Look what I just found!

See what I found poking through the leaves in the front yard a few minutes ago! Actually there are three patches of them... Guess I should clean out the leaves one of these days... but right now they make a good blanket!

I just found this wonderful blog about me!

I just found this blog about me! Patty from Broken TeePee Designs wrote this wonderful blog about me and called me a bead maker extraordinaire.... the praise could go to my head!

The necklace on the left is one of Patty's creations it's called Mermaid Jewels... I seem to be hooked on a warm tropical theme here!

Patty and I sort of traded places... she grew up on the Jersey coast and is now in the middle of Montana... I grew up in Alberta and now live on a small Island on the East Coast... I just wish it had palm trees and warm tropical breezes, not ice cold blasts coming off of the North Atlantic.... I like to dream that I can just put a tiny beach lounge on these beads, so that I can climb out of the North Atlantic into paradise!

But I digress... Back to Patty... Not only does she make jewellery she raises Goats, makes goats milk soap, makes bread and rolls and is soon to add baby chicks to the farm ... and she does all of this in a tiny trailer kitchen.... The Goats have a spokes goat called Pricilla who writes her own blog I have trouble seeing/finding my kitchen counter in a real house! If your wondering about the name their property in Montana came complete with a Broken TeePee...

Patty and I are also both members of an Etsy street team called The Artisan Beaders you can check out their informative blog... !

What inspires us to create jewellery?

Over the last year I seem to spend more and more time on the computer and less and less actually making things.... One reason is trying to sell online... I've had a website fireallbeeds for five years at most my sales off of it paid the annual fees.... Then along came Etsy I joined as Islandgirl because I was buying (I'm really good at that) then last February I decided to try and sell something ... well you wouldn't believe the hours you spend taking pictures and writing text to go with the pictures and trying to promote yourself....

One of the promotion tools is flickr . Flickr has all sorts of groups... I tripped over a group called Art Bead Scene they have monthly challenges... (yep that was what my Iris necklace was for) . This months challenge was to design a piece inspired by Henri Matisse's painting "The Goldfish". I made a necklace which I thought was pretty lame except for the focal bead which I really like. So all you get to see here is the focal bead! Then I decided since my first effort was so lame that I woud try and do a peyote stitch bracelet.. the entire bracelet is the goldfish bowl and the toggle is the big one that escaped!

Oh and of course there is this blog.. it wasn't enough having a rant on my website... According to the webbies that know all one shouldn't blog on their on website, you must blog on blogger or....
And then there is twitter... I'm really not sure about it... I think I delete people as fast as I add them.. My criteria, i f you have more than 3 updates in a row that don't make sense .. you're toast!

Freddie the Pheasant

I guess using my mothers logic in naming birds that should be Phready the Pheasant or something... Anyway meet Phready... and note that white stuff he is standing on that is SNOW.. actually it's ice which is one of the reasons it's not melting very fast!

There is also a Mrs Phready this year but she wouldn't pose for the photo... that may have had something to do with the fact that she had two cats in hot pursuit... I actually think that the pheasants would win if one of the cats was stupid enough to attempt to catch one... time will tell as they are certainly determined... not to mention that the two cats are just as likely to attack each other on the logic that that's my bird....

Have you ever heard a pheasant.. it's a bit like a creaky door.. Hope they stick around this year.. it's fun to watch them scurrying around!

Got a new picture of Phready.. marching across the front of the house!

All wrapped Up

All wrapped Up is the result of me playing with combining more than one piece/type of glass into my electroformed pieces.... I really like the way my large holed lampworked hearts have been turning out, so I thought I'd add a fused frit mask to them. I'm reallypleased with the way this piece turned out!

I'm thinking of making a copper chain maille chain for it... partly because the ring faces the wrong way for it to hang from a chain... so at the very least I have to add a ring... but it I'm making one ring why not make a few hundred....

This piece is currently listed on etsy... Who know when it's chain will show up!

Spring Fling Sale on Etsy

The Lest Team on etsy has been reincarnated as Fire Divas.. in honor of our new group we are having a spring fling sale!

COME SHOPPING AND SAVE 20% on anything in my store that has a flower... even if I don't have it tagged as a 'Fire Divas' 'Spring Fling" sale bead if you can find a flower it's 20% off (25% off if you have bought from me before) AND.... if you buy a bead with a flower anything else you buy will also be 20% off .... You can pay at the checkout as usual and I will refund the discount or you can convo me and I'll send you an invoice!!

Sale in effect NOW until March 30 (my husbands 60th Birthday!) To search for other participants just search Spring Fling ...

I want to sell my old flowers so that my new ones don't feel overcrowded!

Craft It Forward

This started on Facebook but I think it's a neat idea so I'm going to do it here too!

I think this started with Marcy Lamberson: I won a handmade item from Lauren (May Beads) she wanted to send me an over-ripe banana but fortunately it won't make it through customs!

The Rules (yes there are always rules!)

The first five people to respond to this by leaving a comment will get something handmade by me.

There are some restrictions, though:

- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make.
- What I create will be just for you.
- You'll receive it this year (2009).
- You have no clue what it's going to be. It may be a mix CD (but probably not, too bad copying my sons awful music from the computer to a CD doesn't get rid of it!).
It may be a poem (not likely, however I do write a mean Haiku). I may knit or sew or glue something (unlike Luaren I can do all of those so you may get a pair of felted mitts that would fit your dog... yes I do have one pair that size.... sigh... they are pink!).
- However most likely you will probably get a bead or two.. if my husband has anything to do with it you will get a pound or two of beads...(needless to say he won't be helping to pack!)

In return, all you need to do is post this text into a blog of your own and make 5 things for 5 people.

Then respond in the comments section... first 5 people win!

