Gingersnap Creations

I'm the May Muse at Gingersnap Creations. How cool is that? They are featuring me and Beeswax and they even included a couple of pictures of my beads in the write up too.

Gingersnap Creations

New Images!

I've just finished putting up the 48 new images and you can find them here:

New Stamps

My apologies to those trying to shop on our website yesterday. Our shopping cart was down all day which is entirely out of my control. I've been using this shopping cart service for around 8 or 9 years now and it's the first time that's happened. The good news is that the company did a streamline version of the checkout system a month or so ago and I've just upgraded our cart to the new system this morning so it's supposed to make checkout even faster.

Update

I thought I'd give everyone an update, especially for those waiting on the new images. I have the engravings and the matrix boards now so we are starting to make the molds. The biggest delay was the surgery I had last week. I don't usually share much in the way of my personal life here, at least not the serious stuff, but now that's it's all over (and all is ok) I will. I've had a thyroid mass for years and years and every biopsy had been negative in the past. This last biopsy came back with abnormal cells. Four different doctors told me it really had to come out so I caved in and let someone cut open my neck last Wednesday. The surgeon came highly recommended and he did a very good job. The final pathology report came back benign so all is good. I'm just waiting to see if the part of my thyroid I got to keep can do the job on it's own. Now that I'm back on track we can get the new images out. I'll probably have them up early next week.

Delays Ahead

Well there has been a delay in the release of our new images for 2011. I know, I know....there always is but this time it's not my fault. I emailed the new images to my engraver (which I've been doing for many, many years) over two weeks ago. I usually wait a week and a half and if I don't have them delivered yet then I call and check in. Just about the time I'm expecting my engravings to arrive, I hear that the engraver has gone out of business. Huh? So I pick up the phone and call them. Sure enough, they are in the process of discontinuing their engraving portion of their business and FAILED TO CONTACT ME. No email, no phone call. Fabulous. So I've contacted a new engraver and I'm going to email them the images. This will change the timing of the release. I'll keep you posted but I'm expecting to release them mid March now.

Halstead Website Feature

Halstead Beads has now added a Glass Artisan Portal page to their site with a link to my website...how freakin' cool is that?

http://www.halsteadbead.com/Glass-Artisan/

Halstead Catalog Feature

Last summer Halstead Beads asked for lampwork entries for a feature in their 2011 catalog. I'm very honored to have been chosen along with one other lampwork artist. These are the beads I sent them and below that is the catalog page. They wanted me to leave the beads uncored because they wanted to glue in their own silver rivets to market those as well. I'm not sure why they changed their mind but just so everyone knows, I use a tool to permanently core all of my European Charm Beads with sterling silver. To order the new 2011 Halstead catalog you can go to their website here:

Halstead Beads

Stormed TNT

I don't think I've written about storming Terranova2 before here. You can get some really great color by doing heavy storming and also utilizing layering. The double row dot bead is just heavily stormed TNT topped with clear. The cream dots are heavily stormed Olympia Rain. The single row green bead is heavily stormed TNT topped with lightly stormed Golden Emerald light (TAG) and then clear. The Sea Pod bead is heavily stormed TNT topped with lightly stormed Olympia Rain and then clear. For a deeper blue try layering with Taxco light or Elektra light.