Fresh Glass 6.25.16 Last of the Cleo Sets

I'm done with the Cleo sets...at least until I can afford my own press! I'll be having a sale in private Facebook group in a day or two.

Fresh Glass 8.17.15

Hey there...long time... uh... Been freaking busy! Found out some classes I need to take...were already happening! So I had to jump in and catch up or...wait til January. Waiting is not my forte. And... I started a tutoring job the same week! Argh! But things are a little calmer but...school is starting and hopefully work won't be far behind!

I have been a torching fiend! I have a trunk show the first weekend in October and so I want mostly newer stuffs...

Don't laugh but these were actually TWO torch sessions! Each time, I made exactly three beads and... hated them and quit! Only to get them them out and love them! Lather rinse repeat! LOL! Loving this honeycomb dichroic!  So these will be a set... three large olives and 2 spacers and ...one for the bead bowl. Sigh!  More tomorrow!

Overwhelming Good Feeling

I admit it. When I would see other beadmakers post photos of their stuffed outgoing mail, it would sting a little. I rarely sell anything and it's even rarer that I I have two packages going out with beads in them...much less a box full!

 And seriously, my stamp business hasn't had boxes full of packages shipping out since mid -2008. Oh how I longed to have something that people wanted! But my last trunk show was WONDERFUL! For the very fist time in my bead-making "career" - if you can call it that - I had multiple bead packages going out!!! And it felt amazing!!!

This was day one after the show:

And day two:

And two more priority boxes with over almost 2 pounds of beaded goodies in each left yesterday! It's such a good feeling to have customers appreciate your work!!!

If you were one this past week, THANK YOU!!! 

What a Week!

I've been kinda quiet here, thanks to a "what was I thinking?" issue with my teaching schedule. Yes, folks, the gal to travels and teaches for a large part of her living managed to book herself 3 classes in 6 days! O.M.G!!!!!! It's no wonder I'm running around like a drunk chicken!

There ARE new beads... just no time to list! 

Wanna take a ride on the magic carpet of my last week? Hold ON!

• Wednesday - Wire Wrap I class...  dashing out the door, check email. Spot an order from a customer who orders lots of fondant  every year. Fondant...hmmm. OMG! FONDANT... of the truck load of supplies needed for cookie class, I have forgotten about fondant! Call vendor and place an order on the way to class. Whew! Thank you Universe!
• Thursday - need to bake cookies for cookie class but enrollment keeps fluctuating. Distractions abound...phone calls from customers, emails about custom stamp plates, promoting a photo that's a finalist in a breast cancer awareness contest, monitor online contest promoting shelter adoptions. Decide to make use of ebay's last day of free listings instead of prepping for class. 71 items listed... Great.
• Friday - MUST BAKE COOKIES! Bake enough for class + demo + 2 extra sets in case of walkins. Clean up and realize that Monday's class is small enough, one more batch might buy some downtime on Sunday. Land a custom bead order from repeat customer. Do the happy dance. Pack cookie kits to sell, load up all the store items, vases, silk flowers, money box, ipad, and kitchen tools. Get ready for bed. Realize there are no Hershey's kisses to make rosebuds for the cookie bouquets. Go to the grocery store in a bathrobe.
• Saturday - Leave for class at 8:15 - Unload, set up store items, kitchen work area, flower arranging work area and painting area. Teach and sell. Clean up / load up and home. Beg the dog for a night off... No luck... maybe the hike will make the back pain stop screaming. No, it doesn't. Collapse in a puddle on the sofa. The phone rings. Can't move. It rings again and again. Look  at caller i.d. IT'S A CUSTOMER. At 9 pm on a Saturday. WTH? Check messages...nothing urgent. Reprogram call forwarding. 
• Sunday - Back pain dominates. Breakfast with the bestie who's been out of town. Major exciting household finds at the thrift shop afterwards! Lunch with the hiking buddy. Feeling guilty, make the beads for the custom order. Check emails and messages and find that the same customer has now called about her non urgent issues a total of 12 times in less than 24 hours, leaving an actual message 7 times. On a Sunday! Decide to put her on the back burner until Monday.
• Monday - Repack sold items in store kits. Call anxious customer. She adds LOTS of items to the order going out. Fell guilty for not responding on Sunday. Get angry for feeling guilty for wanting a little quiet time. Find out my photo won the contest! Pack orders, pick up assistant (the bestie), unload and realize 30 minutes before class on box of crucial items is missing - still in the driveway. So is the ipad... can't take credit cards. Race home - get to class 10 minutes late. UGH! Home by 10 - glad all classes went well! 
• Tuesday - Try to pack the anxious one's order, realize one item is out of stock. Call local-ish vendor to verify their stock. On the way out the door, the bestie calls - tickets to Dancing with the Stars TONIGHT! Spend an hour and a half running errands toward the vendor. Realize vendor doesn't have item you need and curse the whole drive home. Electrical contractor who has promised to show up for two weeks is at the shop... asking questions, needing input. Can't press rubber...he's in the way. No orders can ship and the studio call is now an hour earlier than expected! Race to get dressed in decent clothes and realize there was no lunch! Enjoy the show, dinner with friends. Home exhausted and ready for bed at 8pm.