I'm not tagging anyone so the first 5 people who sign up get something that I made with my little hands... I'm not joking there really are beads covering every flat surface in this house!

I will accept hints in the comment you leave me on what you would like however I may choose to ignore them!

Emm is sleeping in a felted kitty pie made by me... Emm is a bit larger than the pie... Lucky Zoomies now sleeps in as he is much smaller.. I didn't try to make a bigger pie but Sue of SuziFitz Beads made a larger one and got a kitty pizza!

Spring....

I have a car for the first time since Christmas... I finally got it off the driveway today! Now where should I go... Along the lines of 'all dressed up & nowhere to go'... this would be all revved up and nowhere to drive...!
As you can tell Zoomies is very excited that my car is now drive-able... the mere thought of going for another ride in a car has him ecstatic!



The heads.. are fused frozen frit.. It's a technique that I tripped over a couple of weeks ago..... on JSglassart.com I don't follow the firing instructions completely but I have quite a lot of powdered frit and I think it's a neat technique!

A Blog Award for Us

Well, I was reading my favorite goat's blog (I should clarify that.. Priscilla is the only goat I know that blogs.. she however is not the only goat that I know... but they gave away/sold Nora who was/is my favorite goat..., but as far as I know Nora doesn't have her own blog!) and I found out that I have been given a blog award.

This award is called the Kreativ Blogger Award and it, of course, comes with rules. I need to list 7 things I love and I need to pass it on to 7 people. I have The Maaaaa of Pricilla to thank for this honor (I'm thinking her publicist had a lot to do with my being picked!) . So here goes:

7 Things I like:

1. Sun... I follow it around the house during the winter! (that is if it isn't snowing....)

2. Reading (I prefer whodunnits... I don't like it when I figure out who the evil person is 1/3 of the way into the book!)

3. Shoes (However I prefer not to wear them as I might get them dirty!)
4. Coffee... ( I drink it by the potfull )
5. Jewelry (I had to learn how to make it as I was spending to much buying it!)

6. Hot springs... however bath tubs and hot tubs suffice as a substitute!

7. The sound of a cat purring

Now 7 people to pass this on too

1 Broken Teepee
2. Storey Beader
3 & 4. 2 sisters for Art (this blog has 2 authors so it counts as two people, even if I only know one of them!)
5. Glassbead
6. Jill's Beads
7. Glass Addictions

income tax time...

I know that this is everybody's favorite time of the year... In Canada we actually get til the end of April to file but since I'm leaving April 16th that extra two weeks is irrelevant... I have been doing our income tax on line using Quick Tax for almost 10 years... I got a new computer last fall... and Gord transfered the files from the old computer to the new one.... I'm sure you can tell where this is going....

Two weeks ago I installed the 2008 version of quick tax and suggested that it would like to import the 2007 files... the fact it couldn't find them wasn't that big a deal as Deloris my new (DELL) computer is not set up at all like "Laundry" was (that computer was set up in the Laundry room ... such a nice place to work... no excuse for leaving clothes in the washer for a week though!)

So I went looking and found 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, and a bunch of giberish in the 2007 folder.... No problem "Laundry" will still have the files... WRONG someone deleted all the old files off of that computer before he made sure that the files he had transfered where useful....

So instead of doing our 2008 income tax I just spent 10 days redoing our 2007 taxes so that the numbers matched the totals on the summary that the government has on file... Sounds easy doesn't it except quick tax won't let you put in totals ... you have to SHOW the WORK... (sounds like a University Physics or Math class and almost as much fun!)

Anyway as of last night I have 2007 done and can now start plowing through the piles of paper I generate through consignment, wholesale, online sales and my gallery... At least the weather is crappy so I have no desire to be playing in the garden!

The bead is Midnight Echinacea and is only on here because I think a blog needs a picture!

Well it wasn't the TIm Horton's Briar...

But what ever it was we won! Yes I spent yesterday in a curling rink.... outside it was warm and sunny and the snow was melting.... what was I doing, chasing large blocks of granite up and down sheets of ice....

The prizes were all hidden in brown paper lunch bags... So the only benefit of winning was getting to pick first (and of course knowing that we won!) I surveyed the bags carefully and picked one that looked like it contained a box... I think the clock is actually quite nice... and I need a clock in my bead studio... Gord got a very tacky bunny It will probably get to live in his sock drawer! Poor bunny!

We woke up to more... NEW SNOW this morning...Now on twitter I commented that the snow replacement theory that is operating this winter is Einstein's theory of relativity WRONG even though I think E = MC2 would work with E being the melting snow, M being the new snow and C2 being the thickness of the layer of ice on top of the new snow!

This years snow fall is actually following Galileo's law of conservation of energy... where matter can not be created or destroyed... snow can no longer be destroyed! Every flake that melts will be replaced within 48 hours...

Do you have stuck beads?

I tried all my normal methods of getting this bead off of the mandrel.... soaking, soap, freezing, drumming...no go! Then I thought maybe if we could get a grip on it! I grabbed a lobster band (Large Red elastic on right) They use them to hold the lobster claws shut so that the lobsters can't grab the poor humans who have to stick their hands into the lobster tanks! For this bead the band was just too big!

So I had to resort to a standard elastic and voila the bead started to move and came off! I'm not sure that this bead really has a lot going for it but I take any bead that refuses to come off as a personal challenge.

Today's weather update... we did not get another 12 inches of snow... we only got 2 or 3 inches... Late yesterday afternoon is was like walking around in granulated sugar... it was kind of neat snow... all the dirty snow was covered.. a pretty white world... well then we got the freezing rain... so our nice granulated sugar now has a layer of ice on it ... I don't even make a dent out there... G is currently taking our grub hoe... (looks a bit like a pick axe) to our driveway.... Someone might want to go somewhere before the next time it gets above freezing!