Boro Glass Heart Pendant

It has been a few months since I made a video. Come watch me make a little blue heart pendant.

Sweet Satisfaction

I made a video of me making a boro implosion pendant a few weeks ago. It was actually my second video but I couldn't upload it to BlipTV because it is 38 minutes long! I finally figured out how to get it up there. Buy a pro account! lol. Well that should inspire me to make frequent videos. Here I am, and if you hang in there with me, 3/4 of the way through you will hear my daughter explaining her paper shoes to my internet audience.

Click To Play

A Penny For Your Thoughts

My daughter found a penny in church yesterday. It was stuck to the floor under the kneeler and she proudly dug it out for the family to admire. "A penny for your thoughts" she exclaimed in an excited whisper. "EWWWWWWW......" was all I could muster. "Put that filthy thing down.. leave it...right...there"... And out came the bottle of hand sanitizer from my purse. How sad that in the age of swine flu a little kid can't get excited about a lucky penny. Well not with a neurotic mother anyway...

and so it is....

The pretty pouch in my previous post was made by one of my customers Lisa of lsa1sew. She sent me that beautiful hand-sewn gift with some skeleton keys she picked up at yard sales. Two of the keys were earmarked for special necklaces for Lisa. Yesterday I videotaped (more like digitally captured... what is the current term?) Anyway, yesterday I made a bead on one of the keys for Lisa and here is that footage. It's actually my third video but the second one was 38 minutes long and bliptv won't accept a file that large. Anyone know of any good free editing software? Let me know.

Click To Play

Bead Unplugged

A recent conversation with my kids made me realize how utterly and hopelessly dependant I am on the Internet and my computer. Typically while at baseball practice with my kids I am perfectly happy on a lawn chair with some glass or bead magazines or a good book. However it's early in the season and Mama gets cold real fast on 45 degree days. I knew I was going to be trapped in my car for 2 hours, so on this particular practice last week I brought my laptop in hopes I could "borrow" some Internet from a nearby neighbor or the school in front of the field. I had the following conversation on the way home from practice.

Thomas: (sounding annoyed) "Mom, why were you zig-zagging around the parking lot during practice?"

Me: "I was trying to get Internet?"

Emma: "I thought you were leaving us and I got sad."

Me: "I wouldn't leave you here alone Honey. Mama was just trying to update my Etsy shop."

Thomas: "Well you looked ridiculous, you moved your car like 6 times and then when you got out of the car and looked like you lost something....."

Me: "I'm sorry did I embarrass you?"

Thomas: "Well kinda, I mean Mom you looked kinda unstable"

Me: (Trying not to laugh and feeling a little bad) "Ok next time I'll just read my book."

Thomas: "Did you get it?"

Me: "What?"

Thomas: "Did you steal some one's Internet?"

Me: "Thomas, I didn't steal anything and no I wasn't able to get a signal."

Thomas: "Jake says it's called pirating. Did you pirate any Internet?"

Me: "No, Thomas your mother isn't a pirate."

Thomas: "Oh. Well that would have been kinda cool."

Me: "Ok, I'm a pirate. But not a very good one."

Thomas: "Mom. I think you should just get the I Phone and go back to reading your Twilight book."

Me: "Ok, Thomas I promise. No more computer at practice."
So as you can see I am a hopeless embarrassing case.
I need my kids to remind me to unplug once in a while.

When I Grow Up

My kids fight over who is going to take pictures of me modeling my pendants. I assign the job to whoever gets done with breakfast and brushes his or her teeth first. This morning my daughter got the job. She will be 8 in a few weeks and the camera is bigger than her head. lol. She's a very cute and careful photographer though. She spends time making sure the lighting is right and I am posed correctly. Sometimes she angles the photo in an artful way and sometimes she captures it dead on. I'd like to think that exposing my kids to my art and the business of selling it will inspire them to have creative outlets someday. My son wants to be a lawyer right now and my daughter wants to be a teacher but we'll see. They can always do what Mom does and be an artist by moonlight.

Beads 2009

I have been featured on the cover of Beads 2009 and I am so excited! Danielle Fox, the editor of Stringing asked me to submit some keys, pendants and big holed beads to this sister publication. My bumpy key made it on the cover! The key and 2 big holed beads are featured in the Steampunk section, there are 3 floral implosion pendants in the Flora section and Danielle used one of my keys in a necklace on page 44. You must check it out. I see several other glass artists I am familiar with featured as well. It's so exciting to see bead magazines embracing handmade. I'm just thrilled because I think it helps all self representing artists when mainstream publications who could just as easily show imported less expensive components (and those companies who pay big advertising dollars) instead highlight the handy-work of individual artists. It's very validating in a collective beady way!