 This is the photo of my sister that won the Archipelago Botanicals Contest! So excited... she will be getting all kinds of goodies from them!

Today, shipping MUST resume in the shop!  There's rubber to press... did I mention - I've manage to run out of rubber??? OY!

I hope to come up for air in a day or two... that is  after shipping 10 packages of dog prizes from the Creekhiker blog and dealing with those 71 listings on ebay! Er - Maybe it'll be another week....

True Confession: I'm a Glass Hoarder!

Sometimes I make a beads and list them right away. Sometimes I just... can't! Sometimes a bead is so pretty, I simply can't part with it...no matter what. Sometimes, I need to stare and appreciate them for a while.

One I made recently using a tut from Kim Neely with an added flourish from Kimberly Affleck falls into the sit and stare category.

 Dark Waters side one

Dark Waters Side 2

I finally shared it on the fan page... but I'm not sure when I'll have the heart to actually list it. Yes, I am she who needs ALL the shiny beads!

Here's a video so maybe you can see what's so mesmerizing to me:

Upcyling the Wedding

NOTE: This was written well before our niece's wedding in February but... I realized she had not seen many of the items in this post... hence the delay. (I told you she was not a Bridezilla!)

We're all on a tight budget for the niece's wedding but we're NOT gonna skimp on elegance and glamor! Take the dragonflies one of the aunties has been working on. I mentioned in a previous post that we have dragonfly on the invitation... a symbol of good fortune.

 Our decorative dragonflies are HUGE - about 20" tall!

While out on a  research shopping trip, we found these hideous wire frame butterflies. Don't EVEN get me started on all the butterfly winged tchotchkes out there that have dragonfly bodies or vice versa... they are LEGION! We found 3 very large (the bodies are almost two feet!) ones on sale and after a little manipulation, realized the wings could easily be re-shaped into dragonfly wings!  But it still needed a bigger body. One was carved out of foam core. And then the fun began.

Not wanting to spend a fortune in beads, the artist raided her mom's antique jewelry box for broken or no longer worn pieces.  She raided her button box and her craft box. As the holidays approached, small glitter ornaments were purchased for the eyes and tail. We ended up with three: the red "welcome" on you see above, a white one for the sweet heart table:

 and a most glamorous black and white one for the cake table:

A big part of building these was organizing all those various pieces-parts for ready access as the artist built each dragonfly. Check this out:

She found a couple of old  spice racks at the thrift store and just look at all those organized beads!

Here's a shot of the finished sweetheart's table featuring the white dragonfly. I just love the layers of diaphanous fabric and lights!

