Make your advertising interesting!

I started out this morning looking for something Christmassy to put up here.

I went to YouTube and my mind started wandering onto the subject of monkeys...   which in turn brought me round to some of my very favourite monkeys from years gone by -



Now who could resist buying PG Tips with commercials like these? There's a whole series of them if you search YouTube.

Then I came across this Wintery ad for Irn Bru - why can't all commercials be like these?



The moral of this post?  People are more likely to pay attention to your advertising if you make it fun and interesting!

So did I end up finding anything Christmassy?? You bet!

A couple of Cold Monkees

Yes, everything you were told is lie! Monkees don't all hail from tropical regions at all! They are alive and well in the Great White North! Descendants of a tribe that trudged across an ice bridge from Madagascar in the Pleistocene Age over a million years ago (you didn't know about THAT either did you!)
In order to survive with their less than woolly hair they learned to adapt by weaving moss and lichen into very spiffy parka's to keep themselves warm.

However, despite Global Warming there are still days when the mercury dips to levels that leave them feeling like very Cold Monkees.





These two are currently visiting David Paterson at his Glass Blowing Studio in Merrickville, Ontario. Not too far from Ottawa, the Nation's Capital.

Beading Times Featured Artist

Beading Times is an online magazine for all things connected to beading.  Each month they feature a different Bead Artist and I'm so honoured to announce that they chose me for December's edition!



Here's a link to the article December's Featured Artist, Carolyn Jankovskis of Beading Times was drawn to my Monkees and also my Faux Boro beads so they are the main focus of the article.

I'm very excited - it's a fantastic way to finish up a year that's been full of growth and firsts for me on my beadmaking journey :o)

A tutorial from Aardvark

Sometimes my will is weak.

When I saw what fellow WC-er Maxine had created with her Aardvark Fish Tutorial - take a peek here, and saw what wonderful creations people were posting on the LE forum , I have to confess my will broke completely!  I purchased my first ever tutorial.

Was it worth the money?  You bet it was!  Lots of useful tips and ideas, but no matter how hard I tried to follow the instructions I couldn't quite end up with a fish ..



It nearly looked like a fish, but not quite, something just wasn't right...

So I tried another...



THEN I realised what the problem was!

These weren't FISH!!



The were SEA MONKEES!!!

After that revelation I tried the eyelid part of the tutorial and I think I ended up with my first ever Sea Monkee in Space, and she looks pretty PO'd about it!



I think I need to work on the eyelids a little!  In my defence it was getting dark when I made her and the light in the suporch is really bad ;o)

So would I buy another tutorial?  Yes, most definitely!  The trick is to take the information you learn and turn it into something else, to put your own twist on things.  Sea Monkees hadn't entered my mind until I got the 'It's a Wonderful Fish' tutorial and brainstormed with a friend.

Monkees with freckles!

From time to time something goes awry.  Something unplanned happens, as with this guy



Isn't he good looking?!  I'll call him Murdoch.

Murdoch was born with looks to wow the ladies, and a cowlick that most bovines would jump gates for.  David says he has a Homer Simpson quality to his face, I happen to think he looks far more intelligent ;o)

All was well, until Murdoch was pulled from the kiln and I realised he has a blemish.  Yes, even the best of us can have blemishes.  The back of his head touched a hot mandrel in the kiln and it left a mark -



Barely noticeable right?  There's a small indentation up near the top back of his head, it doesn't feel sharp, it's just there.  Poor Murdoch!  He's got such a lovely face I still wanted to offer him for sale, and didn't want him to think he was somehow a 'lesser' monkee because of it.  So I decided to call it a freckle.  Freckles make me think of happy children, the word somehow doesn't carry the weight of 'FLAW' or 'DEFECT'.  Murdoch certainly doesn't have either of those - he has a FRECKLE!

Monkees with FRECKLES are extremely special, and because of this I've decided that I need to make them even more accessible to people!  In order to do this, I'm offering Murdoch at a special price!  If you think he's dashingly handsom and that his FRECKLE makes him super special, you can purchase him for $10.  He's delighted about the whole thing, because he feels that it lifts him above the crowd where he surely deserves to be.

Visit my Buy Beads page to find out how you can purchase Murdoch, Monkee with a FRECKLE!

Glub, Glub, and monkees on sticks!

One thing that I really enjoyed about the Ottawa Bead Show was hearing other peoples ideas.  One lady called my cake tester's 'monkees on sticks' and I though how perfect that was.  A nice catchy name that was rather humourous!

Here's an experiment - Scubamonkee!

Hooray for Hollywood!

These three little guys on their way to Hollywood, I can't help but wonder what adventures lie in store for them!

[caption id="attachment_754" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="SOLD!"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_753" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="SOLD!"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_755" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="SOLD!"][/caption]

Alvin's feeling pretty pleased with himself too - he won a prize in Artistry In Glass' Intermediate catagory of their latest contest.  He's sure it's going to make him even more appealing to the ladies!

[caption id="attachment_757" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="He's a WINNER baby!"][/caption]

Sidetracked

I was going to try and beat the 324 +/- dot bead that's currently in the lead on the dot challenge, but somehow those little primates were calling to me today and I had to do monkees instead.

Not content with World Domination, seems like they might be shooting for Universal Domination -

MONKEES IN SPACE! 



..I think each one has about 26 dots.....