What's new, what's out, what's coming

Wow! 2010 is shaping up to be a great year, filled with steady positive changes, and that’s what I want to cover in this post.

What’s new?

A month ago, I posted a blog about the new additions to my body of work: Butterflies and Doodles. Just yesterday, I launched a new website, that brings a ton of positive change on its own. You’ll find shopping is much easier, and navigation improved within the website. I think the site ‘matches’ me and my work a lot more- more photos, more color. I’m really excited about it, and about the new work projects. Poke around; let me know what you think! With the launch of the site, I posted work from all of the series I make, but added quite a few Butterflies. A big round of Doodles will come with my next posting.

What’s out?

At the end of last year, as the ideas for the Butterflies and Doodles started to percolate, I decided to do a little creative house-cleaning. I realized that quite a few bead series were starting to feel …ummmm…. too familiar. I firmly believe that my energy and intention get captured within each piece I make, and that in turn comes across in the work. Fresh energy creates fresh work. Stale energy creates stale work. Getting to make a living from beads is a blessing, and at no point do I ever want to take that for granted. If boredom persists, I may as well start looking for an office job… I want to be feeling gratitude and joy when I play with glass, and I want that energy in every piece made and sold. (That said, it doesn’t mean we can’t use art to work through negative emotions. I do it all the time, but boredom is not an emotion welcome in my studio.) So, wanting to foster good, fresh, joyful energy in everything I make, I allowed myself to put a few of my well-established series to bed. So, the Biologicals, Talisman, and the Pendant series (that never really got a name) are done.

Please don’t misunderstand- I still love all of these series. But I wanted to make sure to ‘retire’ them before stale energy ruined them for me, and, a bit downstream, ruined them for you. I still have a few left in each series, and in the coming weeks, I’ll offer what I still have for sale on the website. If you’re antsy to get that Biologicals or Talisman focal you’ve always wanted, feel free to email me in the meantime.

What’s coming?

I’m in the process of figuring that one out. We (my web guy and I) still need to get the Enamels E-Tutorial JC Herrell and I wrote in a comfortable place on the website, and that’s coming soon. You’ll see the ‘retired’ series for sale in a bit. I know that over the next months, I’ll be making more finished jewelry, adding earrings, beaded necklaces, and accessories for my beads to the website. The Butterflies and Doodles will each see more development as I play around within each series. Past that, I’m not sure what’s coming. I have a few projects simmering on a back burner while this website project finishes up, and it’s hard to tell where my attention will focus, and even harder to tell which of these projects will be ‘cooked’ first. I know that, whatever comes, I’ll be excited to share it with you. ;)

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!

Feeling Technologically Inept

I used to blog. Years ago. That was before I was doing glass full-time and when maintaining my website was just a hobby, not part of my official job. Nowadays, between shows, classes, travel, and other life adventures, my website has cobwebs on it, I haven't blogged in ages, and the only way to keep up with me and the biz is on FaceBook. This fall, being blessed with months of relatively few planned work-related trips, I've made returning to blogging/ web maintenance/ catching up a priority. That, and working with boro, but that's for another blog post.

Over the last couple days, I've set up this new blog, and started researching the ways to integrate FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter, and all those other social networking pages with my website. In a dream land, the social networking pages, my website, and blog will all work together like a well-oiled machine.

We're not quite there yet. Wow, I feel dumb. When it comes to this web stuff, I am officially as out-of-date as acid wash denim. There was a time when I thought I knew what I was doing…. I wrote the code to my first website, after all. But now I'm in a whole new world, of widgets and badges and Tweetdeck and web developer language that may as well be Cantonese.

I'll get there, eventually. I'm one persistent cookie, if I choose to be. Keep an eye out- my successes will be celebrated, trust me.

Wish me luck.

Back to the 'help' sections I go…