Marbles

Over the past month or two I've been making marbles. I learned how to make them years ago from a video, but I haven't tried them again in a long while. Here are a few of my recent ones:

For the clear on these marbles, I used some large diameter Effetre rods. If you go over to my Facebook BeadAbundant page, you can see all the pictures of my recent marbles in my Marbles photo album.

Maybe some time I'll make a video of me creating a marble (Thanks for the inspiration, Kathy!). It takes about 1/2 hour to make one, so I need to get a bigger card for my video camera so I can capture video longer than 10 minutes.

The hardest part of marble-making for me to get has been removing the final punty, melting the bump flat, and tossing it in the kiln before it cracks or rolls away! (The roll-away thing has happened a few times. I've always been able to grab them up off the floor with my hotfingers, toss them in the kiln and never had a problem with them!).

These days I'm busy building a new website, and I'm deeply engrossed in all the crazy coding and all that technical lingo I don't understand. It's the kind of project I have to get intensely obsessed over for a few days, because if I leave it and come back after a day or two break, I've forgotten little details like the hex number for my background color or where in the CSS code to put my header width. I forget all the terms and what they mean and what I'm doing, and then it takes me a while to get back on track.

A person can't simply be a maker of glass trinkets these days and expect to survive in the cut-throat world of lampworking, oh no no! You have to be an ace studio photographer, a Photoshop geek and a technological wizard! And that's just to get started! Then you have to be a savvy marketer and sales person, a prolific blogger, social networker and emailer, and have pretty packaging to boot! I knew being a Super Mom was training for something!

Well beautiful, loyal, wonderful blog readers... I will be moving my Blogger blog (that's this blog that you're reading) when I finish re-doing my website. My blog will be integrated with my site and will be its homepage. For a while I will be double-posting, but after a while I won't be updating this blog anymore. Not leaving it yet, but soon. I will give you more warnings, and the link to my new blog.

Have a great Fourth of July weekend, USA bead peeps! And happy weekend to everyone else too!