Wednesday 14 February 2007



ooops I forgot my cats, these make cute little beads, but I'm finding with not having a kiln I'm loosing some things like bits of tails. I try to make sure they are well heated when I make the bead, but I think its the stresses that are causing things to pop off before they're annealed.
I have been reminded by a certain friend ;o) that I need to update my posts, so here goes..

We are half way through February and I'm almost ready to get my second batch annealed, I have been working on my faces, some cats and variations on the Warring States beads.

I've registered a domain name -fireseed.ca and hope to have a website up as soon as my hosting company get their act together and fix my account utilities, I feel like we are going round in circles at the minute. I keep getting emails that say 'try to set the account up now, it should work' and I keep replying 'tried to set the account up -- it doesn't work!'. Hopefully things will get sorted today.

I'm getting great responses from people about my beads which is really exciting, I have one lady who wants to buy some as soon as they are annealed and another asked for my website address as soon as it's available. It's very exciting to have something to feel positive and good about.

David and I worked on a logo and we came up with this, my idea was to have a 'flame' pod with seeds inside it, I was experimenting and liked what happened so it stayed.



I've noticed over the last few weeks that my little hothead torch is bothering me. It's partly the fact of using the small cannisters of gas - I did switch to the camping type, but it's still a problem - they run out too quickly and loose pressure too quickly and I find I'm always wondering what type of bead I can make before the gas runs out, and how much gas is left anyway. I feel like it is stifling me a bit because I tend to think 'better not try a big one..'. I've looked into all kinds of angles of switching to bulk propane in the spring. I'll be in our sunporch then so it is do-able, but the more I read the more problems seem to present themselves. What I **really** want is a proper propane/oxy set up, it would mean more heat, which means I could work faster and not feel so inhibited. Of course the big downside is $$$, they are much cheaper in the long run but require a fairly hefty outlay to get going (according to my bank account anyway ;o| )

Enough blabbing, time to post some beadies, I visited Tank Studios site - they're in Toronto http://www.ehmeglass.com/page.php and saw some beautiful beads there, and also discovered Dustin Tabor http://www.dustintabor.com, along with Larry Brickman http://www.brickmanartglass.com/ - what inspiration! Here are my attempts at their styles of beads -









what fun!! I feel like my dots are getting a little more uniform, but still have a long way to go until I'm in control of them.