Concordia Reunion

Apple Core Beads

My little apple core beads got noticed in my long-neglected ArtFire.com listing! Tis the season for fall fruits, so I guess the collection curator searched me. See my tutorial for making these beads, published in the October 2009 issue of Polymer Cafe.

This year I'm making other things - covered egg ornaments and mummies and broomsticks.

I  think Baghead is my favorite, but  this mummy is cute, too.

He inspired my smaller Mummy Face Brooches.....

Each one slightly different, with varying amounts of graveyard aging  -  they have been buried for many years, some of them. You think it's clean in those old tombs???

I was also curious about making broomsticks. I used raffia with both copper wire and twigs, using wire, wrapping and stitching for different types of brooms. Not exactly Harry Potter's Firebolt or even an older Nimbus 2000, but perhaps useful for someone. These are about 4" long. The earrings were shorter...

View ALL my new eggs and seasonal stuff on my Picasa web album here.

My Studio

Classes - people are always asking me to teach them. But my studio space - though big - is cluttered and the table that should be available for students to sit at is covered in storage things. Alright, covered with stacks of papers, books, a storage hutch snagged from my son's office, and generally just junky. I clean it off when I need to use it.

No longer! Once I get things sorted out, there is now lots more storage space to organize plus an 8' workbench height counter - with a vise!

Gotta love Craigs List. And Dewey - he's a Tennessee boy from my little country church who hauls scrap. He not only provided a truck, a trailer and 2 burly guys to move this behemoth (actually an old nuts and bolts cabinet from an hold hardware store) from a guy's basement, but they installed it into my walk-in basement and he had a formica countertop that just fit - off by only 1". He also added the vise.

Those boxes in the back are the 65 drawers . . .

which will soon hold my stuff.  I have plans to label maybe paint the drawer fronts so I know where things are, but NOT today.

I know some of you are jealous, admit it. But you should have seen what I didn't buy - a 10' long shoemaker's polishing/grinding/stitching machine, with ventilation system. I do not think it will ever leave that poor guy's basement. It was his father's who had shoe-repair hobby and who obviously collected a lot of stuff.

So, I'll post the finished results someday soon.

Vote on Etsy Beadweavers Bollywood Challenge

Beadweavers united - on Etsy. The Etsy sellers who love beadweaving have their own team to co-promote sales of their work. Each month this group has a challenge - and September's challenge was Bollywood.

You can view some truly amazing beadwork and participate by voting for your favorite. To vote, visit their blog here, where you can view each of the below pieces up close.

Then vote for your favorite, on the right side of screen. Note: I'm not in this challenge, but there are some fabulous pieces here.....

Etsy - again. Seriously, check it out

Wow, twice in a week an item from my Etsy shop has been selected for a Treasury  (read, co-promotional selection of cool items on a theme, selected by another Etsy seller).

This time an artist from Turkey included my Apple Core Beads in a grouping about Autumn Colors. Thanks, Sema! Had a great time exploring the various items in this group. Love the birds...

 
The thing is, none of her items are in this grouping. So I had to go check out ZuZu's World. She lives in Turkey and does Turkish lace - with traditional scarves and shawls, but also making jewelry with individual flowers she crochets and connects into long wearable strands. Very cool. Reminds of "long ago days" when I wore daisies on my prom dress. Yep, I'm that ancient.

So while I'm exploring Etsy, I stumbled upon something completely different....a guy who makes clocks using recycled items....like old computer hard drives,

tape deck reels, record players, dead Apple iBooks (yep, it happens).Shop is called PixelThis. So if you need a gift for a geek, or a lover of electronic gear this is a good place to shop.