We had to do a lot of brainstorming on how to attach that heavy dragon fly to the front of the table. We didn't care if it damaged our sheer tabletop but we couldn't have it damage the under - cloth belonging to our location. We're used velcro and heavy refrigerator magnets to keep it all in place.

Cyber Monday Deals

In case you've been in a turkey coma for the last four days, today is the last day of my Black Friday / Cyber Monday coupons and specials going on NOW through midnight PST Monday night.

Holly's Folly Glass Bead News

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Beads: Save 20% off my Artfire, Etsy or HollysFolly.com with the coupon code THANKFUL

This sale is on EVERYTHING in the shops including tools, jewelry and my latest favorite - a sparkling bronze made to order set!

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Subscriber / Fan Page ONLY Specials

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IF you are a Fan Page Member, use coupon code THANKFULFAN for an additional 10% (30% total!) savings.... valid only for FANS! Join my Facebook Fan Page

You must be a subscriber on a mailing list / fan page to get the discount. Mention this deal for your discount! If you are reading this online and are not a subscriber, no discount will apply!

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****Free shipping on my rubber stamps!****

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And I'm also having a special on my FoodSafe & Art Rubber Stamps:

FREE SHIPPING now through Midnight PST 11/29 on UNMOUNTED rubber orders of $5 or more AND on Wood mounted stamps orders of $20 or more.


All Food kits ship free this weekend! Valid only with credit card or RME payments.

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Thanks as always for l@@king!

Holly

Just Some Eye Candy...

Still recovering from house guests and I need to spend some time in the shop today working on a custom order... so, I thought I would share some eye candy.

I love this little Cell phone / zipper pull / purse charm. The beads are so sweet and they just make me happy. My BFF has a similar one on her purse and I always smile when I see them. But for some strange reason, this piece has the LEAST views of anything in my Artfire shop! I don't get it... It's as cute as anything else in the shop.


This is a focal that doesn't get many views. It's funny but customers "say" they love yellow but yellow beads don't sell all that easily. But I love this guy for several reasons. The yellow is rich - it's one of my favorite colors in glass (and I'm a "yellow hater'). I find the depth of this color so versatile and have used it as the base of some interesting beads.

The other thing I love is the little, tiny scallops I managed to put on the "sand". Seashells are some of most favorite things and those are so cute!

Sunny Day at the Beach

The other bead that gets so little love is this giant fall leaf. I love large glass beads. This piece was made for a contest and I mixed my own frit from transparent blends. This baby took over an hour in the torch to shape and is just stunning in person. But...sigh... he's still looking for a home.

Hope you enjoyed our little eye candy tour.... See you here tomorrow.

The Color of the Year

is....Yellow??? Ick! I am SO not a yellow fan...maybe because it makes my ruddy Irish skin look like warm death. My mother, with her American Indian / Black Irish coloring - skin that tans beautifully in a heartbeat, jet black hair and dark, mysterious eyes - looks stunning in yellow. So I guess it is somebody's color.

The Color Association of the United States declared Yellow the color of the year and cites influences such as "Slumdog Millionaire" and the fact that hope is associated with the color. And, this country certainly needs a little hope!

I am happy that the shade of yellow selected by Pantone is a bit more goldenrod than a true pale yellow.
Let's take another look at the colors for the coming Fall / Winter Season...Beadmakers, are your stores stocked??
Here's a few yellow selections from my 1000 Markets and Etsy shops:



Crochet Neclace with detachable focal:


Pinky - really, a yellow off mandrel heart (She was shouting her name when I opened the kiln!)


Sunny Day at the Beach:

Head Under Water

As I explained on the Folly site... I've been torching and torching ... and torching. But cleaning, staging, photographing beads and sizing the pics...not so much! I love making beads. I love selling beads.... it's just all that junk in the middle that is so time consuming and annoying! LOL! It's that part of life as a bead-maker that makes me feel like my head is under water.

