Featured in a blog

Here's a blog someone wrote about my beads. Kglass did a wonderful job. There's a lot of nice glass featured, as well as jewelry and some ideas about business. Take a peek here:
http://kglass8.blogspot.com/2011/02/isinglass.html

And here is a link to her shop:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/KGlass8

Girlfriend beads

Oh, I have a new bead style that I'm liking right now. So far I've only made four, and they're all princesses, but this idea isn't completely congealed yet. I decided while I was making one today that they don't always have to have a crown. So they are not going to be princess beads after all, but rather 'girlfriend' beads. Remember when tiaras were 'in'? I'm hoping that's all over with!

They can have different hair, skin, eye and background colors. And different background pictures too. Since there is a face on only one side, I have to work on making the other side interesting. I've got a new idea for that- we'll see how I do a bit later. For now, here are the first couple of princesses- the harried princess ( I keep wanting to call her Princess Harry!) and blue girl, who is a bit more staid.

The Woodwork of Irwin Seidman

Here's my new plan. Every once in a while I am going to show a little something from someone whose work I think is magnificent.

Today, it is the woodwork of Irwin Seidman. He was kind enough to tweet about something of mine, and when he told me about it, I had to go see what he made. Turns out he makes incredible wooden bowls, pepper mills, oil lamps, and other things. His pepper mills are on sale right now- a great addition to your kitchen wares.

I just love woodwork. My grandfather always had something cooking with wood in his workshop, and I have had the pleasure of working with wood a few times in my life. I love the feel, the patterns, the colors- it's all good! And Irwin does beautiful things with it.

There are also some lovely paintings from Susan Seidman.

Overall a wonderful etsy shop!

Here's a link:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/mapleseedgallery

Leaves again! Lampwork glass beads for demos

I know I mentioned this idea before, but wanted to bring it up again. I've started working on making a few leaves to use along with a demo.

I love to demonstrate for kids- schools, scout troops, whatever. And I know they don't have a lot of spare cash for this kind of thing. But doing it for free just doesn't work for me any more. I have finally come up with a new way to make this work better for both of us. The kids love to bring home a souvenir, and what better than something they can watch being made?

So now I offer a demo for a sensible fee, or they can buy a leaf for each child for about $5 and get the demo for free. It's win/win, I think. I bought my leaf press years ago just for demos. It's a nice quick thing that even an adult with a short attention span can usually manage to sit through. And it gives that nice 'aha' moment when the leaf is quickly pressed into shape. Of course, me being me, I always have to pull out the scissors and reshape a bit too...

Here is the link on this very blog to an easy photo tut to make some quick little crowd-pleasing leaves. http://isinglassdesign.blogspot.com/2010/01/quick-pile-of-leaves.html
Look! I made a youtube video too!