Crochet Project

I never came back to show you my in class crochet project. I love this pattern because You just chain how ever many you want (I kept this one small - 32 - because of time limitations in class.) You single crochet down the chain and then along the backside of the the original chain and keep going, round and round. As I showed you in the first post, it just turns in on itself! Pretty cool, huh?

You can seam it up the sides or on the diagonal as I did. I like the diagonal because it makes it thicker where you grab the hot pot and it adds a little something to the plain potholder. It's made from cotton - best for the kitchen. You don't want potholders made from something that melts like rayon or poly!

Of course, I had to make something glassy to go with it: a cupcake button!

And naturally, I had to make a few more. In typical Holly fashion... they kept getting bigger! These should be up on the glass bead website later today.

Just a Howdydoo Today

My apologies for going all MIA on you last week. I started a job... and got laid off within hours. I've been wanting more work as a content manager and was so excited to be working freelance for a HUGE beauty company (and freaking out over roots that are so long, they could be called "tan lines!"). But their backend wasn't ready for the front end. (Think of it as Blogger having a massive brain fart when you just HAVE to get a post up!) So... I spent more time commuting on the 405 than working. But money is money!

By Thursday, I was in major freak mode over teaching kumihimo... I had forgotten to package student kits and...in my effort to always give my students maximum info (info overload???), I decided to preload a few looms to teach them different stitches. All in all, in spite of no a/c on a hot day, it was hands down the BEST CLASS EVER!

Teaching at a community college is much different than teaching in a store. A store attracts a certain clientele; a community college attracts...the community at large. There are often language barriers, skill barriers and... intelligence barriers that you don't always encounter on such a large scale in a store setting. But this class, ALL got the concept, hunkered down and did their work and were all excited over their "homework." It was most exciting to witness!

Anyway, it looks like my job may be restarting this week and my schedule will be nutty as the website I will be working on has a huge "premiere" scheduled.... But I didn't want to leave you without any eye candy  for another week! These are all recent additions to the glass bead site. I'm gonna rustle up some lunch and hit the torch for a few hours and enjoy our cooler weather!

Have a great Monday!

Better with Time

Years ago, I set out to make a focal using my favorite transparent purple and silver plum... one the only reactive colors on the market way back then! (That should tell you how old this set is!) I made a rather abstract focal and some spacer beads; I cleaned them and wrapped them and somewhere between my work station and photo table, decided I didn't like them!

Not only were the relegated to the bead bowl, they were placed in a bowl that kept getting shoved from one area to another and I literally forgot about them. Last week, I found them and took them out. I like the silver plum so much but those old negative feeling lingered....until my bestie popped by for a cup of joe. She picked them up and declared them so cool!

And so, I sort kinda like them now... Does this happen to anyone else???

Hope you have a wonderful 4th of July!!!

If It Weren't for Bad Luck...

It's a good thing I can laugh at myself...otherwise, I think I'd cry all the time! This week's adventure is a lesson in why Holly MUST wear her glasses when working with beads!

It all started when I sold this little seahorse:

I was so excited... he was going to Germany! His owner makes lovely sea themed necklaces!

Only, this guy had been to a few bead shows and I had him wire wrapped on a copper stand with more copper loops coming out of his head. I grabbed my wire cutters in my darkened shop to cut off the copper on his head, because I couldn't get to the loop below his belly. And, wouldn't you know it? I cut off his "hair do" / upper fin thingy!

There was nothing to do but sit down and torch one up! And since I HATE just saying, "I broke it. Here's another." I could NEVER say that to a customer mainly because I know how that would make ME feel! I made TWO.

Here they all are together... the one I broke is in the middle:

Luckily, she liked the one on the left! Yay! The one I broke spent a bit of time with a diamond grinder and is in my Beads of Courage pile cause the kids will give him some love. And the one on the right??? He needs a good home. And I promise my wire cutters won't go anywhere near him!

Also, today is the LAST DAY of the 50% off sale on Artfire. Thank you, as always for l@@king!

