I am THRILLED to have been one of the lucky ones selected by Jo of Daisychain Jewelry to do the Poppy Challenge to celebrate her 500th blog post. I think these headpins are just darling and I can hardly wait to play with them.
Random Tips
Sometimes I come across some cool tips I’d like to share that don’t need an entire blog post. So whenever I get a few gathered together, I will share them in a random tips blog post. I only have 2 for today.
You can download a PDF of this sign in 3 different colors here: http://www.flamingotoes.com/2011/06/some-pinterest-love/
The first involves Pinterest. If you blog, you should be pinning some of your best blog posts. As an example, I always pin any free tutorials I write up. Keep in mind you don’t want to only pin your work. In my opinion it’s like spamming you followers and I’ve actually stopped following people who do that.
Anyway, you can see who has pinned or repinned from your blog by entering the URL: http://pinterest.com/source/ then adding your blog url after the slash. For example, if I want to see my blog, I would use: http://pinterest.com/source/glassaddictions.com
This has some limits if someone pins it from a feedburner or something like that. I found this out because someone pinned a tutorial and it was repinned several times, but didn’t show up in the source link. But at least it gives you a rough idea.
The next tip is twofold. First, if you haven’t seen the Pantone Colors for Spring 2012, here’s what’s supposed to be in this spring:
If you do enameling, Barbara Lewis and her Painting with Fire Team actually came up with a chart of enamel recipes to replicate these spring colors. I can’t imagine how long it took to come up with these recipes, but I will definitely be printing out the chart, taping it by my torch and trying them out.
If you need some of those colors, Barb is having a sale in her Etsy shop through Friday January 27th you get 18% off all enamels (price is already reduced).
Free Tutorial Friday: Hand Coiled Finding for creating adjustable Necklaces
Ever wonder how to use that gorgeous silk hand dyed silk ribbon without having to tie it? Then today is your lucky day.
Materials and Tools list:
-Hand Dyed Silk Ribbon
-20 or 21 gauge wire (I used sterling, but you can use whatever you want)
-something round approximately 4mm diameter. I used a steel mandrel.
-pendant
-beads, wire, or charms for embellishment and weight
Instructions:
Begin by hand coiling wire on your mandrel. You can work directly off the coil of wire to save materials. This particular mandrel seems to be the perfect size to allow the ribbon to move easily when tugged, but not to slip on its own.
Coil until you have about 1/2″ long coil. Cut tail about 3/4″ long.
Begin to spiral the end of wire toward the coil.
Continue until the spiral sits on top of the coil.
Repeat on the other side.
If you will not be attaching your pendant or beads with jump rings, you need to add those to the ribbon now before you add the coil.
Feed one end of the ribbon through the coil.
At this point, make sure the ribbon isn’t twisted in a manner you don’t like. The 2nd end of the ribbon needs to be fed into the coil from the OPPOSITE direction. This is a challenge. To aid me, I grab a piece of scrap wire sitting on my table and use it as a trocar (surgical reference. It’s the only thing I could think of to compare.) to guide it through the coil in the opposite direction without pushing out the other end of ribbon you already fed through the coil.
If you managed feeding both ends correctly through the coil, you just completed the most difficult part!
Now it’s time to embellish the ends. You could just do a knot on each end and call it good, but that’s not as much fun. Also, if you want to wear your necklace short and have the ends dangle in the back, it helps to have them slightly weighted. For this demo I slid a bead on each end then knotted the end.
Here’s the finished product (listed on Etsy if you want to see more photos):
For Lime Blueberry Fizz, I used some scrap sterling silver wire to make some fun spiral zig zag charms and tied them into the knot.
For this Nightmare Insomnia in the Garden Necklace (sold), I added small Hill Tribe flower charms to each end.
Have fun playing with this technique and make sure you show me pics of your creations.
My Favorite Tools of the Trade
After cleaning up my torch space which was cluttered with a plethora of glass and tools and frit and murrini and metal leaf laying about, I went minimalist. If you look at the bottom right corner of the photo below, you can see a small peek of tools piled up. Yes, it’s difficult to find the tool I want in this mess.
After cleaning and reorganizing the space, I laid out only the tools I use most frequently. The other tools in the pile above are hardly ever used.
Here’s a tour of my 5 favorite lampworking tools (other than my hands, torch and kiln).
Starting from the left side of the photo:
1. is a brass tool given to me by my friend Lisa Atchison several years ago. Her husband makes these and I cannot live without mine. I use it on at least 50% of the beads I make. The end you can see in the photo is perfect for shoving or spreading molten glass where you want it to go. The other end is a point and is what I use to poke holes in glass like the dots in my Nightmare Insomnia series beads below.
