Its beginning to look a lot like christmas...

Finally, I *think* its starting to come together, I have finished making a couple of presents this morning and there are more in the works that are coming along nicely, I have wrapped pressies up and put them under the tree



and look what else is under there lol ...



the lights on and everything is looking very festive, Ive been baking so the house smells yummy ...christmas feels like its on the way :o)

p.s. thank you to everyone who commented on the p-hish :))

P-hishes

Ok I have pictures ... these are the beads that i was soooo excited about yesterday (and i still think they are cool today !!)



They are thanks to a great tutorial from Aardvark Art Glass they are quite big beads, I was going to measure one for you but due to the fact my calipers have vanished (what is it with calipers, how do they know when to disappear???) I cant, so at a guess they are about 35mm long. They do take me a bit of a while to make the first one was a whole cd's worth of time !! And yes that is how i measure time when im out in the garage lol :))



Sooo.... what do you think ??

hot things in the kiln...

I was going to say cool things in the kiln but blatantly they are not cool they are hot or I'd have got them out by now !! One of the few bad things about glass is the waiting for the kiln to cool down, lol and I reckon I have another couple of hours yet until it does ! 

I have been playing with something I dont make very much, sculptural beads. In this case following a tutorial for some fab fishes that I think are such fun that I had one of those *I need it* moments when I saw the tutorial available, and they are so much fun to make. I even did a little dance when I finished the first one and by the 3rd one was quite over excited lol. So I am totally watching the kiln waiting for it to be cool enough, hopefully I will be able to get pictures to share with you tomorrow when it is light again.

I have not yet managed to get very good pictures of the ornaments on my tree (other than a couple of new ones i made - see below) but I am working on it so those will be coming too :o) 

Gosh such a lot has been going on ! The run up to Christmas and the end of term is always a bit manic so let me see,....

I have had a tutorial printed in Beads and Beyond magazine which goes through the technique I used to make the Iontaise bead (A preview is available online HERE)

My Christmas tree is up, for anyone who doesnt know I LOVE CHRISTMAS. I love decorating my tree, wrapping presents and making everything look pretty, in fact it has been know for me to get a little obsessive about it !! :o) So Himself and I spent quite an amount of time tredging around various garden centres, DIY stores and Xmas Tree Farms until we found one I liked (they were all skinny or like EEEEK price !) and we now have a gorgeous fat christmas tree only slightly shoe-horned into our living room.



I will try and get some close ups of some of the ornaments for you, I have been building up a collection, so each year some of my original plain ones that I bought a ton of for my first tree so that it would look full, dont make it onto the tree as I buy a couple of special ones each year and one day it will be an amazing tree full of different unique baubles ...and I do try and buy handmade ones too, I have a couple of lampwork ones I love :o)

Lastly for a bit of fun (be warned it is very addictive) make a snowflake ! If you search for snowflakes made by Becky in Surrey with todays date you might even find some of mine !! Thanks to Sam of Beady Sam Glass for sharing the website !

Frit Happens Calendar

Great news to share today, my beads have been chosen to feature on the July page of the Frit Happens Calendar 2009. This will be a gorgeous calendar full of pictures of yummy lampwork beads from the talented artists on Frit Happens forum so Im thrilled to be included in there.

Busy Busy Busy

Yep its that time of year again, the run upto Christmas and assessment time at uni drawing close ! Only one more week after this in uni then we break for Christmas and my dissertaion starts to take up a lot of my time lol ! Currently Im spending lots of time in the hot shop trying to get as much practical work done as i possibly can as I dont want to be doing any blowing of work for assessment after next monday (athough thats not to say that a few christmas presents wont be being made lol !!).

The other reason why very little has made it onto the website is that I have a jewellery party this weekend. I am really looking forward to it and have been having lots of fun making up some new jewellery to take with me. One of the new things I have been creating is these little ear studs



They come on their own little cards (Dont you just love Moo) and Im having lots of fun coming up with designs. I think the ones above are destined to be a made to order design on my website, and then I will have some one offs available from time to time too.