Anyway, it's a holiday and I should do what I want, right??? More torching for sure!

But here's a teaser to come. Each of these babies took me over an HOUR EACH to make...They are huge and the colors are fantastic. Stay tuned! And from the looks of things, my head has been under water in more ways than one! LOL!
In the meantime, I actually made a new bead and put it straight up on Etsy:

Sunny Day at the beach

Pardon Me? Is My Head too Big?

Wow! My beads were mentioned in two different blogs today!

My friend Becky wrote about this giant cupcake bead in her Constant Crafter Blog.



And my Pineapple Orange Sherbet I Scream Cone was mentioned in Creative with Clay's Color of the Week blog post. Both are available in my Etsy shop with kissing cousins on the Folly Site under Sweet Treats.


Any more and my head won't fit in the door! And if my sweet tooth keeps showing, my head won't be the only thing that won't fit!!!

Thanks ladies! I needed the confidence boost!

Experiments

I have been desperately trying to improve my cased floral skills. I just adore big (HUGE) beads with lots of flowers and stuff going on inside the layers upon layers of glass. That's one of the reasons I took a class recently with Cynthia Tilker.

Then I came home and kept working. I've been spending about an hour of torch time working on cased florals each torch session. I'm finally starting to like my results enough to show you!


This bead is for sale on the Folly site.

The other thing I've been playing around with layers of dichro. I just love all the colors going on in this black-heart bead (also available on the focals page).


And as always when I experiment, I have a lot of beads I just don't like that much. So I'm having a large sale on focals on my Sale Page. Most are $10 or UNDER...many are $5!... Take a l@@k, won't you?

Moving to ebay

I've moved a few sets to ebay and will be moving more. Here's the first two:




My Ebay is HERE.

And this one is off to Etsy.


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Fish Tales

I promised a post about the new directions I'm taking and thought I would chat a bit more about inspiration.

There are literally times I dream in beads... they are strange dreams indeed!

Recently I awoke after having the most intense dream about hearts and fish. (I told you they were strange!) I'm a Pisces - sign of the fish. Would you believe I found this little tidbit of advice on my favorite Astrology site: Your answers to your most pressing creative (and other) questions will arrive in visual forms, as if in a storyboard, a dream, or as a little movie?

After this dream, pondering it all, it occurred to me that fish are really undefined hearts. So I sat down at the torch to make it a bit more of a solid definition. This is actually the second, more clearly defined vision and is currently on Etsy. I really love how she came out. And that she looks like both a fish and a heart depending on how she's worn.

This was my first attempt and will most likely appear on Holly's Folly in the coming days. Being my first attempt at recreating my dream... I stuck to red... Red heart, red fish. I used opaque and transparent red on her body and fins with a touch of rubino on her lips.


And, like version #2, she can be worn as both a heart and fish depending on the mood of the jewelry artist.

The most hilarious part to me are her lips... she looks like she's not sure she wants to give you a kiss or not. I love how something like that can set the tone of the piece.


And finally, this guys is on Holly's Folly... He's the result of another dream. But I'll save that strange fish tale for another day.

Inspiration and New Directions

If you are looking for the One World, One Heart contest thread, click HERE. There is another drawing for a different bead on Creekhiker.

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It's been no great secret that I've had the blahs for months! Coming out of it has been hard. But I realized I love making beads and since my sales are in a slump nonexistent, I've decided to shift directions.

While I fully expect to keep listing beads on HollysFolly and my Etsy, I've decided to make the beads I want, not the ones I hope and pray will sell. For me, that means entering more contests and just getting my work out there.

I was really excited when I read that the Art Bead Scene would be using paintings as the inspiration for their monthly jewelery competitions. I've always been inspired by paintings and and art in general. I was a painter for quite a while when recuperating from foot surgery.

January's painting was Van Gogh's Irises - one of my favorite paintings and one of my favorite flowers to make on the torch. Here are the two beads (of three I made) used in my necklace (photo above).

