I haven't blogged in a while and so here's a little update...

My webshop is almost finished. I'm in the testing-phase and still taking pictures and writing descriptions for the thinks I'm going to sell there but I hope to announce the opening in a about a week. I know it would have been good business to have it opened say before the December-month but there's only so much a person can do in a day and you can always go check my Etsy-shop if you would like to purchase one of my softies.

This week was dominated by Sinterklaas.
Tuesday we had our own Sinterklaas-festivities with Suprise-packages, special poems and most of all a lot of fun and wednesday like every year on december 5th, I played Zwarte Piet at my kids old primary school. They made up a story about Sinterklaas sending me away on training camp, where I happened to have broken my leg. This because of the fact walking is still difficult and sometimes even painful for me and so I absolutely cannot play Zwarte Piet the way I used to, at least not yet. This year Marjolein also joined us for the very first time, which was very special for me and also a lot of fun!

In the afternoon Marjolein and me also visited some other small kids and after that I was totally shagged out!

This year I also joined several glass-forums and on one of them someone organized a Sinterklaas-swap I attended. This beautiful "Tigerbead" necklace was my swap present and I'm totally impressed by their size and beauty. Thanks Secret Santa!

About eight weeks ago I ordered a special kiln which I not only can use for annealing my glassbeads but also for fusing and small ceramic-projects and some other things I'm planning. Thursday Albert and I went to pick it up and so now I'm able to properly anneal my beads in order to sell them. Haven't had time to figure it out yet but I will soon!

Here's a little peak of my working area:

Now the only thing I really need is a studio in the backyard because my living starts to look like one more and more...

I finally made myself a bracelet with my own lampwork beads, sterling silver spacers, Swarovski cristal beads and a sterling silver clasp. For the beads I used poked, raised and layered dots, with transparent topaz and blue, ivory and white Moretti glass. It's a real treasure and although I'm not used to wearing bracelets I think I will from now on...

This is the first beadset I sold trough my website to a colleague of mine. She bought it as a "Sinterklaas" present for her mother and from what I've heard her mother was very pleased! Needless to say I was too ;0)

Although I don't live far from the beach I don't visit it a lot because on our beaches there is way to much sand for my taste... I only like sand in it's liquid form ;0). The sea and and the beach are however a wonderful source of inspiration...

I'm getting more and more comfortable with hot glass and so I also made some new little figures. These angels I made to hang in our christmastree and some I gave to family-members. The little bathing-ducks are prototypes for beads I'm going to sell for the trollbead-, pandora- and biagi-bracelets.