two weeks practicing spelling words.

Which leads to the topic of copying and integrity in the beading and jewelry world.  On the beading side, I am always always always happy to try new techniques and be challenged with custom requests.  I haven't yet called Uncle in the attempt to get things right, although I have come close a time or two.  I love when people email me with descriptions of what they want....this color with these kind of stripes, or encase this, oooh, but can you add that?  LOVE it. 

That being said, I would prefer to not receive pictures of other lampworkers beads to see if I can make the same.  Yes, it is a fun personal challenge to see if I can teach myself different techniques without a tutorial.  But that wouldn't be right for me to then sell those beads.  Not if I didn't change it up and make it my own.  Granted, there are basic bead designs that are well, just basic.  If I'm encasing a small bead in tons of clear, there's really not much I can do to differentiate it from other lampworkers encased beads.  But still.  I am betting you understand what I am saying.

Erin Prais-Hintz of Tesori Trovati wrote an absolutely fantastic post about how you let yourself be influenced.  If you have more than a minute, I would highly recommend clicking over to read her contemplations and conclusions on this.  She warns you at the start to grab a cup of coffee before you sit down to read.  It is very thought provoking about inspiration and how you run with that inspiration.  She included this quote, which I love:

"It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation."
~ Herman Melville

There is also a post written by Kerry Bogert of KABs Concepts about where inspiration takes you after learning the techniques of other artists.  She is celebrating her Totally Twisted Flickr group and the designs from others using her techniques.  Many wonderful creations and none of them are copies.

And while I have you clicking all over the place...check out what Lori Anderson of Pretty Things wrote.  She discusses celebrating yourself.  For who you are and not wasting time/days wishing that you were as good as someone else.  It made me think about appearances in that some of us may seem more blessed than others.  Some have it easier than others.  Some are prettier, more talented, wealthier (as if these should ever be a basis for determining sense of worth or value as individuals), smarter or who has more legos than others.  Or who has a Little Horse and who doesn't.  ;) But we don't know what those seemingly more fortunate people have been through on a daily basis or in their past.  

I don't think that you guys truly need any of these reminders because I am totally convinced I have THE best people who come to my blog to visit with me.  You guys are so wonderfully kind.  And encouraging.  I wish I knew all of you in real life.  That you could sit in my kitchen and share a dinner with my family before taking you to my studio and making one bead before pushing you to sit at the other torch and try making one yourself.  But I need these reminders some times.  

The duck on the pond looks so calm and serene, but underneath the surface those feet are paddling like heck to move it forward and away from its past.  Some of us are unemployed, battle daily migraines, are the crisis managers for supporting families and friends through heart attacks and suicides, contend with multiple sclerosis, juggle work and family as single parents, cope with fear as our children are overseas either with the military or just continuing education.  

So with that, I embrace my own challenges and pray I don't collect more along the way.  I will celebrate being me and focus on my own strengths.  My own challenges and battles?  Well, at least they are familiar and I know how to deal with them.  :)

All of the beads in the pics on this post are in my Etsy shop if you liked what you saw.  Some were added just last night and others are waiting to find out what they will be when they grow up.  If you missed my post from LATE last night, go back and look at more pics of these lovely cobalt blue eggs here.

Aaaaaaand, one last thing...

Kristi/DreamSome Designs has a couple dozen of my raku beads that she's working with now.  You can see her current project and read a bit of a tease about my raku beads, but will have to stay tuned to see what she does with them and how they grow up.

Did Somebody Say They Wanted to See Blue Eggs?

Well here they are!  :)

What do you think?  The two in the middle are lapis and the other five are cobalt.

I hadn't tried using cobalt yet, but I am loving the raku on it!  And the orange and red, too. 

I made the lapis eggs just in case the cobalt ones appeared so dark they would be black.  But they aren't too dark at all.  I LOVE them!

Check out Karyn's blog.  She made a lovely fused cabochon that perfectly matches some of my black eggs and bebe black beads with raku.  Go look!  I think the shape is way cool.  I know my kiln can fuse glass, but I have never tried it and wouldn't know the first step in what to do.  I wish Karyn were closer because I would crash her studio, but we're separated by a few oceans, thirteen time zones and one hemisphere.  Sigh.

I Petted a Zebra!

We decided late Saturday night to take a drive up to Dahlonega on Sunday afternoon to visit a wildlife nature preserve.  It was about an hour and a half drive, which we thought by driving North might earn us temps a few degrees cooler.  We were wrong.  :)  It was just as hot.  But in spite of the heat, we had sooooo much fun!

