Glass & Other News

First things first! Don't forget to enter the giveaway! You have till Sunday to enter. You could win this beautiful set I made!

(Click the picture for details!)

So, the big news is that I got to play with glass on Monday AND yesterday, too! Want to see?

These beads aren't the greatest, but it's not bad considering I haven't sat at a torch in *over a year*. I'll pick up the beads I made on Thursday when I go back on Monday, to make more beads. ;-)

I've missed this so much, y'all. This one has my precious rubino oro (dark pink), with some goldstone, silvered ivory, and I can't remember what else.

This one is just fun, I think. And I needed a few tangerine sparkle spacers. Man, making spacers sucks! It's so boring. I do think I should go back and work on technique-- dot placement, stringers, etc... I'm so out of practice that doing that stuff is intimidating to me. I seem to only be able to do larger dots. The smaller ones tend to be distorted or misshapen, or something.

But, honestly-- just getting to sit there and play with molten blobs of glass, for hours on end... it was peaceful and fabulous. Even better when I didn't have to talk to anyone. I could just be. In my own little world.

This one has a beautiful pale blue with opal yellow, and it reacted nicely with the silver and black. The other side isn't nearly as nice, though, because I ruined the clear dots by putting (smaller) turquoise dots on top of the clear. It just doesn't look right. Ahh well.

I think this one is my favorite from the other day. I love the pinks, and the silver reacted nicely with the ivory and the smidge of intense black I added in. The dots on the side are a super pale amethyst/almost pink. This one is definitely staying with me, and definitely getting made into a necklace of some sort.

I may need to learn to like making spacers, because all these focals without anything to go with them is kind of annoying from a jewelry design perspective.

Basically, I decided to stop depriving myself of torch time, just because I haven't been able to afford getting a studio set up at home. Yes, I have to pay for the torch time... and yes, it's a 30 mile drive each direction... but it's worth it. The peace and calm I've felt over the past few days is evidence that I need to continue carving out the time to make beads.

I do have one other bit of news. I debated giving this its own post, but... nah...

I got a full time job! After months of looking for more contract work and searching for a full time position, an opportunity sort of fell into my lap. I'll be working as a leadership insights business analyist in the Business Innovations department of an international snack foods company. I'm excited about this on many levels-- because of the people I'll be working with, because of the company itself, and many more reasons than I care to list.

Things are finally starting to look up in our neck of the woods... so please keep your fingers crossed that my husband, Brett, finds work soon too.