and the winners are….

I know and I apologise…I’m late.  The run up to school has suddenly included (among other things)  a complete overhaul of the kid’s rooms, including a paint job.  I’ve been meaning to paint their rooms since we moved in (4 years ago, says she with a red face) and it seems that now is the time.  The benefit is that now they can help with the job and learn about the joys of cheap renovation via painting!  Max’s room is a wonderful bright green which rejoices in the name of ‘Lime Freckle’.  Suits him…he has wonderful freckles, though not green ones.

   
                                                                              

A couple of shots of Max’s new green womb…he coils himself in there and reads for hours…

                       


Rachel’s room isn’t quite finished, but you can see the blue she has chosen.  It looks too Madonna’s robe blue here and is actually a little greener in real life.  My camera doesn’t do blues well.  Here is a demented shot of the wonderful (if a little sinister) Victorian doll’s house that Rachel inherited from her great aunt.  Yes, it is filled with miniatures…

My wonderful daughter also cut out all the entries for the draw and I folded them up into small bundles.  Somehow we like this better than the old random number generator, possibly because we are luddites at heart.  My daughter is no friend to technology (although she can work her way around a computer just fine, thank you…) and I’m seeing at school that it isolates you from your peer groups if you’re not connected.  But that is her choice – we all have to use technology in a way that works for us!  But I digress…you’d like to hear the winners, no?

                                         


                                                         
                                                     
                                            
         And the winners are.......Peg Gerrard and Linda Sudimack!
 
I don't have email addresses or shipping addresses for either of you, although I see that Linda has an Artfire shop linked to blogger, so I'll try sending a message there.  If either of you see this please contact me through Etsy or this blog so I can get your mailing addresses and send out your winnings!
And please, check in with me tomorrow as I’ll be adding my first video (made by me…) to my blog.  It will be up tomorrow barring any more unforeseen technical glitches.  Oy, the world of video formats and converters is horrible….

30-40-50 sale and a celebration giveaway!

 
 
                  
                          This collage features GIVEAWAY #1
 
I'm coming to the end of my necessarily unproductive summer, filled as it is with childish frolicking and short vacations here and there.  Also some teenage moaning about not knowing what to do....a first for this family!  Admittedly, the continuous heat has sapped our enthusiasm for endless outdoor stuff, except for biking over to the nearest public pool and jumping in as quickly as possible.  We have one more week of vacation and then my two will have to start practicing in earnest for late summer and early fall auditions, and get mentally ready to start the new school year which begins on August 30.  Music school starts on the 21st of August, if they are accepted!  Toooo early.......
 
I have a lot of new work to list in the store and it seems to me there is rather a lot of older ( but hopefully still interesting?) work in there that's been around too long for my taste.  I'd like to clear some of this out in preparation for the newer stuff so this would be the time to buy if you've seen something you like but thought it was 'a bit dear', as my mum would say!

Here's how the sale will run, for 3 days only !

Thursday, August 9th, 30% off all items in the shop (use coupon 345august9 to receive 30% off )
Friday, August 10th, 40% off all items in the shop (use coupon 345august10 to receive 40% off)
Saturday, August 11th, 50% off all items in the shop (use coupon 345august11 to receive 50% off)
All purchased items will be shipped out the following Monday and anything left from sale items will be moved to a permanent sale category ( of 30% off) in the shop.

                        
                              
                               This collage features GIVEAWAY #2

The giveaways are to celebrate reaching 1000 admirers in my Etsy shop and the amazing number of blog followers I seem to have.  Seems like yesterday when I had absolutely NONE!  All you have to do is comment on this blog (on this post, if you wouldn’t mind…) and I will enter your name in the hat to win one of the 2 giveaways featured on this post. The centre photo in each collage shows the total collection – focal beads, experiments and other good stuff.

I’ll be making the draws on Thursday, August 16, so you’ve got 9 days to enter the draw!  Good luck!

I wish you all the best, the most relaxing final weeks of summer…..

Strata production

I'm really not very good at online shop managment.  I do have a fatal tendency to spend overly long periods of time working on one little thing (that's also a one-off, by the way) that isn't going to make heaps of money for me.  Not that that outcome was ever on the cards in the choice of artist as a career!  Remember the old matchbook cover advertisements 'Become an artist - make 10 -50 $ a week!'?   It spoke truth....oh , yes.

With this in mind and also the need to have some things in my shop that don't require new and individual listings every single time (could it be that I will actually get to use the relist function on Etsy and leave behind the hodge-podge of copy and paste?),  I've designed some beads that are a little less labour intensive than the hollow ones.  These are more along the lines of the 'meat and potato' spacer type of bead, rather than the focal type.  I like these as they are a great opportunity for trying out new surfaces without a huge commitment. 

I've fallen in love with cutters (great production tool) and recently purchased the entire set of Kemper cutters (55) carried by the Clay Factory  (owned by Marie Segal and her husband).  Just by the way, this is a great deal and saves a lot over buying the individual sets.  These will be amazing not only for my new line, but also for the tiled hollow beads!  I'm also going to buy this tutorial on Craftedu, on how to make your own minicutters - heck, it's only 12$ - see here!  What fun and a  great use for soft drink cans...

It started with just layering up cut pieces of polymer and realizing that I like the possibilities of the side edges as much as I liked the 'top' and 'bottom' sides of the resulting bead, which I covered with a transfer.  I also realized that I liked the beads when the layers were not stacked too neatly as this accentuated the 'strata' effect, particularly when distressed with various finishes.  And also, once made, the bead could be interestingly manipulated away from the cutter shape to be a little 'off'.  Which, naturally, made it a little more fun to my eye, as it shows some movement and gesture which always livens things up!  Once I got the other cutters, I tried some other shapes - some worked and some need work.

