The holidays are here! Please plan to join us December 2nd and 3rd at the Mary Queen Christmas Bazaar in Friendswood! Attending the MQCB will light your holiday mood like a fireworks sparkler! Booths are always appealing to the eye; a wide range of goods is offered from holiday foods and snacks to wood-working, jewelry, hand-made books, drawings, paintings, quilts, pottery, clothing, Christmas decorations and lots more–and all made by the artists/crafters themselves! Holiday music sustains the mood, people are happy, tummies are full, and the sights and smells are nothing but Christmas! It’s sparkling, interesting, attractive, and lively. The location is Mary Queen Catholic Church at 606 Cedarwood Drive,…

We are pleased to announce that select pieces from our collections are now available for purchase at Beadoholique in Cypress, TX! Stop by the shop to see our pieces up close and personal and take your selection home today! No need to wait for shipment! We will be adding more pieces soon. See you there!

Cut Loose & Get Hammered Keep an eye on the Beadoholique calendar for March (coming out in a couple of weeks) because I will be teaching three new classes that month! All three classes will be taught at the Beadoholique Bead Shop in Cypress, TX. Visit the Beadoholique site to find a map and the class calendar. The earrings to the left are called Cut Loose & Get Hammered. In this class you will learn how to use a disc cutter, tap & die, texturing, do some wire wrapping and coiling, using basic jewelry making tools. They’re a fun pair of earrings to wear and make! Another class I’m teaching…

We would like to wish everyone a happy new year! It is my warmest wish that 2010 be a good year for us all. I’m not here to talk about resolutions because I haven’t made any and I’m not a fan anyway. They tend to make me stress and feel guilty for not following through on them all. I would prefer to say that I will strive to be a better person and work hard at whatever I may do this year. Shauna and I are both working on new designs and I wish I had something to show you today but the sketches are too rough at this point…

Christmas will soon be upon us and as we hurry to ready ourselves for this glorious day, we should all take a moment to remember our brave troops who are abroad and unable to celebrate Christmas with their families. May God bless them one and all. Another thing we should all do this Christmas season is to remember to sit back every now and then to catch our breath and enjoy all that is going on around us with our family and friends. We move at too fast a pace in our normal lives and need to make every effort to appreciate what we have and not take our blessings…

Working on a few projects at once, as usual. Keeps it interesting… I have been working with bronze clay over the last few weeks. My first experiences were with domes that fired to about 1.5″ but I had some problems with uneven shrinkage so had to cut them to a smaller diameter. Warping is always a strong possibility, but uneven shrinkage is when the edges of your shape pull in; a circle is no longer a circle, in my case. I have been doing some research which has helped me consider the issues. The following can effect shrinkage:1) thickness–thinner pieces not only warp easily but if pieces have uneventhicknesses, edge…

ArtoberFest 2009, Galveston, Texas Tomorrow is Hallowe’en! It’s always been my second favorite holiday. Mom used to make donuts in our kitchen, and we trick-or-treated faithfully until well into junior high. So now our kids are carrying on the tradition! I will be out contributing, dressed witchly with my pit fire burning, enticing the juicy little ones into the backyard lair…. But that means it’s after Artoberfest ‘way back on the 17th-18th! Seems like months ago by now, but we had a great show and need to thank Galveston! My earlier post explained how much we love going there, and this year was even better since we had the best…

I had insomnia (again) which resulted in some very early morning jewelry work. I have been buried with lots of other things to the detriment of exorcising jewelry projects but am exerting myself to make up for it, which has resulted in some long-awaited revamping of a couple of pieces. The first photo shows, among others, a larger “Heartbeat” drop that is now nickel-sized compared to its original 3/8″ diameter. Other changes are to the Texas Star earrings, seen in the second photo. The smallest pair is the original design (just under dime-sized); for another avenue of interest I added a band around the outside, and for the last pair…