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

So Much to do, So Little Time

I'd say the title pretty much sums up this post nicely. There are just so many projects I want to start and not enough time. Where to start...

I've just opened up a new Etsy store for my own handmade jewelry created with my beads. My lampwork bead shop was getting a bit crowded. Unfortunately I can only do ten different categories per Etsy shop and I was really starting to feel that limit. I'm hoping to move anything that is ready to wear into this new store.

Here's the one item I have in that store so far. I've got a lot of work to go on getting that store stocked.

I personally love simple elegant pendants. I think they're perfect for a nice clean modern look that can go with office wear or jeans and a t-shirt. I have a few other colors in the same style that I will get photographed soon. Now you can have a pendant to go with every outfit :)

I was going to make this a long post about the other projects I want to start, but I should get on some jewelry photography instead. I just reminded myself.

Off to go be productive....hooray.

Here's some of what I've been up to lately

Just popping in to show off some of the goodies I've been making. I've got a couple topics to write about, but not yet.


Metallic Scrolls on Creamy Ivory



Metallic Scrolls on Mirrored Red

And lastly, I've been doing some work with my new flat lap machine. It makes some really unique windows in my beads.

Studio Tour

I noticed a thread on the Etsy forums of artists showing off their workspace, so I thought I'd share mine. I always love seeing where the "magic" happens for artists. So here's where I make my glass goodies.


Above you can see my minor burner along with a bunch of glass in my workstation. I'm not the best about cleaning up when I'm done. When I do actually clean up, I can never find anything, so this works out. The green hose connects to the oxygen concentrator at my feet and the red one leads outside to my propane tank. The containers full of sand hold my mandrels that are dipped and ready to be used. There's a couple jars of pixie dust and frit hanging around too.



Here's my kiln. After creating each bead, it gets placed inside a 960 degree kiln to be held for 30 minutes or longer and slowly ramped down to room temperature. This helps relieve the stress in the glass caused by manipulating it.



Here's my jumble of tools. They're not exactly organized. Not even a little bit. I drop them on my feet when I'm reaching for them sometimes actually. The flame handled tools are beadrollers from Donna at CGBeads. I love them. They are fantastic for consistent sizes. I have several tools by Zooziis as well. I love the flat shapes as a nice canvas for scrollwork. Last but not least is my most used tool, the giant spoon I stole from the utensil drawer. I use this constantly to pat down surface designs.


Here's my 10 lpm Oxygen Concentrator.



Some of my glass rods. Most of these are Moretti, but I do have a little bit from everyone.



My reject pile. I need a bigger bowl. I was thinking of trying to fill one of those giant water jugs.



Here's my 1200 Cfm squirrel cage blower. It's attached to a hood above my torch to blow the noxious fumes outside. It's quite loud, but ventilation is too important to ignore.


This is Onny, the studio kitty. She's very helpful.




Here's where I take my bead pictures. There's normally a Cannon DSLR camera on the tripod.

New Lampworking Toy...er...Tool

Buying a new tool is always so much fun for me. I'll research it for weeks, trying to justify the money I'll be spending on it. I look at other artists' work to see what they've done using that tool, trying to think of how I would put my own spin on it. I order it and hound the poor mail carrier. It finally arrives and it's like Christmas!

This month I bought myself an Ameritool Flat Lap machine. I love it! With this tool, I can create windows into the core of my lampwork beads. Here's a few examples