Today I also set up my hothead and started beadmaking again. I love how this particular one turned out. So much I even made a picture with the beadrelease still in it!

It has a large hole bead because it's made on a 4mm mandrel and fit's my daughters Trollbeads bracelet.

It is a beautiful combination of Lauscha Blue, Blue Violet and Moretti's Periwinkle with a touch of white and transparant. I think this colorcombination is awsome and so these colors definately will be on my favorite list for re-ordering!

I know I always say I don't talk family on my weblog because it's all about my creative endeavers, but I was browsing through the few holidaypictures I made and I think this one is fun to look at.

Dinner in a restaurant in the south of France, we couldn't translate a big parth of the menu and also the explanation of the friendly waiter wasn't very helpfull because we didn't understand a lot fro what he was talking about. So for most of us it was a bit of a surprise what would be served, the food was wonderfull and we enjoyed it all except for my daughters boyfriend. He's what we call a difficult eater....doesn't like salad with dressings and fancy sauces and raw steak and ofcourse that's exactly what he's got. And with our minor knowledge of the France lanquage we couldn't ask to fry the food some more to make it more acceptable to him, ah well better luck next time ;0)

And just so you know... that's me in the middle with the white shirt. On the left are my daughter Marjolein and her boyfriend Marc. Sitting next to me is Peter who's a friend of us and the uncle of Marc, my son Sander and husband Albert.

I haven't done a lot of swapping the past year but this summer I decided to participate in a fabric charm swap organised by Dawn.

I myself felted some merinowool and silk in beautiful natural and seablue colors as a tribute to the summer, cut them in leaves and decorated them with embroiderysilk, seedbeads and sequils. The ones for the other participants I send off as they were but I decide to make mine into a pendant by adding two lampwork beads and a spacer.

I received 6 charms in return and to be honest I have two favorites: the lightblue drop Dawn made herself as an extra and the purple one with little beads.

Here you see some of the examples of some of my more recent cracked beads. I tryed out some new techniques like shaping with my marver and using some of the twisties I have been making. Unfortutely a lot of them cracked. Maybe some of the beads could have been cracked due to stress in the glass because of familymembers walking in and out the door causing drafts. I know the glass I'm using is compatible so that could not be the cause. Well whatever the reason I was searching some of the forums I visit to find tools that could help me prevent it.

What you see here is a tool I made for slowly cooling off my lampwork. The example I found on the forum was made with an aluminium bucket for the exterior but since I work in my livingroom I decided to make it look a bit nicer and used a ceramic flowerpot. Inside is a lamp with a ceramic socket. The intention is to light the lamp when you start lampworking so the vermiculite will be nicely warm and the hot bead will not be cooling down too quickly.

The best way ofcourse is to place the bead in a hot kiln but I don't have one yet...

I made some pendants as presents.

The one on the left was for my mother. It's a combination of lampwork beads and silver colored beads and has a neckless made from seedbeads, leather and cotton lace and beadingwire combined with beads in lovely green shades.

The right one is for a friend and was made totally with lampwork beads and has a simple cotton lace neckless.

Although I'm totally into lampworking lately, I still feel the urge to play around with stuff like paper, cloth, paint and other found materials. Sometimes this results in something a nice like the little shadowbox showed on top, sometimes it's just rubbish.

Well after visiting the blog of Holli Conger, a childrensillustrator, I was inspired by a special activity she's having with her 3 year old. My kids are a lot older thow and probably aren't interested in actually doing a project like that with me. So I came up with another idea where my familymembers may get to be involved if they would like to, but don't need to be parth of the actual creating. I hope they like the idea... if not I will adjust it to fit my own needs ;0)

Here's the plan:

Since my home is my atelier I will place a Junk-a-Doodle box in my kitchen to collect random found items to be used for my next Junk-a-Doodle. Everyone of my familymembers will be allowed to place their found objects as well.

Every week I will choose some of those items, take a picture and start making them into a Doodle. I can leave out and add stuff if I feel the need but I should at least use 50% of the items I choose in the first place. Ofcourse I will show the result on my blog as well.

I hope Holli doesn't mind me using "Junk-a-Doodle" because I do like the way it sounds.

These are the items to be used this time. I picked them out myself to start off the project. Don't know exactly how many items there are (the black stuff is all from an old headphone I took apart ;0). I'm not sure what it will become yet and if I'm going to use everything, so that's something you need to come back for...

My favorite website visits this week...

Illustrational:
Anette Heiberg
Samantha Enria
Klaus Haapaniemi

Lampworking:
Touch of Glass Designs.com/index.htm
Minori Tagagi