Back to regular life

The Best Bead Show (and the rest of the Tucson Gem & Mineral Shows) came and went, and I started the slow process of tuning back in to non-Gem show life. Over the last couple weeks, I slept a lot, slept some more, put my house and studio back together, took a nap, taught a quick class at Sonoran Glass, did a ton of paperwork, took another nap, and started working on my website again. The sleep deficit has been remedied, and I’m back in the studio- two things that sometimes take me a while to do after the February shows each year. Ahhh. Gem show done. It’s always wonderful, but I’m always happy to get back to regular life.


A while back I mentioned starting the process of updating my website, and to make everything work the way its supposed to.  That's hard to do... so I recruited and found local help to both assist me with the update, and teach me about the program that runs my site.  He's oddly a family member of the guy from whom I purchased my house and studio. Small world, eh? We’re working on giving the site a little bit of a facelift- adding more pictures, a few new features, and most importantly, making the store a bit easier to navigate. We’re making a ton of changes to the site, and Peter, the man behind the curtain, has set up a few things that make the site easier for me to maintain. I’m so excited for this project to be done- Peter has done such a great job, and I’m delighted to share it with you as soon as we finish up the last few edits, and push that ‘on’ button sometime soon. I’d like the site to be live before I head off to teach at the Craft Guild of Dallas next week. We’ll see…

With the launch of the new website, I’ll have a handful of new work available, including a new batch of butterflies. I’m painting wings today, along with flameworking a few Maze marbles and Doodlebeads to paint later this week. Yup, that’s what I’m up to- just plugging away.  No big news, and that's just fine with me.  Wishing all of you beautiful days!

The new projects

We here in Tucson are getting ready for Best Bead to roll into full swing. My houseguests have started to arrive, and by a stroke of last-minute changes of plans, we seem to have a smaller Hotel Zinser this year. I’m thankful, to be honest, but I will miss having so many here. Makes me feel slightly less guilty when the line for the shower has less than 10 in it…

JC and Harold kept me company while I photographed these last night, and I'm thankful that they kept me entertained...

There are two new series:
The Butterfly wings are done off mandrel as a thin pendant that hangs from a jump ring. Just like my Beetle beads, they're sculpted in the flame and painted cold (and then returned to the flame) for color and detail. Also like the Beetles, these are completely stylized, not representative of any actual species of butterfly. The wearer can opt to sport one, or mix/ match two to make their own imaginary butterfly.

 

The doodles are straight up fun. I had a bit of a creative slow-down/ slump last year... It happens- with attention on other projects, life, and all that. These really helped me get out of the slump... uncensored, plenty of room to play, but very simple technical contstraints (white bead, black paint). The doodles are a very literal translation of my journal pages into a bead. The first few I made were meant as a creative exercise- not something I expected to turn into a product.... but then I realized how much time I spent giggling, smiling, and in a generally positive and playful place. So, wanting to bring more of that play into my day to day creative world, the Doodles and Doodlebugs (and there's a DoodleBall not yet photographed) were born.