My latest on Etsy

I'm still on a major metal clay kick. It's so nice to feel creatively inspired when "it" seemed to have vanished after my father passed away. It really took a long time for me to start feeling like working on anything. Anyway, on a positive note. I just listed these on Etsy, and I'm particularly fond of the Captured Blossom pendant.

I'm teaching a metal clay class at beadFX tomorrow, It'll be fun to spend the day with some metal clay newbies. I love watching what they come up with, especially when they have no preconceived notions of what is technically "easy" or "difficult".

New Year, new inspiration

I'm a little late posting my "happy new year" post! - We all had a major bug over the holidays that kept us in hibernation of sorts. The kids are starting to get better, and now I'm worse. While sick, I was able to get some play time in at home. I recently received Hadar Jacobsens texture book and video on metal clay. I love her collage technique, and I've made a couple pieces that I'm completely in love with.

For any of you metal clay afficionados out there, I highly recommend her book.

These were just recently listed on Etsy:

The holidays come on way too fast!

I finally getting around to posting one of the "before" pictures of my studio. This is currently my lampwork setup. Our goal is to use the downtime over the holidays to get my studio organized and set up...all fresh and new... It will so so exciting to be able to work down there again.

As you can see below, it's pretty much got to the stage that it's just way too messy to be remotely safe to work in. The rest of my studio (beading, metal clay, silversmithing) is far worse and completely unusable.

Good thing I can at least work at beadFX!

beadFX - Crimp forming plier

One more video. The following two videos were shot a few months ago with a borrowed camera that my old boss loaned out to me. My editing skills are somewhat lacking, and we of course had no experience actually shooting footage. On that note, please excuse the quality, or lack thereof. However, we had a huge amount of fun that day! We're planning on shooting more video in the coming months. Let us know what you'd like to see. Do you want techniques? Or, do you want to see the creative process? Or, maybe a combo of both.

beadFX - Cubic Bling Bling Bracelet

In this video we have Dwyn demonstrating the design process of her Cubic Bling Bling bracelet.

beadFX - Our Beads

Our first photo montage. Check this out on Youtube. We've got some photos of some of our inspiration ideas, as well as some of our beads. Look for more instructional videos coming soon!

Studio again

Still plugging away at getting my studio set up. Hopefully, we'll make a bit of progress on it this weekend. Most likely I won't be able to really spend much time down there until the Christmas break.

All of the new shelving has been purchased. We ran into a bit of a snag, as our drill wouldn't drill through concrete. I did find a hammer drill at Home Depot tonight for $79. With luck, the new drill work!

My new studio will eventually have 64 feet of shelving! Whohoo. All of that crap that i've been tripping on the last year will finally be up off the floor.