New Home for LavenderCreek Blog

Speaking of changes and moving, I’ve created a new glass blog!  I won’t be posting here anymore, but I’ll leave this one up for awhile since there are some good articles here, I’ll eventually move them all over to the new blog and then close this one down. From now on though, I’ll be posting all of my updates on the new blog.

You will find the new blog here.

 

P.S. If you are a subscriber to this blog, I’m sorry but you will have to re-subscribe through the new blog. I haven’t been able to figure out how to transfer subscribers.

Moving with the Times and Listings on the Bay

Today I’m doing administrative stuff…I gotta say, I really hate it, but it’s a necessary evil.

With all the latest innovations in social networking and options for running an online business it is so easy to get left behind in the dust, if you don’t run along with the rest…I wish it wasn’t such a necessary part of my world because I don’t really excel at it! I just wanna make the beads!

I’ve resisted all the changes and advancements for a long time but I’ve come to the realization that I can’t do that anymore…gotta move with the times and all that. So this past few weeks has seen many changes in my little world; I joined FaceBook, that was a huge one for me! I’m dumping my old primitive mailing list and designing one where I can integrate pictures and links and other goodies more easily. I think work on my website or maybe even a totally new look will happen in the not too distant future…

Keeping up with the times is ALOT of work, let me tell you!

Before I get back at it, let me show you my latest up on the bay…

“Calypso’s Garden”

 

“Gaia’s Teardrops”

That’s about it for today!

 

 

Inspirational Monday: Jeanie Tomanek and a Few New Beads

I haven’t posted an inspirational image in a while!

“Seed”

Jeanie Tomanek is a favorite artist of mine. Her work is an exploration of the Feminine archetype, often inspired by poems, literature, folktales and myth. Her paintings have a very ethereal dream-like quality. Her women are pale, white and ghostly, they often bare scars and imperfections which, Jeanie explains in her bio, symbolize the struggle to become. Her work might seem dark to some, but I think her work is quite powerful, one could meditate on the imagery in a manner similar to that used with Tarot cards, the themes are deep and meaningful.

I chose this image because it so aptly expresses for me some feelings that I’ve been experiencing lately, the stirrings of new life (no, I’m not pregnant!) and hidden potential (creative ideas) that is very near the surface. It also perfectly expresses the unseen events of winter and the spring to come, the hidden and powerful potential lying just beneath the surface of the lifeless, cold and hard earth.The struggle that this new life endures as it reaches for the world of light just above…

If you’d like to see more of her work you will find a large online gallery on her website, here.

Also…

Here are some of my latest beads on Ebay!

“Dreaming of the Sun”

“Desert Daisy”

“Gourd Venus”

So that’s all the beady goodness that I have for you today. More tomorrow!

Black Marble Set and Hot Tip!

TGIF everyone! Thank goodness, this week has felt kind of stressful for some reason, it really wasn’t, just felt like it… I’m glad the weekend is finally here.

I’ve got a couple new beads to show you and also a hot tip, something that I’ve been dealing with for several months now. Ok first the tip :O)

When I began lampworking nearly 6 years ago I, like many beginning lampworkers, began by organizing and storing my glass rods with rubberbands to hold them together. DON’T do this…NEVER do this!

As many of my fellow lampworkers have found out the hard way, rubberbands dissolve over the years and what you will find one day, is that they become like partially chewed gummy bears and they weld themselves onto your glass. This is really gross and will cost you valuable time scrubbing and de-gumming your glass. Save yourself the heartache and the headache and use pony tail bands instead. Those  will last forever and won’t make a total MESS of your glass.

I got this tip from my Aunt Susan who was horrified to see the state of my Reichenbach rods. She worked on them  for hours…thank you Auntie!

 

Ok, onto the beads!

First a focal set I just listed on Etsy.

Black Marble

 

And last but not least …Ned the Naughty…you’ll find this mischievous little Christmas elf up on Ebay this evening.

Ned the Naughty

Ok, that’s it for today!

 

 

 

 

First Light

I love being the first one up in the morning. It didn’t always use to be that way, believe me! I was a true night owl for most of my life, even worked graveyard shift for nearly 10 years. But as I’ve gotten older I’ve come to really appreciate the stillness and newness of first light…waking up with it…not going to sleep with it! There’s a big difference.

This time of year is probably my favorite; the blanket of early morning fog that hangs low over the fields and floats wispy among the trees in the forest and hills surrounding our home. The dew hanging on the thousands of intricate woven spider webs in the meadows. The smell of early morning in the fall…

Geez…when did I become so introspective, even before my first cup of coffee??

Anyway, I’m up before the roosters and I’ll be heading out to fire up the woodstove in a few minutes so I don’t freeze my butt off in the studio. I feel a set coming on…weird I know! But I did buy a new press or two over the pass few weeks, they need some breaking in  :O)

Here’s a few beads that I listed this morning, Ebay and Etsy. Have you seen my Etsy shop by the way?…it is FULL. No really…it is! How cool is that?

Yes, you’re right, my photos are becoming a bit more artistic… I was getting really bored with them and all the blank space. I hope you like them…I do!

It’s Back!

I’ve gotten several emails about my missing blogs so I’ve brought them both back. I’ve got to say that I was really missing the ease of using WordPress, it’s just so much better than what I can do on my own website that it also makes sense to keep using it. I wanted to downsize and keep everything in one place but I guess that’s not to be. So anyway, both blogs are back up and I will do the main bulk of my updates for the beads on this blog, just keeping the website as a home base kind of thing.

While I’m here I’ll show you some of my latest work :O)

There are quite a few more listed on Ebay as well as in my Etsy shop, I hope you like them!

Old Man Holly

Hope you all had a great weekend. I spent much of it playing Mahjong, it’s about all I had the energy for. Even the cats were laying around like dead things in this heat. Luckily I like Mahjong so it wasn’t that bad, but there were other things I would have rather been doing.

I do have a few beads to show you though. I’m working on a new series…tree and plant spirits. I’ve always wanted to do that but didn’t really have the skills to capture the faces like I wanted to. I feel like after 5 years of lampworking, I can slowly begin moving in that direction :O)

So, this is the first official tree spirit bead, I am sure they will evolve and change as I work with them. This one I had intended to be Rowan, but as I worked on him, I could see that he wasn’t turning out to be Rowan, and besides, quite honestly, when I think of the spirit of rowan, to me it would definitely be feminine. At this point though, I feel much more comfortable and capable of creating masculine faces. From a sculpting point of view, while I find the female body much more interesting, when it comes to faces, I much prefer masculine. I mean geez, there is so much more there to be expressive with, or at least easily expressive with, like eyebrows, beards and mustaches. That’s probably not really true, but for me right now, it feels that way. I will work on female faces too, but it might take me a while to become comfortable with it.

Another aspect that I find difficult is the foliage. You would think that would be the easy part but not for me. The scale is so small that it becomes really difficult  to keep the detail. I just need to practice though and eventually I’ll get it. So anyway, here is Old Man Holly, he is up on Ebay!

“Old Man Holly”

 

I’ve also listed a pretty little turquoise goddess in the Willendorf style…

“Danau”