New Designs for Christmas

Bead of the Day: "Winter Wonderland"

The last post proved to be very popular, so thank you all who made comments here on the blog and on FB - very much appreciated, especially that I realise that I need a tutorial on how to use these tiny thingies.

Yesterday was - at last! - spent at the torch. Well, half of the day to be honest. There are always things in the way when you are at home, especially near Christmas time. I won't go into detail, but in the afternoon I finally got back in front of the torch - yey! I had lots of ideas, as you do when you've been away from it for such a long time, so I started melting glass happily, feeling extremely inspired. I made several focal beads, all of them with my own murrini, decorated with goldstone, silvered ivory stringer, the base bead was out of dark irovy overlaid with crystal clear in places, and of course, lots of Double Helix Aurae - for the lovely Christmas sparkle. I love Aurae - easy to get good results and it can be reduced into so many shiny colours: silver, gold, copper, and even gold and copper - with many shades. The bead with the murrini was dedicated to the star which was born for Jesus.

However, I'm using past tense here. This is because... Sadly, all my beads broke. I work in the conservatory, and to make sure there is plenty of fresh air, I open windows and the door. Yesterday was an exceptionally windy day, so no matter how hard I was trying to keep my beads in the flame, obviously, it wasn't enough. I was sad when I saw them all cracked, but I'm not anymore. I just need to work harder. The other thing is, I like the design I've come up with, especially with the star, so I'll be using it again - and it's not windy today!

One more thing to mention: I've decided to hold a raffle for my dear blog followers, and the set of beads that I'm going to give away is almost ready, I just need to make one more bead - it's always the way, isn't it? So I'll be "officially" announcing it in a couple of days, so that the beads would get to you in time for Christmas! :)

Becky's Blog, 111 stars and Taking Photos in the Rain :)

Becky Fairclough of Chameleon Designs, being an amazing glass artist and making amazingly beautiful beads and things, also is a truly beautiful person. Whenever I see her at fairs and meetings, she always smiles, always happy, always has a chat with her numerous friends and acquaintances. I was really happy when she told me that she ordered my book; now she received it and wrote a whole blog about it! :) You can read it on http://www.chameleonsdesigns.blogspot.com/ . I am feeling so fluffy inside! :) :) :)

Yesterday I realized that now I have 111 feedback stars on ebay! I thought it was a pretty cool number. It shows that you are not a novice, and you have sold a considerable amount of stuff, and that customers care to leave a nice feedback about what they bought from you. I always thought that once I have over a hundred of these stars I will be very pleased indeed (you see, some customers don't leave anything, and it isn't because they are dissatisfied, but they might forget or be busy). But now, of course, I am dreaming of, say, 500 stars! I don't know if I'll ever be able to produce as much as feedbacks for a 1000 items! But you never know...

Also yesterday I was very clever and I took photos of the beads I was going to put on ebay in advance. I usually list items on Friday, and usually Friday is a very hectic day: choosing and additionally inspecting beads (lots of noise, I tell you!), cleaning (for a 10th time) and polishing (for a 20th time) the beads which would be ready to be photographed, taking photos, choosing photos, tagging and naming them, ooooh! busy. Then the actual writing of the descriptions, measuring etc. When I woke up I saw a lovely sunrise, which was surprising as all night it was raining. Remembering where we live now (it rained a LOT LESS in Norfolk) I used the sunshine for these great photos of my beads. Here's one. I should have called the beads something like "Lunaglow", but this great thought only came to me this morning, so they'll just have to be simply "Lentils"!