Fresh Glass 6.29.11 - Wordless Wednesday

 

Those two back beads are also hearts... color tests for a custom order memorial bead. I love how the ivory on the  big heart got all silvered from my fritted vine cane! 

Custom Orders and Fussy Glass

A regular customer of mine who I also consider a dear friend asked me to make her a special bead based on a video game called Okami. I've played about 15 minutes of video games in my entire life so I was at a distinct visual disability.  But my friend sent me photos and even a video screen capture of the flower she wanted moving about.

That garlic bulb looking flower is the desired bead. The Okami game is stylized visually after Japanese watercolor. However, I felt the black outlines might be too much for glass - especially a sculptural piece where all the pieces parts would be made well ahead of the final  bead.

The flower has a bright orange center and the petals are actually a cloudy pink with white veining. The only cloudy glass I know of is CIM's Cirrus. And that's the where the trouble began.

I am not the biggest fan of this glass because I saw a rather fussy annealing schedule on many of the glasses a few years back. I don't feel the colors are that different and frankly I just don't have the money (or earn it back on my beads) to be buying Chinese made glass at "boutique" prices. Still I do love a few colors but... the inconsistency from batch to batch (making ordering online impossible) has made those colors lose my favor as well.

I'm not knocking what others do. I know many that love this glass and do wonderful things with it. For me, I'm only successful with CIM when I use it alone or with very little of any other glass. I have quite a bit of cirrus from a project of hollow birthday cakes I made and filled with czs. The cloudiness of the cirrus can read both white and transparent. I truly do love its look.

But when I layered it with a Vetrofond pink and dabbled on some veins in Effetre white, the entire bead cracked. I did some reading and found that fussy annealing schedule. It recommends cirrus anneal between 970 - 1040! I feared the rest of the bead would slump at those temps.

After discussing it with my friend, I slowly ramped up my kiln to 995 over the course of several hours. I fired up the torch and gently placed that hot bead back in the flames. I got everything glowing red. I healed the cracks and added definition back to some of the melted Italian glass. When I was certain there were no more cracks, I moved it back in the flame and back into the kiln.

And the next day, holding my breath, I opened to the door to... a more evenly cracked bead!

In the end, I simply couldn't sell a bead that cracked but... my customer insisted that it looked so realistic (in keeping with the theme of the game) and since she wanted it HUGE, she was just going to display it, I shipped it off. Still, I had to make her something to wear... (Yes, I am aware of my anal retentive nature!) That's what the small one is - minus the cirrus. I do love how cloudy the cirrus makes the core and I so wish there were something more compatible that would give me this effect.

 

Yes, I probable could've purchased /  used a CIM pink trans but who knows if I wouldn't have the same issue? In the end, It is a really cool looking bead and... I'm donating that cirrus to my bead group. I'm done!

I'm ending the sale on Artfire on the 30th so only a few more days for 50% off!

Filled with the Nervousness

I'm a bit nervous for my weekend. I'm teaching a class I've never taught before. Beginning crochet. It's fine....I've crocheted for decades having taught myself around age 11. But teaching it is another story.

My arm got twisted to do this... I seem to be the "go-to" teacher when someone quits at the school because I can do just about anything. But still, HOW do you teach someone to crochet AND have them finish a project in just three hours??? I'm more than a little worried!

Plus a new class has meant new lesson plans. I put a ton of effort into my lesson plans...photos and descriptions so that hopefully students can duplicate their efforts at home without me. But then, if they just wanted to read and follow instructions, they wouldn't be taking a class now would they?

That photo above is one of my class projects in the works. Of COURSE, I had to bling it out with some handmade glass buttons when I got done!

But I'll have to tell you more about it later. Today, I have to make more buttons to take to class and... I have some color tests to run for a new memorial bead.  Busy busy!

If you need something more substantial to read, you simply MUST check out my friend Jenny Cameron's article on Handmade Jewelry, Ridiculously Cheap! It's a must read for artisans everywhere and something I've long complained about here!  Jen just says it PERFECTLY!

Have a good weekend!!!