I knew I wanted to rework an old lariat I made ages ago when I first started buying lampwork beads. It was made of a thick, multi-looped sterling and was just over four feet long! The beads I envisioned were diamond shaped...but I wasn't sure of the orientation. So I made three: one with a horizontal layout and two that were more vertical but of varying scale. I decided one of each worked best and ended up not using the smaller vertical bead at all. (Look for it shortly on the Folly website. )

Each bead was shaped into a large and thick diamond... I knew I needed some weight to the beads and made them much thicker than I normally would have. Once shaped, the bead was coated with blue / teal dichroic glass which was carefully melted flat. Prior to starting, I pulled various hand mixed canes in my chosen lavender / purple / blue color palette and a few yellow stringers for stamens. I also pulled leaf cane using my favorite muted green - I'm not a fan of Emerald. All the beads were decorated on both sides.

I cleaned up that old chain... that took some major work and, special thanks go to Lynne Bowland at Islandgirl, who reminded me that tumbling silver was awesome for cleaning it up. Still I pickled and scrubbed and dipped and that old chain was a dull gray at best. So I went into the art studio and dug through all my PMC teaching boxes, found my tumbler and 30 mintues later had a sparkling silver chain! If you do any kind of silver work... get a tumbler! (Lynne, BTW, was named one of the designers of the week in the ABS competition. Lynne is a fellow LEST team member and I'm so proud of her! Her necklace rocks! Another Lest team member, Jennifer Cameron a/k/a Glass Addictions, won the drawing for the monthly prize at ABS! Congrats Jennifer!!)

After the chain was clean, I wire wrapped my beads with Swarovski crystals (8mm), Bali silver and finished off each end of the lariat with Turkish tassels.

It's really hard to photograph such a long necklace! The top photo, the chain is wrapped around my neck and tied .



My next post will be about other new directions I've decided to take, but I'll give you a little clue here:



This cute girl is on Etsy .

Koi Joy Part 2

I had mentioned my customer wanted the fish to hang so they looked like they were swimming, top down view. I thought it was a fantastic idea. But, great idea and execution are two very different things.

I found working with the mandrel going through the side of the fish much more difficult and it added a good ten minutes to my working time. And in lampwork, time = money.

My first attempt, I started a bit too far down the mandrel to get the tail to look exactly as I wanted. It still came out nice and that is the one my customer bought.

The second one, I started near the end of the mandrel and did get a nice bend in the tail.

But the longer working time on both made the frit stretch a bit more than I would have liked.

All in all, I really do like this look but I'm uncertain if the higher price tag will find a market in this economy.

The orange one is available on HollysFolly.com and all Halloween beads are 10% off.

Showoff: Custom Galaxy Redo

I thought I would create a new tag for pieces I'm exceptionally proud of. So those pieces will be found under "Showoff" in the future.

This is a redo of my Galaxy necklace. That necklace was purchased by the same customer that ordered this necklace. She purchased it for her mother-in-law and admitted she wore it around the house several times. She loved the feel of the necklace but my glass bead choices were not quite her style.

Those lampworked beads were made with rich transparent amethyst and cobalt glasses, rolled in fine silver foil and cased with a reactive clear. The beads appeared to contain their own little universe...hence, the name.

My customer is more a fan of my organic silvered ivory beads. (There are several focals in that style on the Holly's Folly site right now. See "Bead Sets - Page 2.") She wanted a necklace like her mother-in-laws but with those earthy beads. Here it is. It is a long lariat style that closes mid- tummy.

It features a floral design drop - through clasp, Swaroski crystals in Colorado Topaz AB and Jet AB2x, lots of sterling including a hand made tassel.

I delivered it this morning and she phoned to say she feels like a million bucks wearing it. That makes me very happy!

This is the long skinny focal.

The large stop bead and drop through clasp.