My Shipping Buddy

Cats are funny little creatures.

I ship beads out about every other day for the past year or more. I have the packing and shipping process pretty streamlined and routine. I wrap the beads in bubble wrap, tissue paper and a little ribbon. I print out the receipts, write thank you and fold them up neatly with a business card. I weigh each package and print out my shipping labels.

Each label needs to be cut to size and I have a heavy duty paper trimmer to save me some time. Every time I trim the labels it makes a very distinct noise which my cat bender hears from downstairs across the house. He races up the stairs to the office and sits in my chair patiently waiting for his favorite part of the shipping process.



I add everything to the self-sealing envelope and pull off the little sticker. Bender's eyes light up and he crouches down in excitement. He does the little butt wiggle and locks onto that little scrap of paper from the sticker. I toss it up in the air and it flutters down to him. He's just way too excited about this scrap of paper.



He's been doing this every time I ship beads for a while. It keeps me amused. Just thought I'd share :)

I'm not dead!

I'm not dead, I swear! I've just been pretty busy. This month I've been getting hit hard with custom orders. It's great! I know a lot of folks don't like making the same bead, but I find it very relaxing. It's a chance to really nail a design and get it perfectly streamlined and work on speed.

There's also just something really neat looking about a big pile of matching beads. Something that might have looked simple by itself looks decadent in large amounts.








Yum!

Getting Ready for Valentine's Day

So, I've been trying to be a little more ahead of the game when it comes to holidays. I usually only think of making seasonal beads about a week before the actual holiday. With this in mind, I started searching for a heart shaped mold for the upcoming Valentines day.

I was probably a bit picky in my search. I wanted to make hearts that weren't too flat, or too tall. I also wanted to have them puffy enough so I could use my flat lap to reveal an interesting core. It can't be too big or too small. I'm not even sure if I knew what I wanted.

After lots of browsing around and asking about custom molds, I had someone offer to sell me their Carlo Donna heart presses. I jumped right on that because I had heard nothing but good things about them. I did my usual stalking of the mail carrier until it arrived.



I ended up purchasing a small set and a larger one for focals. I had never used a tong style press, and it took a bit of practice for me. The biggest struggle for me was using a light touch when mashing. I had a rough time not messing up the bead release. And boy does the focal size use a lot of glass. They turn out beautifully though. Here's a bit of eye candy for you all.

Revisiting Pixiedust

I know I've written about pixiedust in the past. I've always really liked pixiedust because it's pretty inexpensive, easy to use and of course, it's sparkly! You just make a bead, heat it up a little bit and dunk it in the pixiedust. The only thing to really worry about it overheating the bead once it's been covered in pixiedust.

I had always thought of pixiedust as the last step of a bead whenever I used it. My pixiedust beads were pretty much all pretty simple spacers. After looking through some advice on the Lampworketc forums, I can see that it has a lot more uses than what I thought. It can be used on the surface, encased even pulled into a stringer. It even comes in different size mica flakes. I felt like this whole new world had been opened up to me, so for the past few days, nearly all my beads have pixiedust on them. My workbench is very sparkly.

I haven't done a lot with encasing the pixiedust, but I'm sure I will soon. I'm really enjoying how wintery and festive the pixiedust is making my beads look. Take a look :)







Can anyone guess what colors have been used in this last set? It makes a neat looking tropical pink color. I love it. Particularly with all this snow on the ground.

So, if you're a lampworker with jars of pixiedust collecting dust, get those jars open and start playing! If you're looking for a bit of sparkling for your jewelry designs, then stop by my Artfire or Etsy and take a look :)

Bead Giveaway! Cute little Santa Mousie

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house. Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse...

I'll be drawing for this on December 1st. Here's how to win him for your own.

1. “Like” my Facebook fanpage

2. Refer a friend to “like” my Facebook fanpage

3. Comment on my blog

4. Promote any of my stuff online (tweet, blog, whatever)

Each time you do one of these, you get your name put in a hat and I’ll be drawing a name. When you do or more of these send an email with the subject “Free Bead Drawing” to HeatherBehrendt@hotmail.com and what you did, so I know who wants to play, so I can keep track and so I can contact you if you win

Overrun by Glass Beads! Random Giveaway!

So, as I've been cleaning my desk, my studio and the rest of the house, I keep finding more and more beads. Whenever I do laundry there are beads in my pants pockets. When I hear one of the cats batting something around, it's a bead. They are everywhere!

I'm pretty good about putting sets together, photographing them and filing them away. Everything you see photographed has been neatly bagged and is ready to ship out to its new home. Everything else is a couple matching beads that I keep meaning to add a few more to make it a set, or some other form of orphan. I'll set them somewhere I can see so I can make a point to get back to it, but that never happens. Or I do end up making more beads to complete the set, but one of my cats decides the original bead is a new fantastic toy.

So, to help alleviate this problem I'm going to start giving some beads away! Hooray!

This will be in the form of random drawings either monthly or biweekly. Here's how to get a chance to win.

1. "Like" my Facebook fanpage

2. Refer a friend to "like" my Facebook fanpage

3. Comment on my blog

4. Promote any of my stuff online (tweet, blog, whatever)

Each time you do one of these, you get your name put in a hat and I'll be drawing a name. When you do or more of these send an email with the subject "Free Bead Drawing" to HeatherBehrendt@hotmail.com, so I know who wants to play, so I can keep track and so I can contact you if you win :)

Hope you guys have fun with this. I'll start a November drawing in the next post.

Windowed Pendants

I just wanted to share some of the new pendants I've been making lately. I love them and I hope you do too. Each one has a different unique core encased in a thick layer of clear. Using my flat lap, I added windows to make them look like geodes.


This one is my favorite. The outside has been covered in black enamels for a bit of a texture. It's really neat to grind away at the plainer surface of the bead to find an awesome looking core.

Here's a couple more