Fairy Tales

The Fire Divas most recent challenge was Fairy Tales. This was my entry. I call it "Cindy's Coach."

I wanted to give the illusion of a pumpkin converted to roll to the ball with Cindy inside. The window is to give the illusion that someone is inside. I cased the pumpkin in rare tangerine sparkle glass and it's AMAZING how it shimmers. I will probable list this on Artfire... after the sale.

The Artfire 50% off sale goes on....

Showoff - PINK!

I have a custom order I'm working on and i'm frantically making buttons for my crochet students so I will make today's post a bit easy and just show off some new goodies that I pray I get to list on the glass beads website today.

I love this pink dichroic laden focal:

And this is a sweet squeezed beads set of black and white base with pink flowers. 

Thanks as always for l@@king and...

The Artfire 50% off sale goes on....

Avioding the Vendor Burn

I got a phone call the other day from vendor of mine. My order from CHA's January show was ready to ship! Five months late!  The whole experience has me so ticked off, I thought I would share a little of what I've learned.

The show Experience:
I went to CHA on the fly last January. I wasn't planning to go but, one of the film jobs I landed was shooting there and a fellow Fire Diva wanted me to take a social media class with her so, I found myself at the show anyway. I did a quick inventory of my shop and went to my two favorite jewelry vendors with a list of tools and accessories I would need for my upcoming classes. I also went with a new mission: Find new goodies to build NEW  classes around.

 

Koi pond - part of my half price sale on Artfire

As I was leaving the first vendor, order already having been placed, a demo artist I knew from my Carol Duvall days grabbed me in their booth and showed me their kumihimo braiding line. I had been looking for a way to teach bead crochet but couldn't quite work out some of the logistics of teaching in a college setting as opposed to a bead store. Kumihimo would allow them to finish in two classes and the stitch work is not difficult. So I walked back over and added to my order.

This vendor does NOT give customers copies of an order. Which is lesson #1: I know you may be tired and that your feet hurt, but take their order form and transpose EVERYTHING to your own notebook. Item numbers, colors, quantities and descriptions. I did not do this!

The next vendor where I order most of the cheaper tools that the college prefers I sell had a new copper findings line. As the cost of sterling is through the freaking roof, I looked for and found all the accessories to rework my current wire classes into copper or silver coated copper to keep costs down. I ordered tons of findings! This vendor did give me a copy of my order but it was all item numbers! NO descriptions. Gee, that's helpful...NOT! Furthermore, as many of the items were new, several had the same number. I'm the one who caught this as my sales rep was writing up my order! Those are the only items that had any kind of description beside the number.

Bail Making Pliers... My new favorite must have!

After the Show:
Vendor #1 sent me a partial order the next week. But I only received  some of the kumihimo products: a few disks, mismatched cording (instead of the color coordinated sets I wanted), no beads, no bobbins, no class books. I had to put the new class on hold and wait for the products I was so excited about to be available.

Vendor #2 phoned to say that "some" of my findings were in but it would be "a few weeks" before the rest were in stock and they gave me the option to refuse the order or take a partial order. As I needed the tools, I took the partial order. It arrived with a few necklace blanks and all tools. I hardly call that "some." Yet another project has to be postponed.

Lesson #2: Ask the vendor for an ETA. If they don't meet that date... shop elsewhere!

Wire Wrapped Cupcake - also 1/2 price on Artfire

Five months later...

I'm now trying to figure out what is missing from the first vendor's order as I do finally have kumihimo classes starting.

And Vendor #2 sent me a list of what is finally in stock and I'm going through their online catalog to match item numbers to photos and to see if I still have a need for it as some of my jewelry classes have been cut back.  If I had a list of what I really wanted from the CHA show to compare, things would be a bit easier.

Which leads to the most important lesson #3: When standing there at the show, ask the vendor, ARE THESE ITEMS IN STOCK NOW? Next year, I will be certain to say, "Don't even show me things that aren't available NOW! I don't want to see the line you plan to roll out in six months..."

Lessons learned... Move on!


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