PMC class and more beads!

Here are my friends, Mary and Sheryll, at the PMC class we took together. We will be going for at least 4 weeks and it was super fun. We had a great time talking and playing with the silver clay.

Here's a picture of the room we are in. It's in a high school! LOL! Smells kinda like teenagers in there. Anyway, the gal in the brown dress is Cindy, our instructor. The class had a lot more people in it than I expected. There were 22 ladies there! Hey, maybe I don't live in a cultural void, after all. Hope springs eternal!!!

Here's another flower pendant! I need to put away the petal puller for a while now. I've had my fun and it's time to make some beads again. The holidays are coming!

Speaking of holidays...Here's a kidlet all dressed up and ready to go trick or treating! Pretty adorable, if I do say so myself.

Ohhh, I love the silver glass I bought. This bead is Nyx on opal yellow, I believe. I think it turned out pretty cool.

Disaster!

Can you say, "Bad Dog!" Yep, Puppy chewed Desiree's cosmetology time card for the week. Her points for this week are lost. :( Luckily, she hadn't eaten the time clock portion of the sheet yet so Desiree still gets the hours. Such a bummer. Sometimes, The Puppy is a baaaaaaaaad puppy. Usually when you are eating pizza and not sharing. Guess what Desiree had for lunch? Yep, you guessed it. And she NEVER shares.

A new perspective

My husband just sent me a link to a cool blog. I could spend days there.

http://indexed.blogspot.com/

I just got off the phone with a fellow beadmaker. Sometimes it really helps recharge the batteries to talk with a friend. I claim to be a girl yet I spend very little time on the phone. Funny, because I really love to have a good chat. I should be less of a hermit, I think.

I have no photos of beads today because Mark has the camera in his car. Grrr. Photos tomorrow.

Puppy bead tutorial

http://www.squidoo.com/loribeads
I've written up a quick tutorial on how to make Puppy beads. I hope you enjoy it!

Flower Power

I am officially addicted to making these fun flowers. They're awesome! String one on a cord and you have a great necklace. I love them. They take a while to make but the process is pretty fun.

Snowpeople and the zen of marketing

I had some requests for winter beads (ho ho ho...it's August). I love snowpeople any time of year and it seems pretty fitting since we've had the coldest summer since I've lived here in California, I think. We are just now getting some temperatures over the 80's. Every night, though, it drops below 60 again. Weird. Anyway, I love the breezy weather so I'm happy. Poor skinny girls in bikinis are going to have to put on a sweater. Boo hoo. Yeah, been on a diet for a few weeks now and I'm settling into cranky. :/ Ok, back to the snowpeople! I am experimenting with a few different styles. With hat, without hat, with buttons, without buttons, big eyes, little eyes, big noses, etc.... Not sure if we have a clear winner yet. I still have to try out poked eyes, stripey stocking caps and maybe even some sticky-outy arms. Although, I need to get some hi-temp wire to do that. Could be cute, though.



Ahhh yes, I promised some chat about the zen of marketing, didn't I? Well, I believe in truth in advertising. If I don't like something I made, I will tell ya. Like the beads below....I think if I were to sell these, they would be called "Tape Worms" because that's what they look like to me. And yet, I am compelled to make more. Damn Double Helix and their addictive glass....*shakes fist at sky* Look for my clever marketing scheme involving the benefits of tape worms in a weight loss program.... (wah, I wanna quesadilla).

Puppy knees and land of the lost beads

We found a new park to take The Puppy to! Los Gatos Creek park, I think it's called. Very pretty and dog friendly. YAY! It was quite beautiful and the trail is pretty long so we can get a good amount of exercise there. Puppy has very small legs but amazing stamina. She also has a very *ahem* healthy appetite. We keep her trim by taking her for long walks every weekend and at least 3/4mile every evening. So far, this has really worked and it keeps her active. She had knee surgery so my concern is always for her joints but my vet assures me that as long as there is no running involved, she is fine.

Where do lost beads go? I had taken this photo last week and was just about to add it to my Etsy store when I went to measure it and could not find it anywhere. Where do lost beads go? Have you seen this bead? Did I send it to someone as an extra? It's these kinds of things that make me realize that I am not in complete control of the universe. Not even my universe. LOL! Dang it.