Driving up, there were very few clouds in the sky.  Maybe you can see if you look at the reflection on the mirror?

Once at the Chestatee Wildlife Preserve, we were greeted by zoo and World Famous Zedonk signs.

Here is the baby zedonk.  She was so cute.  She had striped legs just like my daughter has several days each week!

The baby was very sleepy.  Mom stayed close to her baby at all times.

Meet Dad.  Dad has already been introduced to a new donkey, who is keeping him company in the neighboring pasture to Mom #1 and the baby.  Before we left, he let out a loud, long whinny.  But it was nothing like the whinny of a horse.  It was almost like fingernails on a chalkboard.  One of the strangest sounds I have ever heard!

Here is the South end of Dad traveling North (thanks Chris!).  I love how perfect the stripes are as they wrap around his back end!!!

The preserve had several emus.  Can I tell you that emus creep me out?  At first glance, I think they are ostriches and love the long legs leading up to this massive body before another equally long and skinny neck lead upwards.  But the face and the eyes and the crazy hair/feathers on top?  Creeps me out.  It was breathing through it's mouth (probably because it was so hot!), so the beak was open and we could hear it breathing.  It looked at me with plotting eyes, like it wanted to eat me for a snack and wouldn't feel the least bit guilty afterwards.  I had no desire to try to pet this guy.  I just knew he would take a finger!

This big fat billy goat was in the same pasture as the emu, the fluffy feathered goose and a few horses.  It was really neat seeing such different animals all thrown together in one living space.  I love goats (aside from the fact I constantly refer to the girl child as a goat), I think they make the coolest sounds.

I loved the big fluffy feathers on the back of this goose.  She was pretty, although slightly dirty.  I have a history of being chased by geese, so I didn't try to pet her.  Sad, considering my Dad nicknamed me Goose as a child and still calls me that.  I'm kin, you silly goose!  Don't chase me!

The horses let us pet them as they ambled around.  They were really hoping we were going to feed them, but all we had were a couple of slim jims (which the kids discovered they liked this weekend) and that just seemed wrong to off a little petrified cow to a horse.

There was this one peacock who refused to pose or give me a face shot.  He also did not cooperate upon request to fan out his tail.  Unruly guy!  But aren't the blues and teals just gorgeous??

KJ, this one is for you!  There were about eight of these beautiful cockatoos in a large fenced in area together.  One of them kept telling me "Hello!".  There were McCaws close by and they wanted to talk about Crackers.  I suppose they were hungry, but we couldn't get close enough to offer them any crackers.

The McCaws were guarded by two of these guys.  They didn't stop walking (and rather fast, I might add!) for the ten minutes we stood watching.  The snappers paced 20 feet, back and forth non-stop.  I wondered if they were nervous, or just health conscious and wanting to keep up their muscle tone to support their big shells.  They were not quite as big as my friend who came to visit a couple of months ago.

Here is the sweet girl who let us pet her.  The whole time I couldn't stop thinking to myself "I'm petting a ZEBRA!!!"  Who gets to do that?  Her hair felt the same to me as a horse.  She was a sweaty girl because it was so hot.  She just wanted some loving and made it easy to rub her ears and her face from her forehead to her nose.  I didn't want to leave.  But there was coughing and shuffling coming from a very hot and sweaty husband letting us know it was time to walk, if only to create our own breeze.

They also had a grizzly bear, who appeared to be very hot.  His mouth hung open and that poor bottom lip just stuck out even farther as he breathed through his mouth in our heat.  He was the favorite animal for both of my kids, but I just felt sorry for him.  So much fur, so hot and no companion.  Sigh.

There were two white tigers in a large field surrounded by lots of chain link fencing.  The female charged one end and stood on alert when two Harley's pulled into the parking lot nearby.  She must have thought their roaring was a challenge to her territory.

Here is a picture of kudzu.  A quick growing vine that covers fields, forests and homes seemingly overnight.  It is a pest in the South with its fast growth and then the ability to blog out light with its large leaves, thus killing whatever is underneath.  All of the green is pretty and turns anything into the appearance of a lush jungle, but it is generally considered a nuisance down here.

It is late now, while I am writing this.  After 11pm.  I worked until 10pm Tuesday tonight.  I missed picking up the kids and having dinner with them, although I did get to put the girl child to bed.  I say this only to lead into this --> when my husband gets tired, he rubs his eyes with his fist like a little kid.  It makes me smile and think about how much I love this man for so many reasons.  He just walked past me rubbing his eyes and my heart melted.

There are some new cobalt eggs in the kiln now.  I hope to be able to share some pictures of them with you this evening!