Propane Problems

Hey there everyone! Sorry there haven't been as many beads listed on Etsy the past few days. I've been having a fun (not really) struggle with my propane. It's been going on for a few days now and I finally just ordered some new parts.

It started on a cold snowy evening of -1 degrees out. I'm all ready to start torching! I get my boots on, my coat and scarf and head out to my backyard through the snow to turn on my propane. I go up and down the icy snowy porch steps, trudge through a foot of snow, get inside, take off my winterwear and head to the studio to get some work done.

I turn on the propane of my torch and I get nothing. Hmmmm...this can't be a good thing. I put my winterwear back on, trudge back through the snow to the propane tank to see that the gauge is on zero. I notice that the little arrow on the gauge is frozen and not moving. I carefully listen for the familiar sound of propane rushing into the hoses as I fiddle with the knobs. Nothing....sigh. My propane must be out. That sucks.

The next day, my husband brings home a fresh tank of propane for me and hooks everything up. Hooray! I'm ready for another night of torching. I go outside into the lovely Rochester winter wonderland (blech) and turn on the propane. It's not as cold today so the knob moves to its normal setting and life is good. I head back inside and to the studio to start torching away.

Everything's good for about an hour. Hmm....why's my flame getting huge and then tiny? I try to turn down the flame to apply some stringer and it turns into a giant bushy candle. I try to turn up the propane to reduce some silver glass and my flame almost dissapears. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here!

I've given up on making anything productive at this point. I shut everything off, go outside and take the regulator off the propane tank. Why is the needle on zero? It was on earlier. I've been making beads for an hour. I turn it off and dissconnect the hose and apparently the needle had gone so high that it went back around to zero. Ooops!

So anyways, my regulator is pretty much shot at this point. It has been cleaned out and then accidentally frozen to the tank because I didn't dry out all the water. I've cleaned it and left it on a heat vent for 24 hours and still nothing. My husband even took the entire thing apart and cleaned it up, but still nothing.

So I'm currently not able to torch and I'm waiting for a new regulator in the mail. Yuck!

Daily Deviation Hooray!

So yesterday I came home from my day job. I've been having a rough time with my day job lately. Yesterday was not much different. I came home exhausted from another day and started logging on to my etsy, DA, and other sites I promote my work on.

Whoa....that's a lot of messages! What did I do? Wow! A favorite every 5 minutes? What the hell did I do!?

It took me a little while to figure it out because I'm slow and my brain doesn't always function after work, but finally I did figure it out. I was the Daily Deviation for Monday January 25th! Thank you so much everyone who commented on my work. I hope you enjoy peeking at it. It really brightens my day.

Oh and be sure to visit PurpleRose on DA. She suggested my beads to be featured and I really appreciate it :)

An Overdue Update

Ok, I'm very overdue for a blog post. Especially since I think in one of my recent posts I said I'm going to update more. I lied apparently. Sorry about that :(

Anyways, I hope everyone had a good Christmas and New Years. Mine was good, but it sure sapped the energy out of me. I've been beading like a madwoman lately and then I hit a tiny wall in my photography and decided I needed a little break, so I took the weekend off. I feel like my batteries have been recharged and it is a great feeling. If you were wondering, I did figure out my little photograph issue. Yay!

I don't have a ton to write about at the moment, but I have the impress beadliner on order right now! When I get it, I'm hoping to show you guys what it's like. This tool has been out for a while, but when I was doing research on it, I couldn't find any pictures of it in use. Everyone says it is a great tool for the money. I'll let you know my observations on it. Just gotta wait for it to get here. I'm not very good at waiting.

Jewelry and Soon Metalworking

Happy November everyone! Halloween is over so we can all stop trying to resist all that yummy Halloween candy and prepare to be stuffed with Thanksgiving fare. Yum!

So, I've finally been making some finished jewelry. I very rarely make finished jewelry, but lately the few things I have made have been so much fun to create. I love making beads, but it's so awesome to see a finished product made from your work. It's exciting for me.

Anyways, I had a little bit of extra money, so I got excited and purchased some tools from Harbor Freight (which is an awesome store by the way) for metalworking. I didn't go too crazy on tools, and just bought what I would need for basic charms, bead caps, and lining beads with metal. Unfortunately, I bought all that, but I didn't have time to shop for some metal to play with. Doh!

I was hoping to maybe have some first metal projects to share with you, but it'll have to wait. Meanwhile, here's some of the finished jewelry I've been making. It's all up on my Etsy store.



Ok, that's enough shameless promotions from me. :)

Photographing with close up filters

So I bought a 15 dollar set of close up lenses for my Canon DSLR camera this week. At first I was pretty disappointing because I couldn't figure out how to screw them on to my camera. Of course I was doing it backwards and I felt pretty dumb. Obviously I'm not the most camera savvy person, but I've had a lot of experimenting with this camera, and I can at least take some decent bead pictures.

I'd love the have a macro lens, but those are a wee bit pricey for me, so I went with these close up lenses. I read that with these lenses you do sacrifice sharpness a little, so on to experimenting.

I took a ton of pictures to show the results with the various lenses. Each picture was taken in a light box with a tripod and given a 2 second timer (for my wobbly button mashing fingers). I had it set on f20 so each time the camera took a picture, the lens was open for about .6 seconds. I'll let you all be the judge of which one is the best.

Here is +1
Here is +2


Here is +4
Here is Macro

Here is Macro with the +1 screwed on top of that one

I'm still not quite sure which one I'm going to end up using. I think it would look different with sets of beads, so I'm sure I'll try that, but for those of you with focals I hope this experiment is helpful.

Reorganization

So when I first started selling on Etsy, I didn't really have a method of organization. I didn't really think that far ahead. I had this napkin on my desk where I put all my beads. Very professional eh?

That evolved to placing them in sandwich baggies, but I ran out of those fast and I needed them for packing my lunch, so that didn't last long. Next I bought some cute little gift bags, but they don't work that well for storage. I found that while I do sell pretty often, I sit on a lot of inventory, and it is a waste to buy fancy bags for everything when everything isn't selling.

I finally bought some simple little 3x2 inch plastic Ziploc baggies. I should have done that first thing! I really don't know why I didn't. I got a thousand of them for like 15 dollars off of ebay.

Anyways, the moral of this story is to invest a little time and money into organization when you first get into selling. Otherwise you have this....
on your desktop every day until you get some organization going.

Lots o Lentils

This week I seem to have gone back into lentil mode. I don't know what it is about lentils. They're nice and smooth and flat. They make such a wonderful canvas for scrolls and other surface decorations. I like that you can make a giant lentil without as much weight as you would a giant round bead. Maybe I'm just crazy, but I love my lentil press. If I were made of money I'd surely purchase more.

Anyways, enough of me babbling about my love for lentils. Here's some of the lentils I've been playing with this week. Scrolls and lentils do make an excellent combination. Add some gold fuming and yum :)

I've been working with a new color for me called apricot. I'm sure it's been around for a while, but fall colors are not usually what I play with. I love this warm swirly color though. Top it off with coral scrolls (cause we all know how much I love the scrolls), and very yummy.

And then there's this awesome tutorial about making "storms" in dots by Amy of AKdesigns. You can see them really well in this bead. They're multicolored and awesome. If you're a lampworker, this tutorial should definitely be in your arsenal.


Anyways, I'm off to go exercise, eat dinner, and go make some beads. Wooooo!