Thursday, July 21, 2011

Special Orders

Many times when I list squares, which are my most popular bead, they will be slightly graduated.  I make that clear in the listing and people know exactly what they are going to get when they purchase them.  However, when someone places a special order I try to get them as close as possible to the same size since they are essentially buying them sight unseen.  I usually make many, many more than the order just to make sure I have enough the same size.  Yesterday I had an order for 12 squares....


40 beads later, I'm still one short of the full order.  Glad I never promise next day delivery! But one more torch session should cover this order, and I have lots leftover to list!

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Shout Out!

My life in beads has been enriched and encouraged beyond measure by the people who support me! I think it's time to let them know and to introduce them to you...


My incredible husband Dusty! This man will listen to me talk about beads for hours without even getting a glassy (haha) look in his eyes! He jokes about hawking beads like a carnie - but he's there at every festival setting up, selling beads and tearing down. He's my biggest fan and my most trusted advice giver.

My goofy friend Kristin ~ owner of The Sun Dog Bead Co. the best bead store in town!  She's always coming up with new ideas for me to try and is my biggest inspiration.  This woman sells more of my beads than I do!

My beautiful girls!  Design ideas, tech support, promoters and the people who love even the beads I just want to throw away!

My BFF Melody! Nothing feeds my creativity like the two of us dumping every bead we own in the middle of one of our kitchen tables and bouncing ideas off each other while we make jewelry.

My Dad!  He's always so positive about my work and full of new ideas for me.  I know he's supposed to like the stuff I make because he's my Dad, but he always makes me feel like he likes it for real!

My Sister! (Apparently I don't have a photo) But she's a great promoter and the woman who first introduced me to this addiction!

And I could go on and on.... In-laws, friends, extended family, facebook friends.... all the people who encourage, inspire, critique, and support me ~
Thank you!

Saturday, July 9, 2011

New Website!

I just got a shiny new website! 
 It even has that new website smell!  :) 

I was very careful this time to select a host that provided simple drag and drop, cut and paste, point and click set up.  I told the service rep I didn't want to have to know html or any of the other acronyms to use it. Basically it was easy, but there certainly was a learning curve.  After several hours of working on it, my daughter decided it was too painful to continue watching, so she jumped in and TaDah!
http://vedasbeads.co/ was ready to go! And this is why we have teenagers, lol! 

How I ended up needing a new website is a long story, but the silver lining is it lit the fire under me that I needed to set my focus on my web presence.  If I didn't really want to kick some people, I would probably at least have to thank them.

Anyway - I think the last thing to do is set up the gallery so it's filled with lots of beady goodness!  (apparently, I made such of a mess of it that my daughter deleted the whole thing and is starting over. Once again, a reason to appreciate your teenagers!)

I think this is the begining of a whole new side of Veda's Beads!  Check it out and let me know what you think  :)

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

An Interesting Phenomenon

Yesterday, I spent several hours at the torch.  I mixed colors, pulled twisties, played with color combos and made what seemed like a lot of beads.  When they came out of the kiln I showed my husband.


 "Honey ~ look at all the beads I made today!"

Then I took them off the mandrels.  32 spacers, 21 beads and 2 pendants (not counting the focal that's still stuck on the mandrel.

You know what happened?

It no longer looked like several hours worth of work.


It's a good thing I'm doing this for love instead of money!

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Coolest Thing Ever!!

Yesterday I was torching (Yay!!)  and I decided I wanted to make a rainbow colored twistie.  I'm not sure what the accepted way to do this is, so I set about figuring it out myself.  I started with a paddle of clear, striped on the colors, and covered the whole thing with clear. I'm using CIM clear at the moment. I took a picture because I thought it looked kind of cool.

This is the paddle, striped and encased.  I usually encase going around from one side to the other, but in this case I was afraid the whole blob would melt off the clear rod if I did it that way, so I striped on the clear.

I got this hot, grabbed the end with tweezers and started pulling the twistie.  Then I decided that since I had a begining picture, I may as well have a pulling picture.  Obviously, with both hands full, I needed help.  So I called to my 12 year old (who by the way is a real shutterbug!) and asked her to come in and snap the pic for me.  Feel free to ignore the mess in the background!


Here are the finished twisties.



While she's snapping pictures my daughter says "Hey Mom, that blob at the end looks like a heart!"  Huh.  It kind of did.  But I'm pulling twisties, so I make several more.  Then I decide to see if I actually could make a heart out of the blob.  I held the blob with tweezers, used the atached clear rod to make a bail and popped it in the kiln.

Then I made a bead with the twistie, just to see if it worked.

Not quite what I was going for. It looks as though some of the colors didn't make it into the pull.  Nothing to write home about, but it's okay.

 
Do you want to see what I pulled out of the kiln?  The coolest thing EVER! And it's the first bail I've made using this method that actually worked! I am sooo going to try to do this again!






                                                      Thank you for the inspiration Jill!!

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Back to Work

Ah the poor neglected blog.

So here's what I've been up to the last several months in 50 words or less:

Got a real job.  Had fun.  Met great people. Stressed out.  Cried.  Stressed out some more.  Quit real job.  Regained personal life. Realized if I put the same energy into my own business it would be successful.  Fell in love with lampworking again. 

Whew!  Hope I never have to run through that cycle again! 

So what's next? 
Back to the torch full time, but with a new appreciation for what I will now consider my "Real Job"!

P.S.  I'm walking in the Anacortes Relay for Life this weekend.  Check out my Etsy shop to read my personal story and see how you can support this great cause.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Life Lessons from Farmville


For the last month I've been playing Farmville in real life, and in all honesty it's the best job I've ever had.  I worked apple harvest for my Grandfather who is 85 years old and has been farming for at least 60.  I had worked in the orchard several times as a teenager, but I didn't really appreciate it then.  It was incredible to go to work every day with a man who truly loves what he does and I learned so much from his passion for life. 

The very best part were the stories.  Several times a day, we would be walking through the trees and he would share a story from his past.  I heard stories about his grandparents homesteading in the area and weeks spent hiking all over creation with his brother.  There were stories about installing the first telephone lines in the valley, and  building the first irrigation lines in the area.  There was a story about the town sheriff that didn't have a car, a uniform, a ticket book or a gun; but would just let your dad know if you had done something wrong.  He told me how he milked cows every day before school and about the plane he learned to fly.  My favorite story was that when he was a teenager he was paid 75 cents for every 100 apple boxes he built, and at the end of the summer he and his brother pooled their money and bought a Model A for $75.00. 

Sometimes, life offers us amazing opportunities and when we take them and cherish every moment, our lives are enriched beyond measure.  So today: eat an apple, hug a tree, thank a farmer, bask in the sun and really appreciate the incredible people in your life.