Beadbijoux

Wow this year has flown by. I cannot believe the holidays are already upon us. Everyone has always told me that once the kids start school the years start flying by so fast you can hardly catch your breath. They were right. Yesterday was our first official school music program and it was the most delightful thing I have ever seen. My little kindergartner donned her paper pilgrim hat and belted out the sweetest songs with all the fun and adorable motions that go along with it. I totally remember putting on those programs when I was a kid. Oh what fun. It was a great day to be a mommy. kindergarten pilgrims With Thanksgiving tomorrow and black Friday following suit, the Christmas shopping madness is about to begin. I have been frantically trying to get ready for it by spending as much time in the studio as my schedule allows, and hope to have a bunch of fun new stuff ready to list soon. If you've not already liked my facebook fan page you should do so now. I will be posti

Today marked the changing of an era in my house. My eldest child started Kindergarten. I felt both old and young at the same time. Young, because watching her get on the bus and walking her into the school building brought forth a flood of memories -reminiscent of my own youth. It felt a bit like my first day of school. I had the sudden urge to pull up a chair and bust into a fresh box of crayons, but the teachers were all too quick to gently nudge us clingy parents out the door. Old, because after I returned home the house felt suddenly quiet. Too quiet . My 3 year old was off playing peacefully with his cars and I didn't have the constant chattering of my best gal gnawing my ear off. It was my first taste of "empty nest" syndrome. And I did not like it . My life flashed forward 15 years and it left goosebumps and a cool chill down my back, which in turn made me go hunt down my 3 year old - who was playing so nicely by himself - and force him to snuggle with me for

My son came out of the womb with an oral fixation like nothing I have ever seen. He needed something in his mouth 24/7. After 2 days of being permanently attached to me, I broke down and stuck a pacifier in his mouth. Little did I know what kind of a monster I was creating. binki monster I know most newborns are horrible sleepers, but I think my child might hold some kind of world record for sleeplessness. He was up every 45 minutes like clockwork for the first 2 months. I really don't remember those days as I was pretty much in a fog. After 2 months I couldn't take it anymore. I broke all the rules in the book and put him on his tummy to sleep and something magical happened. He actually slept! For 2-3 hour increments. It was amazing. It was unbelievable. It was the blasted binki. Apparently a nice little side-effect of sleeping on your tummy is that your pacifier is propped up by the mattress and cannot fall out of your mouth as easily. Brilliant . At that point I di

I have come to the conclusion that I produce better art when I am not really trying. Apparently my anal retentive, ocd, detail-oriented, control-freak qualities are absolutely perfect for my day job, but not necessarily conducive to the creation of expressive art. Thank goodness I am also an extremist - which comes in quite handy for the creative part of me that does produce art. Because if I can't make it perfect, I just "throw it together" and call it a day. It is from those experimental endeavors that I give you my new line of pendants: Scraptastic My scraptastic series was actually born from my compulsive need to clean the clutter around my studio. It was beginning to overtake my space and cramp my creative style. When I get in these moods I tend to fill bags and bags worth of stuff to purge. The garbage man dislikes those days. The folks at Goodwill love those days. The scrap bin of leftover glass rods and stringers was full to the brink. So I decided to g

... famous quote from Dr. Frankenstein himself - appropriate considering this latest project of mine did turn out to be quite the monster. It is finished. And we are LIVE with the new and improved website. Click around, check it out and let me know what you think. I still have a lot of photo uploading to do to my Flickr galleries, but that should go quick now that the hard part is out of the way. It also means I should have more time to focus on the really fun stuff - like making beads and jewelry. I have a new series I'll be posting about tomorrow that I think is going to be fun. But here is my latest offering  listed on eBay :

I have been feverishly working on my new web site. Goodness knows I am ridiculously terrible at keeping the current one up-to-date. I got so far behind that I just plain gave up. The new site is going to be really cool, with all sorts of hip trendy techno buzz like RSS feeds and stuff like that. So my blog posts, flickr galleries, Etsy shop and eBay auctions will all be centralized and feed directly into my website so I don't have to upload my pictures and content to 4 different places. Cool eh? It really is brilliant for lazy people like me who can't seem to manage so many different sites at once. The bonus is that if I decide to switch up my e-commerce venue ( aka quit Etsy and list at a different handmade retailer ) then I can just change up the feed and it will all just work automagically. I'm hoping to launch by the end of the month so watch for it. In the meantime, you should head on over and like my facebook fan page because it is my birthday month so I have d