2. brass stump shaper. I love this for shaping ends of beads I’ve squeezed into a flattish shape, for mashing the bead into a shape I want other than round, and especially for burnishing metal leaf to the surface of a bead
3. Osibin Lentil Shaper. I love these for getting nicely shaped curved ends, shaping bicone or egg shaped beads.
4. Osibin Curve Shaper. I love this for rolling beads on to try to get them centered and to shape out any lumpy bits I don’t like.
5. Marble Mold. No, I don’t make marbles. And I rarely use this for actual shaping of beads. I mostly like it for measuring the initial footprint of glass when I need to make more than one of a similar bead. It increases my chance of success of actually making the beads the same size.
As a lampworker, it’s very easy to get lured into thinking you need more tools and toys. I have bought lots of tools and then they collect dust because I prefer my simple tools and I prefer using the heat of the torch and gravity to do most of the work for me. The tools above just help me refine what I’m doing.
Bring on the Soup
The bead soup, that is…Lucky me I was one of the 200 people drawn to play along in the current Bead Soup Blog Party.
Unfortunately the party has gotten so big that Lori has had to limit the number of participants to 200 out of the 384 that signed up. Eek! To be fair, I won’t sign up for the next one, so I will be bead soup partying like it’s 1999.
And who do I get to party with? Lucky me it’s the lovely Tania Spivey of Moobie Grace Designs. Before emailing Tania, I read a bit on her blog and also took a look at her etsy shop.
I was immediately struck with her style which leans towards vintage and some pieces with lots of whimsy.
She loves to play with polymer clay and told me that her initial foray into polymer clay was a “train wreck” but that once she started to incorporate her love of vintage embroidery into her beads, the rest just “fell into place”.
The intricate work she does in this piece and the addition of the feathers is so gorgeous!
I am totally in awe of Tania's polymer clay beads. This bracelet is only $25...if we weren't on a very tight budget right now, I would snap this up.
Tania loves to take her aggressions out on metal and any material is fair game to be used in her designs. She also dabbles in some steampunk.
Hammered copper pipe used for a bracelet.
Tania loves to use any type of beads except seed beads (I’m with you on that one!) and loves any color. I guess this means Tania will love anything I send…
I adore this sari silk rosette.
This should be really fun trying to come up with a way to challenge Tania and also make it fun for her. Any suggestions?
The Best Laid Plans
My plan the other day was to clean the entire studio. Well…my torch area was such a mess:
and:
and:
That I didn’t get past cleaning just that area. People, there were LAYERS of stuff. I took it all apart, cleaned up all the short rods, frit, powders, etc that caked my torch area.
I also tried to organize the rods of glass laying all over my table into something a bit more user friendly (meaning I wouldn’t spend 10 minutes trying to figure out where I laid the rod of clear). I did this by taking old jars and dividing the colors up by red. orange/yellow, green, blue, purple/pink, neutrals (white, clear, ivory, black) and then the glass that contains high concentration of silver and makes the really cool reactions.
Now that my table is so clean and organized, I am scared to use it. Not really. But after spending an entire Saturday on this one small section of my studio, I’m thinking I probably should be better about cleaning up after each torch session or at the very least once a week.
Now I need to carve out some time to tackle the rest of the studio. Wish me luck. The rest is just as bad as the torch area.
Beaded Laughter
Pics of hot guys with “quotes” about all things beady…what could be better? I’ll tell you what is better. Nothing.
Sylvie Lansdowne started writing her Beaded Laughter blog a few weeks ago after being highly amused by Handmade Ryan Gosling. I love to take a Beaded Laughter break each day. When you visit, make sure to read the tags from each post. Some of them are hysterical.
Here are some of my favorites:
Even hubs got a kick out of this one with Johnny Depp (he doesn’t seem to be as amused by hot guys talking about beady stuff as I am):
It leaves EVERYTHING to the imagination. hahaha! Love that.
If you would like to have one of these personalized for you, click here to get more details.
A “snow” day for me and some new beads for you
Good morning! I cannot believe it’s already Saturday. In some ways this week flew right past me…in others it felt like it drug on forEVER.
However, this day is going to be AWESOME! My family is doing a day long ski trip. Out the door at 6:15 am, and not scheduled to be back until after 9pm. I have the entire day to myself to do whatever I want. Just the idea of it makes me downright giddy. Because I don’t want to waste one second of this precious day, I got up at 5 am with the family and shoved them very lovingly out the door. Don’t get me wrong, I adore my husband and children. I love spending time with them. And I will miss them while they are gone today. However, I am looking forward to the large chunk of uninterrupted time to myself.
What are the plans? Well…they aren’t particularly glamorous. But they are time consuming. I am one of those that once I start a project, I need to work on it until it is completed and have momentum on my side. Once I stop, all bets are off and the project will probably sit unfinished for weeks, months, years…
Today (after I finish my morning coffee, eat some breakfast and workout) I would like to get my studio in order. All of it. Not just one little section. Not just enough to tolerate working in it. Whenever I try to clean my studio, I am interrupted by something the family needs or wants (dinner? Go eat a bag of chips!) I am also considering getting rid of stuff I never use and will probably never use in the future. I may offer some things here at deep discounts just to clear space and give someone else the opportunity to use and appreciate something I don’t appreciate.
