new necklaces in browns

A friend brought me a set of beautiful wooden beads from a vacation a few months ago, and they inspired me to pile up all my brown beads and start stringing.







Both pieces have beads of wood, glass and handmade polymer clay cane work Both can definitely be described as chunky, but lightweight. The clasps are simple gold-tone toggles that are easy to use.




Both are listed in my etsy shop.

attn: buffy fans

I may be the last of the Buffy fans to find out about this site, but just in case...

JetWolf's The Chosen is a continuation of BtVS after season 7 (disregarding the comics, which is a viable lifestyle choice). I just finished reading her season 8, and I loved it. The characters are voiced well, the storylines make sense, and all in all, it's really true to the original series. So go now and read!

P.S. The scooby gang has moved to PA - how cool is that?

challenge time

The July challenge theme at my etsy team, (EART - the eclectic artisans team) is desert. So I took the opportunity to use my polymer clay faux turquoise beads to make a necklace with a desert/southwest feel.





The voting takes place here at our team blog. All you have to do is click next to your favorite entry in the sidebar. There are only three entries this time, but they are three pretty fabulous pieces (if I do say so myself...)

Thanks for your support!

art camp

In my former life, I was a teacher, or actually, I was what is more condescendingly known as a child care provider. 10-hour days, never getting to pee, not making enough money to even pay the rent... Anyway, I moved on because I had to. I was completely broke and completely burnt out. A few weeks ago I went back into a day care center and taught art for one week to kids ages 3 to 13. It made me wonder how I ever had the energy to do it, but it also made me miss teaching. It was so much fun, and the children were awesome.

Here's some of the stuff we made:

Thursday was robot day, and it was downright hilarious to watch the kids of all ages take tubes and bottles and build robots. The little ones all wanted to make Wall-E.


We also made bottles of hope and talked about what donating means. A lot of the kids seemed to get the concept and were happy to create something for the purpose of cheering up a sick person.


Each class made a group-effort pinata. The little ones made a big, crazy abstract design. The younger elementary kids made a jellyfish, which I thought was a fun idea. And the older class made this "bee transformer." What a hoot!
And here is that oldest class and me, posing at the end-of-week art show.


I'm teaching one more week in August. I'm looking forward to it, but I feel like I need to start banking sleep now.

swingle singers new recording

The Swingle Singers' new album (oh, they call them CDs now, eh?), Ferris Wheels, arrived in our mail box a few days ago. It is brilliant. The flow of the songs is perfection, and as a person who takes great pains and pride in arranging concert programs just right, I have big appreciation for the flow factor. Much of the arranging was done by members of the group, and everyone gets to sing the melody here and there, which is cool. There's not a lot of traditional Swingle-ness in this collection, although there is a bit. But mostly they've departed into music that shows off these particular eight people in a fabulous wheel of carefully selected pop tunes. Every single number is beautiful and precise and wonderful, but my favorite is No More I Love You's. Visit their home page and scroll down to hear the beginning of it - it's track 8. Just wow. These kids are just amazing. My new crossover dream is the Swingle Singers on So You Think You Can Dance. It could happen, right?

scavenger hunt