Bad Week for Beading!

Well, I'm not having much luck this week as far as torch time goes.

Monday was out as I had my "Mystery Shopper" hat on. Someone my mum knows runs a little business and occasionally asks me to go and spend his money on little bits and pieces and have a nice morning coffee and lunch and then give him feedback on the customer service. Very nice little job I have to say.

Tuesday was full of appointments, things like doctors, dentists etc and during a 3 hour gap in the middle of them all I spent some much overdue time with my mum.

Wednesday I had to go and see my accountant, dull but necessary and I am much happier and relaxed now everything is sorted. In the afternoon I was the children's taxi service!

Today..........fume, fume!!!
Today should have been a whole afternoon of blissful uninterrupted torch time. This morning I had to wait in for a delivery of a dishwasher to replace the brand new one I had just before Christmas which went wrong the weekend before last. Firstly they were supposed to deliver by 13:45 and at 14:15 I rang the office concerned to ask where they were. I was told they were nearly here and it wouldn't be long. An hour and a half later the phone went, it was the driver of the lorry saying the lane was too small for his truck (we get farm feed deliveries all the time in huge lorries so not sure why he finds it such a problem) and I now have to wait in again on Monday therefore loosing another day! I don't expect for one minute I'll be compensated.

So if you're wondering why there have been no beads, that's the explanation, however.........
Tomorrow is a brand new day ;-)

Colour Combinations and Snow!

When I was asked to make the above set it was one of those "oh well, what the customer wants, the customer gets" moments as I wasn't sure about the colours. However, I stand corrected as I really like the combination.

We have snow too! It first arrived during the night on Tuesday (5th) and on Thursday morning the sun shone and everything was really pretty. This was taken looking at the house with my studio on the left.

These guys love it too!

Happy New Year!!

Hello and a happy new year to you all, I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and that this year will be a good one for you.

I have been itching to share a couple of photo's with you but as they were Christmas presents thought I ought to keep them secret until the recipient had received!

The first is a pendant made for a very dear friend that wanted it to match a dress she had. I was sent a photo of the dress and was free to interpret it how I liked. I love working this was and the result was very well received.

The second was a heart pendant in pink and a matching stretchy bracelet. For those of you not familiar with lampworking, bright pink is a tricky colour to work with. To achieve the right pink usually means layering a colour called rubino over white. Rubino is a very reactive glass that does all sorts of weird things, some of them desirable and some not, in essence it's not an easy glass to work with and the thought of making a large hand shaped heart bead in this colour didn't exactly fill me with joy. Not one to be defeated though I set to and the end result was very satisfying.

I am hoping to get back to the torch tomorrow. Originally it was going to be today but, oh joy of joys, I have spent all day re installing everything on my PC as I upgraded to Windows 7. It is soooooooooo much faster than Vista though, that was doing my head in!!