I would also like to get started on my taxes for 2011. It shouldn’t take very long. But I want it finished and in the format the accountant (my darling husband) wants it in early this year instead of last minute.
And if there is time left over (which I doubt), I might make some new beads. Or maybe I’ll read. Or knit. Or make jewelry. Or go see a movie. All I know is if I want to get any of this done, I need to wrap up this blog post. How about some eye candy first though? I actually listed a few new beads on etsy yesterday.
Obligated to Dream
To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while.
– Josh Billings
One day about 2 years ago, I was in the midst of homeschooling my kids, being a mom, a wife, a chauffeur, the accountant, the secretary, the cook, the maid and the zookeeper. Oh, and I was also trying to run a business where I was the CEO, creative director, creator, marketer, and accountant. I was stressed, overwhelmed, and felt like I was doing all of these things half-assed. Sound familiar? Even if you don’t homeschool (which I am sure 99.9% of you reading my blog don’t), being a woman is hard work and we put so much pressure on ourselves to do everything, be everything, and to do it without chipping a nail or breaking a sweat.
Something had to give. I decided one of these things would be my business. When I nonchalantly mentioned to the kids I had decided to scale back, I was met with silence. This was not what I expected. At all.
Then my son says “I would rather go back to school than to see you give up your dream.”
Um…what?
I was floored.
My daughter pipes in with a “me too!”
Something you have to understand…they were not fans of their previous school and this was before we knew about the awesome place they go to school now existed. While I don’t think they ever loved homeschooling, they did love the flexibility and the ability to change plans on a whim or travel during off seasons.
There was further discussion which basically boiled down to me telling them I wasn’t “giving up a ‘dream,’” but making a choice for my own sanity. And they held fast to their belief I was giving up something I desperately wanted just to homeschool them.
I was completely flabbergasted by this exchange and really didn’t know where it came from. However, I knew my choice was the right choice.
Fast forward about one year. I was reading a homeschooling related book, when I came across something that smacked me upside the head. The gist of it was if we, as parents (and especially moms), are constantly telling our children they can do anything, be anything, and to follow their dreams, but then they see us sacrificing our dreams and goals and biggest desires, then they #1-won’t believe us and #2 won’t know how to do it and #3 won’t see us happy and fulfilled.
In order for our children (and grandchildren!) to learn to follow their dreams, they need to see us putting in the hard work, effort, blood, sweat, and tears to see how to make dreams a reality. They won’t know that wishing upon a star doesn’t actually make your dream a reality.
Here’s the thing…it doesn’t have to be a big huge life altering dream. Maybe you’ve always wanted to learn how to do the tango. Or play the piano. Or see the Grand Canyon. These count as dreams. Give them importance, share some of them with your family and friends.
Make a list. While some people call this list a bucket list, I find that term very depressing. I prefer to think of it as a list of goals or dreams. Try to think of at least 100 things to put on your list. These 100 things can be as small as “try a martini” (that was on my list) or as big as “take a year long cruise around the world”. In fact, it’s good to have a mix of easy to accomplish dreams and the sky is the limit dreams.
Place at least one or two easy to accomplish goals at the top of the list. Post this list where you will see it every single day. It doesn’t have to be in a place where everyone can see it…maybe in your closet or inside the cabinet door in your bathroom. Then focus on getting those one or two easy to accomplish goals checked off. Once you see and feel the sense of accomplishment, you can start tackling other goals and perhaps your family may help.
I would encourage everyone in the family to do their own list (we did!). It’s eye opening and a fun exercise to learn more about each other. The kids can then start on making their dreams a reality right away and have the skills built in for the future when they become adults and suddenly frozen by fear or the sense of obligation and the need to sacrifice their dreams for the sake of their children.
Let’s talk about it. Leave a comment below and answer the following questions: What are some ways you are following your dreams right now? If you aren’t, why not?
Playing with Color
My friend Linda Larsen (click on her name, she posts awesome tutorials on her blog!) sent me to a really cool website and I wanted to share it with you in case you’ve never heard of it before either. It’s called Kuler and is a wonderful source of color inspiration. You can enter search terms by color, or if you’re looking for a certain feel you can enter “modern” or “urban” or “victorian” into the search and see what pops up.
I can see all kinds of applications for using this in addition to making beads or jewelry. For example, website design, redecorating a room, planning a party or wedding, other crafts (quilting, scrapbooking, knitting, painting, etc), wardrobe planning, and so much more.
This website has now been a constantly open window on my computer for a couple days while I search for color ideas. There are some features I haven’t taken time to play with yet so it’s entirely possible I’ve barely tapped the potential of this website. However, I’m having too much fun playing with and searching for color combos.
