The Process: cleaning beads

So first of all I want to say thank you to all the well wishes from everyone- it helped me bring me out of misery :)

So... after I am done making the beads, they are put in a kiln to anneal, and then when they're cool I have to clean them.




Lots of the beads I make are made on what is called a mandrel. When the metal and glass are hot they'll stick together so the end of the mandrel is covered in bead release (looks a lot like clay slip) before forming the bead.



When you pull the bead off the bead release likes to stick in the middle.

I like to soak the beads a bit to loosen the bead release.








And then I remove the bead release with a tool called a bead reamer or just a really small file from the hardware store.



Or if I have 18 million beads to do






Or I use my dremel tool if I have 18 million beads to do.







All clean :)

Apologies

Sorry I've been absent from blogging and commenting on blogs the past day or two. I've been feeling mostly like this:





Thought I was doing better today, but I am quickly running out of steam and succumbing to the pain. I promise a substantial post tonight and to visit all you other lovely bloggers if I can shake this soon.

Baa

So my webmaster tools (they tell me different stats about my blog) haven't been working for a couple months and I finally decided to investigate why, and then fix it.

I then checked out the top search queries and found one of them was "Extreme sheep herding".

This left me with two questions:

1. What the hell is that?

2. Why does my blog come up for that search?

Well to answer the first question:



And now there is an actual reason for my blog to come up in the search.

Working Hard...?

More like the other option.

I guess since I wanted to crank out a ton of beads today things like sleeping and a social life got in the way. And I haven't even heard from my social life since I missed that payment back in June.






Well, I guess I have to be productive tomorrow. At least I made something that I can wear out tonight :-)

Colorful or Colourful

So happy Friday bloggy friends. And happy Saturday to those of you on the other side of the globe. Hope your Friday went well too.


Well, being a lover of color, I was feeling left out because there are site for men who love women, men who love men, people who love themselves, and those who love nothing. Among others.

But then I found out that there is a website just for me. Called COLOURlovers.

It is truly awesome. You can make your own colors, vote on other's colors. You can also make your own pallets, buy stuff, check out the blog, and my favorite- make your own patterns.

I made this one:




You could use the patters you (and other colorlovers) make for your blog, your wallpaper, and a million other things I haven't thought of.

So other-color-lovers, join me in color-love. (I in no way am getting any kickbacks from this site, I just really love color)


Update: color love for Mr. C

Coming Soon...

My Etsy shop! Woot!



So for those of you who are familiar with my blog, I have been having troubles opening my etsy store because of kiln issues which have been totally resolved!

So, I am going to be busy busy over the weekend making beads, and then making jewelry, taking photos, etc during the week... and then on Friday, the 14th of August I will open my etsy store!

Here is the collection of all the bead pics I have posted over the last few months to tide you over
(some will be available in my shop!)

Thank yous and Vegetables

So first off I have to thank Simon of Simon's Ramblings. Not only are you a brilliant blogger, you gave me some brilliant advice. Have an award if you wish:



(it's photo bucket approved ;))

I also want to give a big thank you to Eric of Bored Neoclassical Guy who also had some good ideas (feel free to add the award as well) and he also mentioned me in this awesome post about glass. I am flattered.


Now- onto the vegetables!


Some things in our garden have taken on mutant proportions.



mainly the spinach- which we decided to rip out. I may or may not plant more seeds tomorrow.

Rest in peace mutant spinach.


I also picked lots of peas and beans and lettuce.






I also saw that my tomato and pepper plants were coming along (and everyone said I couldn't grow peppers in northern Alberta, Ha!)


Anyway, I chopped up the beans and peas with carrots and zucchini (also from our garden)





and cooked them up with a couple of chicken breasts in olive oil and chicken stock with thyme salt and pepper. Mmmm. oh and some onion.




Soo good. I would of taken a pic of it all finished, but hunger took over and I forgot :)

Help!

Calling all computer savvy peoples!


So, for the meme sent to me by The Caped Tirader, I decided to make the tag tie-dye. And then I started playing around with Flash, and made a super cool flash button. Little did I know, blogger has a hate on for .swf files. So I tried numerous things... uploading to a different free site; fail. Converting to a different format; fail. And creating an image map in place of a swf file; only got about 2 steps in before I was completely confused so...fail!


So..... can you, lovely reader, help me? (please take in account my somewhat short-bus status)

I promise there will be a badge of your own if you provide (one of) the best solution(s).

