Highlights -

of the last couple of days:

Friday: Ooh friday. That was the day that Lydia Muell put up beads for sale. I had kept an eye out during the week after seeing her beads on LE, but I thought I would not be home at the time she would list them. As it happened I had put her in a wrong timezone and the actual listing time were 2 hours later than I had thought, and I were so ready!
I refreshed and refreshed and wondered how many others were doing that too and if her site would take it. I had almost convinced myself that it would be okay if I didn't get it, but as I refreshed once more the beads were up and I clicked and checked out and typed as fast as I could.
And Voilá, this is the latest addition to my bead/glass collection :)


Thank you Lydia for letting me use your picture

I am very excited about this one and have been sketching a bit regarding what I want to do with it. If I can pull it off it will be fit for a queen, but I shall keep it for myself :) Don't know when and with what I can possibly wear it though ... Go visit Lydias blog and website for stunning bead overload!

Also on friday, non bead related: My boyfriend has been looking at cars for a while. The one we have is an unsafe, noisy, smokey rustbucket, but it gets us where we want to go. We don't trust it for longer trips though, and with the holiday/vacation time coming up, he has made a serious effort, and on friday he picked up our new car! It is a whole new experince I tell you. It is silent, runs smooothly and there is more room on the backseat for the litle ones. I feel quite grown up when driving it, it feels like a 'real' car. Yay!

Weekend: There is a dot craze going on over at www.Lampworketc.com for all the wrong reasons, but none the less I have been inspired to do some too. I should probably not show off my own beads right after the glory of Lydias, but here we go anyway :)

The black and silver one was odd. I placed dots as 6-leafed flowers around the bead, melted them in and they were all well placed with a tiny line of black between them. When I reduced to get the silver out they grew right into each other and are just silvered areas now. Hard to see on the black, but very shiny.

The green one was odd too. There are actually 2 very different colours of green dots on that surface, they just look exactly the same. You can see the outlines of the top dots on the lower ones though.

The blue one has a very nice shape and weight. I have not cleaned it out of fear it might crack cause it's kind of big. But I'd like the blue dots closer together, the center dots are too big and not all shiny, and almost all of the tiny black dots are undercut.

Now the purple one came out nicely. The colours go well together (seashell base, some purple on top and iris blue mini dots), the purple dots came close together and the small metallic dots all went metallic and settled in well. It's a nice bead. But the thing is - everybody is doing it, and they all look just like it, so it doesn't feel like it's my creation. It does not make me happy.

These next ones may be simple, but they are all mine and that makes me happy :)

(Sorry about the fussyness that hurts my eyes. I shall replace asap)








Monday: Yesterday I went to have a bag full of beads annealed at my local glass supplier. I should have them back in a few days by mail. While I were there of course I had to get a couple of rods too :) I got black, white and both Ivories of Moretti as I were running out of those.
I also got a goldstone rod, one with the goldstone on the outside. I have tried the one that is incased in clear and find there are too much clear around it so now I will try the other kind. I don't use it much though, I'm not a glittery girl.
I also got 2 short rods of Double Helix glass that I look much forward to trying. I'll have to read up on how to work them first though, as I don't want to waste them. I got Terra and Chaos. This should be fun :)
And I had a good look at their kiln. They sell only that one, and the good thing about it is that apparently it doesn't use too many Amps when running, which is just what I need. It runs high enough for silver clay too, which I want to try later. I'll have too search around for a better price though, as danish prices are over the roof. It's the MF5 from Nabertherm in Germany. I'll go and look what else they have :)

P~