These were the originals which used a transfer created on Photoshop from some of my artwork.  Rocklike. Cubic...

 Then little drums..

Triangles, naturally...bird feet black and white, and transfers -

Not so sure about these transfers, it's harder than one would think to pick an image that looks good tranferred!  

Some black and whites with eyes, but not sure about the ovals - tricky shape, unless it's cleanly cut!

Teardrops with alcohol inks that morphed into commas...

Battered hearts, the only kind, really..

And my favourite ones so far (metallic, of course) because I really like the sides of these -

Yup, like all my work, more work required.   One wonders if it will all come together in a glorious whole at some future time. 
Some of these sets will be finding their way into my shop in the next couple of days, while I continue to work on new ones.  And new pods....

I'm holding my draw tommorow for the Bead Chest gift certificate - don't forget to enter by commenting HERE!  Bye all...

A gift certificate for you....

This has happened to me a few times lately and I guess it's a sign of something - increasing readership, I guess.  Some businesses have approached me with the idea of advertising or promoting on my blog.  It's all a bit weird as what they are selling has nothing to do with what I'm interested in or talking about, so I guess they are homing in on a certain demographic that they feel must be reading my blog.  After all, I make no pretence at youth myself - although in my head I feel young and full of ideas - funny, that!

Then last week, an online bead business called The Bead Chest asked me if I'd be interested in promoting their shop a little for a gift certificate.  Now, I make beads, and since I'm just starting this business, I try really hard not to buy beads - and this is despite the sore temptation that I experience in this area every day on Etsy.  There is so much beautiful work out there...but at this point, I'm better focusing on the task at hand:  that is, learning to make beads, learning to sell beads and learning to make jewelry with my beads/components.

But I did think about all of you out there in my weeny bead universe and I said 'Yes' to the gentleman who asked me - 'Yes, I'd like to do a giveaway on my blog and use your gift certificate!'.  And the lovely gentleman said, 'That's great!  So now I have a lovely 30$ gift certificate for The Bead Chest, and I went over to the store and found some wonderful images of  beads that are wonderful and classic.  Like looking through Lois Sherr Dubin's book 'The History of Beads'.

The Bead Chest carries a wide variety of trade beads, some modern, some older, and a wide selection of contemporary African beads.  The lovely gentleman (Isaac, by name) who dispensed the gift certificate told me: 

"Regarding our business, we are a small family-run business and have been selling beads for several decades. Our favorite part of being in the bead business is seeing what our customers are able to make out of the beads we sell. We are always impressed by their beautiful creations :) As far as acquiring the beads, we work with bead traders in Africa. We travel to Ghana regularly. We always do our best to ensure the beads are fair trade, and are committed to supporting developing communities and economies in Western Africa. We also focus on African beads because they tend to be more eco-friendly than beads that are mass-produced in China and India. We do not have a brick and mortar store, but we sell online 24/7, and have done gem & jewelry shows in the past."

If you click on any of the pictures, you'll go straight to their listings!

I am in love with these gorgeous red simple glass beads, and as an ex-glass person, I can tell you that reds like this are the Holy Grail for glass blowers!

These are probably made from old 45 records...

Beautiful bone beads..

You could do a lot of things with this brass filigree, just think of Gilder's paste...

 

Classic beads..

Given a chance, I would buy a ton of these snake beads, they are so beautiful and useful...

Well, there you have it!  If you'd like a chance to win a 30$ gift certificate from The Bead Chest, just comment on my blog about the first beads you ever really loved - something given to you, the first (momentous) bead purchase you made, the 'aha' moment from making something that really worked - anything at all!  I've been thinking a lot about my creative progression recently, so I 'd like to hear something about yours.

I'll be drawing for this next Wednesday, April 13!  Have a lovely spring weekend!

and the winner is...

Early morning.  Must make lunches for school - must unload dishwasher to get rid of this breakfast stuff...

No, must rush to the computer to print out the names for the draw and fold them them up wee small so that the kids can pick one this morning!  Son refuses to get up.  Daughter a little grumpy when asked to stick her hand in the bowl....

But then relents, because she is a lovely child at heart....

Can you see it yet?  Son staggers into the room in the midst of the excitement...he is completely at sea with all this and is only concerned with convincing me that hot chocolate would make a nutritional breakfast!

Thanks for pandering to your mother's morning whimsies - job well done, YOU deserve that hot chocolate!


Here it is.

Lovely Veerle from ne vous installez pas!  You must check out her blog, she has an amazing way with crochet and necklaces, among other things...Thanks all of you for commenting and now I'm sorry you all didn't win.

I just couldn't resist - perhaps next time I'll use the random number generator to minimize the drama.

Time waits for noone, nor does a giveaway...

It's been a while - and I do apologise!  I had the best of intentions when September started.  It's certainly been a busy month and, most exciting for me, I reached 150 sales in my Etsy shop!  Time management remains a problem, especially as I have the project of painting the house to complete before winter sets in completely (notice how I cleverly don't give myself an actual deadline?  Clever, that...)  The hours with the brush in hand also let ideas roll (somewhat frustratingly) through my head.

To get to the point - to celebrate 150 sales, I am having a little giveaway here!   Just comment on this blog before the end of next Monday, October 18 and I'll enter you for the draw for these lovely orphans.  (Please, they need a home!)  They include (among others) a flat fly bead,  3 new ruffle beads, assorted other transfer beads and a leafy pod thing.  On Tuesday morning next, I'll write your names on bits of paper and get my kids to do the deed!

I'll be back tommorow to tell you about a new project I'm involved in, and to post some new work!  Really, truly!