The contest is on until I get a decent answer :-)

Art Seymour = Bomb Diggity

I know, I know its a freaking long video. But you can play it while you organize all those papers all over your desk, or while you're waiting for your nails to dry, whatever.

Mr. Seymour makes Chevron beads using glass blowing techniques.


image from seymourchevron.com

First he forms a small bubble of glass at the end of a punty




then he puts the glass in a mold that looks like this:

then he dips the glass into another color of glass, into the mold, another color of glass, etc.


The gather at the end of the punty is then stretched into a long rope:








and cut into small pieces.


The ends of the beads are sanded down at an angle to show all the layers.

Seymour adds all other kinds of techniques to make the beads extra bomb-diggity.

Check them out at seymourchevrom.com

For meme? Aw, you shouldn't have.

So the super-hero of the blogosphere, The Caped Tirader! tagged me with this meme




The rules of this meme is to list 7 facts about me and then tag seven other bloggers so that they can do the same.



First though, I'm not really feeling the plain-white T look, and I've been on a DIY kick, so I am going to tie-dye my award.







There. Much better.

This will also count for fact no. 1

2. "Meme" is what I called my mother as a baby

3. I have had 10 or so different kinds of jobs

4. When I was in grade 5 I brought in some homework that my cat had peed on (in a ziplock bag) because I was so afraid that I would get in trouble if I just said what happened. My teacher was so impressed that he felt he needed to get the whole 5th grade together and tell them about it. Needless to say I was teased about that for quite some time.

5. I have one much younger sister, and one much much younger brother

6. I am very talented at losing things

7. My feet are really dirty right now. Time for a bath.

The 7 bloggers are:

Herding Cats

After 'I Do'

A World So Small

Anything But Blonde
Thinking With Crit

The Musing of a Snail

The Secret Life of a Retail Assassin

Upcycling

Because it sounds so much cooler than "not being wasteful".






So remember this?



of course you do- (assuming that you have a better memory than a goldfish)

and if not, you can scroll down to my last post.

so I took those (ends of glass rods, bead that cracked or just looked down right stupid)

and made it into this:

glass frits


First, I tried to do it the quick and dirty way with

a hammer





latex gloves



placed glass on news print (I know this is blue glass, but I didn't take pis of the green during all this)





and smashed away








This was quite unsuccessful and more glass went flying about than was getting smashed.




So then I made a simple ball mill largely based off of these instructions on instructables ( I love this site)

On a rinsed out maple-syrup container made of heavy-duty plastic, I marked and cut a hole in the bottom.





Then I placed a screw through the hole and tightened it on with a nut





Then I covered the end of the screw with epoxy and stuck it in where the drill-bit goes and added more epoxy.








Waited for it to dry.....



























And put in about 40 nuts (these are substituting the 'balls' in the ball mill)





added my glass and held the trigger till the battery died.

My glass came out nicely crushed




and then I added a little this




and this







and made this :)

Its not easy being green

Beads and such from the glass graveyard (aka f-ups and broken bits)

Tune in tomorrow to see their fate

A few of My favorite things

so I just discovered Happy Tape

















How freakin' awesome? I immediately wanted to buy it in every color and pattern.

And they have a blog. The Happy Tape blog!

And they had this post about a tape artist- Chris Hosmer

And then I find the flickr stream of another tape artist - BUFFdiss

And then I found this blog- I LOVE STICKY which is all about tape artists.

And then I found some of my own pretty tape (on clearance!) at Michaels








And now to go create.

Any suggestions?

Mi Igloo es Su Igloo

(don't forget your toque eh)




Well, eons ago one of my favorite bloggers Mr. Condescending invited his readers to his home, and now I am finally returning the favor.

First, I have to admit- i don't really live in an igloo.







Because it melts during our *month* of summer.

So now I live here:




(and in reality this has become my weekend home)

This is the living room:



The kitchen:



Our Neighbors:





The scenery:








For reading material we have this:





and this:


(what I was reading when I got bored of fishing... so I was really too bored to fish, not too fat to fish)

for "movies" we have:

Bambi









Grizzly Mountain





Buffalo Bill



Buffalo Bill rides again



and the Fox......



.....and the 'Hound'




I would be happy to serve you some fish:






Maybe some bacon?



Maybe not...



And some s'mores.





Here is what we have to drink:



The wine is Naked Grape's(located in BC)Chardonnay. Its a pretty decent table wine and I can buy it for cheap in bulk.

I'd like to serve it to you in my special wine glass:


(you can see my reflection hehe)


And now we can sit in the "living room" sing "living room" fire song, while polishing off the drinks and then tell ghost stories.