I decided it was time to redecorate my surroundings.  Since my eldest daughter moved out last year and I took over her room I have not had much time to think about painting or decorating.   Well, it finally got to me.  Her room had been blue which is not a bad color but it is not my favorite.  My favorite color is green, my second fave is purple or lilac.  I already have one green room in my house so I didn't want another, although it would be a different shade it still didn't seem right.  So I chose a pale lilac for 3 of the walls and a slightly darker shade for the trim.  On the last was I used a light green, it was actually called Lily Pond.  This gave me a double shot in arm because I had to move most of the furniture out of the room to paint.  When I moved things back in, I was able to rearrange my work station to give me more room with a spot to keep my laptop set up.  This will make things much easier for uploading photos onto my site.  Now all I need is a new floor and some new window treatments!  Soon, very soon.

I'm back!  I have done a lot since my last post.  I took a class at The Beadin' Path in Maine.  It is a wonderful bead shop that carries one of my favorite kinds of beads, vintage lucite.  These beads were actually made back in the 1930's an 1940's.  The owners go to warehouses that used to make these beads and buy out the lot of them.  There are so many different kinds.  I learned to make a bracelet called "The Picket Fence".  It is done in an off loom weave pattern called "Ndebele", which looks sort of like herring bone.  After the base is finished it is then embellished wih various types of beads from crystals to lucite flowers.  I did mine in gold.  The possibilities are endless.

Now let me get to what this post was about in the first place.  I took a class in glass lampworking to learn how to make my own glass beads for my jewelry.  I spend so much time on the internet looking for these beads I decided it was time I put the energy into doing this myself.  Little did I know how much fun this was going to be.  Glass lampwoking is just what it sounds like, working glass (using or melting) with a lamp (torch).  I took to it right away.  There is a woman in Scituate, Ma., Marj Bates, her website, http://www.glassthings.com  is awesome .  First of all it is harder than it looks, and Marj is a wonderful and patient teacher.   It took about four hours just to get the hang of keeping the melted glass under control.  I just loved all the colors there were to work with and we got to use all of them.   The glass, (we used venetian) comes in long 4 foot rods which are cut down to about 1 foot workable lengths.  We were encouraged to make as many beads as we wanted and to ask as many questions as we wanted.  The day just flew by.  When we started at 9:30 ( I started at about 10. I am not a morning person.) and finished at 4:30 it felt like we had only worked for about 4 hours.  Don't you just love when that happens!!!!  On day two it was the same way.  I did get there a tad earlier that day because I wanted to squeeze in as much time as I could.  By days end I had made around 40 beads, some good some not so good.  I didn't care though, I had made these with my own two hands.  I was happy and proud of myself.  I plan to continue to go to Marj's studio to make beads.  She says there is nothing like experience to make you better at making the beads so that is what I intend on hopefully a once a month.  The following photos show the beads I made on day one and two.  Guess which ones were on which days?

As you can tell I got a lot better on day two!  I had much more control over the glass and the mandrel (the rod used to shape the bead on).  I was able to make pairs of beads to use as earrings and some unusual shapes as pendants.  I am anxiously awaiting my next session.

See you next time.  Love Lori

                             Friday, March 27,2009

 I knew that making my new site was going to be a challenge!  Was I up for the task, that was the question?  I thought a long time about wether or not I wanted to do all this work or not because I was not even sure if people were going to see it.  I have nothing to lose by trying.  Now at least when I am up at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning I will have something else to do besides watch t.v.  At least this is constructive!!!  Now I need to get some new customers.  I'm workning on that too.  Good night all.