Color is everywhere. It is in everything. Even black & white has color. Have you ever tried to match a black shirt and a black pair of pants? Or picked out paint swatches for "white" ceilings? The underlying colors just come out. They can't help themselves. I love color. Lots of color. It makes me happy. My 5 year old shares my love for all things colorful. The other morning she came out of her room dressed in purple socks, orange leggings, a hot pink skirt and a turquoise shirt. She's quite the little fashionista. Admittedly a lot of my color inspiration comes from my daughter's closet. I so wish they would make some of those outfits in grown-up sizes - not that I could get away with actually wearing any of it . But the color palettes are always so much fun! In the summer my inspiration comes from my backyard. Stare at a beautiful garden for a few minutes to be flooded with color ideas. Scrapbook paper is also an addictive resource for great color comb

It's really too bad that vacation cannot last forever. Of course some people actually live in paradise whereas others ( fools like me ) choose to live in the frozen tundra ( aka Minnesota ). I always question that decision every single time we come back from our annual family vacation in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. It snowed today. Not a lot. In fact not even enough to really justify shoveling. But when you spent yesterday morning waking up to the crashing of the ocean waves against the beach and the sun in your face, it just makes it that much more depressing. Ah well. Back to reality. The kids had a blast swimming in the pool and playing on the beach. I actually rather enjoyed being disconnected from the world for just a bit and doing some relaxing. But alas, it must come to an end and reality sets in once again. The bags are unpacked. The laundry is cleaned. The fridge has been re-stocked. Now it is time to get back into the studio and crank out some glass. I have custom o

I am not a paid color tester for any glass companies, not that I would ever turn down the opportunity if such a thing existed . Nor am I a professed expert on anything glass related - color, viscosity, compatibility or otherwise. I am just a beadmaker trying to get a handle on the ridiculous bundles of unorganized and uncategorized glass in my studio. If I am ever to get my act together and determine which colors I absolutely must have in my collection, I need to start taking notes. Since I am taking notes for myself, I thought I might as well share them with everyone else just in case you might find my ramblings interesting or useful. So here is my first color review: Reichenbach Aqua [ RL-4015 ]. In rod form this glass is a very pretty pale aqua with a slightly more greenish tint than Effetre pale aqua. There are really no surprises when melting it and it stays true to color in bead form. I didn't bother to do any reactive testing with silver, sulfured glasses and the like b

No. This is not a foodie blog. Or a recipe blog. So don't have any expectations that you will find your next gourmet dinner posted somewhere on this site. Actually this blog isn't really about anything in particular, but rather a hodge-podge eclectic mix of random musings and ramblings by yours truly. Today, however it is a recipe blog because I thought it time I shared my famous vegan chili recipe with the rest of the free world. And I wanted to pin it to my pinterest board . Today I am making this dish by request of my 5 year old. It is her absolute favorite and I like to make my girl smile. Besides, who can argue with a 5 year old wanting to eat something so ridiculously healthy? Admittedly, I am a cook by sight/taste/feel kinda gal and rarely take exact measurements. But for all you anal compulsive measurers out there I decided to write down some "ballpark" estimates for you. By all means tweak and modify to your hearts content to get it just right for you.

Not every bead I make comes out looking beautiful. Shocking. Sad. But true. In fact I actually have 3 different levels of unsatisfactory bead buckets. We have the pee cup - which houses all the cracked, broken and completely unusable beads. I have no idea why I save them. I guess I just don't have the heart to throw them in the trash. Somewhere, somehow they will come in useful for something. I just know it.  No I do not have a hoarding problem. Really. I don't. Then there is the banker box - which contains a multitude of fuglies. These are mostly from my newbie days but the box does seem to be getting fuller, and I am pretty sure that beads cannot reproduce themselves through osmosis so I must be continuing to make them. Lastly we have the orphan dish. This is home to the beads that are not outright horrid looking, but lack enough enthusiasm for me to attempt to replicate them or even make them a matching brother or sister. These unexciting and unwanted beads go into the d