Pony time!

Ok, time to have a giggle... Here is my very first attempt at a horse. It looks a bit more like a pony, I think. Next time I will have to make the body and nose much longer for it to look like a horse. Still, since this was WAY out of my comfort zone, I am mildly happy and amused with it.

Pure Glassy Nirvana

I am so excited! This package of Double Helix glass came in the mail today! That's a half pound each of Terra and Nyx and a quarter pound of Gaia. I am in glass heaven. I have one quick trip to the post office standing in between me and total glass bliss. Be back laterz....

Back to the drawing board

Ok, ok, come on back. I'm in a better mood now. I'm sorry I was cranky. Today I am struggling to get anything done! I should be going to the torch and creating my little heart out but I am doodling (I guess, as an Artiste I should call it 'sketching' lol!) and trying to figure out how to do a horse head bead. Sounds like it would be easy to do from memory, right? Well, au contrair, mon frair! I went out there and didn't have a clue where to start. So, back to the drawing board (literally) to figure out on paper where everything goes and what the proportions are before attempting that again. I am still working out whether I want to go semi-realistic or cartoony. Maybe I will do both and see which I like best. I will show you my feeble first attempts and we can laugh together.

will not rant, will not rant

I am in such a mood today that if I start to blog about it a major rant will ensue so I will just post some cute kitty beads instead...

But, really, this is the one I feel most inclined to relate to:

Hit me Batty, one more time.

I love making these. The bats are so full of personality. I could make a hundred of these and not get tired of it. (Please don't ask me to, though. LOL) The little eyes are made with striking transparent orange which is a color I had immense difficulty with when I was a newbie bead maker. There's a trick to getting the glass to strike and you have to know what color to look for (hint: not orange.) to know it's struck. Even then, you don't really know if you've struck it right until the bead is room temperature again. It takes a while working with glass before you learn all these tricks and tips. Reading tips only gets you so far, really, because you have to see the glass in action to know what to look for.

The Etsy sale is going so well! I am thrilled to pieces! I have more to put up after I take pictures this afternoon. Now, I am off to the torch...wish me luck!

Kitties and veggies and more bargains

Do you see the family resemblance? Si has crazy eyes, like, all the time. I tried to capture that in glass by using some really cool swirly sapphire blue glass. The kitty beads are very fun to make. It's fun to put faces on stuff and give them personalities of their own.

Which brings me to ... drum roll please ... the first beads in a new series that I will call "Don't eat anything with a face" which, in Loriland, doesn't leave much to eat. I had raviolis for lunch...I wonder what that would look like with eyeballs?


So, here is an eggplant, corn and an apple with an adorable visitor. Look for more soon.
Have a fantastic Wednesday! Oh and don't forget that the big bead box clearout is still going on in my Etsy store! http://loribeads.etsy.com/

Studio Clean Out - Day 3

I've been cleaning out my bead box. Check out the booty at loribeads.etsy.com and get them while they're hot (and cheap!)



I've got some really great new beads cooking in the kiln today. Kitties in all varieties, silver glass experiments, vegetables with faces. Something for everybody, basically. :)



Here's one of the sets you can get for bargain basement prices if you hurry!

Monterey, the Puppy and more beads

We spent the day in Monterey. The weather was incredible and we had a nice long walk down by the ocean. Here are some pictures we took while we looked over the bay.

Sea lions! We love the sea lions.

Puppy wants to know ... what's for lunch?

Now, here are some beads that I really LOVE!

Ok, the sea air makes me sleepy so I am off to bed. *Yawn* I hope you guys had a great weekend, too.

Back to School x 6

Well, the pencils were feelin' the love from y'all so I made more. I'll put the extras on Etsy so watch for them later today.

Win my Puppy beads at Etsy Glass Artists!

Here are the beads I donated for the Etsy Glass Artists newsletter sign up giveaway. If you want a chance to win them, sign up for the EGA newsletter here: http://etsyglass.com/list/?p=subscribe&id=5 or just go to http://etsyglass.com/ and follow the links. The beads will be given away at the end of August.