Western Scenic Tutorial

I was recently featured on the Gingersnap Creations blog as their May Muse. For the feature they asked me to do a western themed scenic tutorial. I'll get it up on the website at some point but for now you can see it here:

Western Scene Tutorial

Helios

I wasn't the biggest fan of Helios when it first came out but that can be pretty typical for me when it comes to a new glass color. I often have to play with it and then set it aside for a month or two and then come back to it. After that I usually like it. That's exactly what happened with Helios. This is only my first bead with it since I picked it up again. It's heavily stormed Helios topped with unreduced Helios and topped with Aether. It's a gorgeous streaky yellow gold. I'll have to experiment topping the heavily stormed Helios with other colors to see what else I can come up with.

Newest Glass Obsession

My latest obsession is webbing with Terra2. Each bead comes out completely different from the last so it's never boring. Of course that means I can't reproduce a bead either but that's pretty much how it goes with silver glass anyway.

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.