Quick Post - New Beads for 7/23/09

Just a quick post with some pic for tomorrow on ebay:

New Beads for Ebay - 7-16-09

Just a quick post to preview some new beads - check back tomorrow for a free bead giveaway!

Garden Week 14!

The garden bed is full!

At last count we have 15 tiny tomatoes on six plants, 11 basil plants, two peppers, six squares of spinach, four squares of snap peas, three squares of lettuce, two of kale, four of carrots, one of cilantro, three pole beans and seven strawberry plants. Whew!

Garden - Week 10

We're just about to allocate the last few spots in our garden - Tomatoes, peppers and planting the basil outside are slated for next weekend.

The basil is doing pretty well, we've been doing the dance of taking it outside during the day and bring them in at night and all 50+ of them have at least six leaves. I've been suggesting to Zac that we might give a couple away but he is unwilling to share.

See that lovely large Strawberry? It disappeared. This would by my third strawberry casualty to date. One that I plucked prematurely, two that I found on the ground next to the pot (maybe it's just people bumping them? I've tried to put the berries back in the pot but they don't want to), and now three, mysterious disappearance.

And last we have the lovely snap peas. You can't see them well in this photo but there are actual several peas already on the vines, I expect we'll be fighting over them next week. We also planted pole beans in the planter behind the snap peas, they've been in there for about a week and are just starting to peak out. They should be interesting, the seeds in the packet were definitely not what we expected.

New Beads for Ebay 5/21 - Ents!

Watch out! My beads are being overtaken by forest creatures. At first I was calling these Alien Creatures:

And I definitely see a little creature here, sort of a mouse-like thing with a curled tail.

But then I made this next set and focal. And I kept see eyes poking their way out of tree bark. And what trees have eyes? Ents! Maybe they should be Alien Ents, either way you'll find them on ebay tomorrow.

Teague

Garden - Week 9

So I missed a week in there due to being out of town. This post features photos from May 15th - Our garden is getting more robust by the day:

First we have spinach, lettuce, cilantro and some snap peas. All doing nicely.

Next up is the Spinach and Kale - These are now making a dent in our grocery bill, we're eating them almost daily.

The snap peas are really taking off and need to be trellised. We've got the bamboo in there, just haven't tied the twine yet.
This strawberry is Almost ripe. Not quite.

Basil is just about ready to go into the ground. It's so hard to let go.

New Beads for Ebay - 5/19/09

Whew! I'm finally getting back into the groove after my little trip to California. I have some lovely beads to show, available on ebay:

Gilded Cove - A lovely piece with just a hint of dichro glowing from within.


Hypnotic Wave - Waves of green and blue zigzag seductively across the bead.


Dust Devil Swirl - Lovely neutral tones set off with a touch of dicro and dark silver plum shards.

Garden Week 7

Things are really starting to pick up around here.


I have these strawberries that were a gift, they're a bit further along then the ones I planted several weeks ago, show offs! And next I have my basket of strawberries, lots of blooms, but not quite berries yet.

Next I have the snap peas. These really need to be staked, hopefully we'll take care of that this weekend. We had a little scare with something eating their leaves. We sprayed them with BTK and now they're doing great. I also replanted a few peas that never sprouted.

The fourth photo from left to right: A mix of lettuces; cilantro on top, peas on the bottom; finally carrots at the far right.

Fifth Photo: The never ending supply of Kale, we've eaten it three times and it just keeps coming back. The spinach is getting very close to eating size, zac wants to wait.

Sixth and final photo: Basil Town! We replanted as much of the basil as possible. There are over 50 plants, we would need more than 20 more containers to separate them all. Zac counted them, I laughed.

Garden Watch - Week 6

We consumed our first harvest this week!

Fresh kale! Zac steamed it lightly with sauteed garlic, bacon and onions, yum!



The main bed is now almost half full, we planted two more squares of carrots and the rest is reserved for tomatoes, basil and maybe peppers. Here it is before we harvested the Kale.


I also received some fun new plants for my birthday from lovely friends. We potted them over the weekend and they look great. In fact, this strawberry is farther along than the others I have.

Electronica Beads: A retrospective

I've been working with this style of beads for a long time. In fact I debuted them in large set in 2006 that you can view here. You can see that the lines are thick and not very detailed. Over time I've found that I can vary to thickness of the lines, the spacing, and the general shape to achieve different effects. I even tried a few different color combos. Here's one in copper green.

But I always come back to dark silver plum for the lines. Nothing else works quite the same way. Recently I've been experimenting with putting complex murrini canes in the centers. You'll see quite a few of these on ebay list:

Dragon Eyes: The one at the top has a transparent purple base with bright blue "dragon eyes" at the centers.


Aqua Electronica: This one in aqua features multi-colored silver glass rose murrini, they sort of jump out of the bead in blues/greens/golds.

Evil Electronica: This black one features bright red rose murrini. I intended it be romantic but as soon as the dark silver plum started to form, I couldn't shake the idea that it might be a little evil.

I guess I went on a little bit of a rose murrini kick, since the next one in red features pale pink rose buds. This one isn't quite what I pictured, but still interesting.

Next we have another purple base/multi-colored rose murrini.

Dark Portals: A nice black bead. I intended the silvery lines to be discrete, I layered black over the silver glass in hopes of creating two thin lines on either sides.

Electronica Star Portals: This green bead came out exactly how I envisioned it. The stars each sit at the base of their own "portal" magnified by clear glass.

Pale Blue Electronica: This bead features pale pink roses but I'm not sure that they contrast enough with the base.

Blue Electronica: This bead that I gave away last month features alabaster cobalt blue glass and murrini that was intended as a spiral pattern.

And lest you think I might be bored or done with this design...nope, I put a nice little six piece set of kaleras in black in the kiln today. Expect it on ebay the week after next.

Garden Watch - Week 5

Well things are coming right along this week. We planted additional spinach and some lettuce. I think these greens are about ready to be harvested:


The strawberries are moving along--I even found a couple of tiny flower buds:















I'm excited to see a second set of leaves on this spinach:





















But I think the real top producer in our garden will be this:

It was here when we got here so I can't take much credit. Last year there were so many plums that we made copious amounts of jam and ate two or three a day each and still had trouble getting to them all.

Garden Watch - Week 4 - More Sprouts!

A pretty exciting week, first we have new sprouts:

Snap Peas are just peaking their way out. We'll be planting more of these this weekend, can never have too many snap peas.


The strawberries are coming along, no buds yet but lots of growth in the center.

Then we have the spinach coming in. Exactly 2/3 of the spinach has come up. Weird. We planted more last weekend and we'll probably replant these spotty beds this weekend. We also planted carrots, Cilantro and more spinach in the beds to the left.




















Finally, we have my favorite sprouts - the Basil! These are doing lovely, all of them are over an inch tall now and just growing every day. I've been rotating the box nearly every day because they keep leaning towards the sun.