Beadbijoux

Famous last words spoken by my mother. In that tone of voice. You know the one. The one that says "you are in big trouble missy. Expect to be grounded for at least a week. Perhaps forever." Yeah, that one. I'll never forget that night. I had just passed my driver's license test earlier in the day. Mom gave me the keys to her car to drive to a very specific location, from which I would return at a very specific time. You already know how this ends - Mom standing in the driveway, tapping her foot, hand out clicking her fingers in that "gimme those keys right this instant" motion. Come to think of it, I never did drive that car again. Ever. So where have I been? No place exciting really. Certainly not road tripping across the country in a "stolen" vehicle. Nope. I was at training. I won't bore you with the details *yawn* but suffice it to say my brain is mush and I am happy to be returning to normalcy. My studio is not pleased with my abs

Ah the magic 3 letter acronym that is supposed to be the ultimate answer for the question "how do I do this?" Practice , practice , practice . Well that is what I have been doing. Now that my lampworking studio is fully set up (I'll have to blog about that journey some other time) I have been spending every free minute - after the kids are in bed, and the house is cleaned up, and the errands have been run, and you see where this is going - at the torch trying to learn how to make glass beads. I can't really complain. I have been able to get about 2-3 hours a week at the torch so we are making progress, albeit some very slow progress. The beads are starting to resemble beads and not just globs of glass with holes in the middle. The holes are much smoother and can no longer double as a finger pricking device. And I'm even managing to get some almost precise dot placement so they look like something I actually meant to do.