Saturday, December 20, 2008

some update, finally ...



Another quite successful (for me at least) Artists' Fair. I am going to order more Ornela seed beads soon, and probably more fresh water pearls, fire polished crystals and some gemstones too. Please send me email if you have any requests. This includes lampwork, though I so far only make what most lampworkers call spacer beads, and so far they are only flame annealed, though I hope to get an annealing kiln soon.

The image included in this post are the malachite round beads that got this started (of sorts) about a year ago. I got a new fleece jacket (yes, I'm in Hawaii, but I work in what to me qualifies as a fridge). It's green. I wanted to have matching earrings and decided they had to be malachite. There were no round malachite beads in Hilo. There are now, and I sold some as just plain beads today (not a strand of the large ones, but individual beads at a decent price to both me and the customer)

One of my prettiest commissioned sets contains malachite:


A bit of bad news: I'll have to raise the price on mgambo seeds again as I was just asked whether I could supply them by 1000s, and at the current price I can't, and I'm not sure I'll be able to supply those in large quantities anymore until my own trees start bearing. I don't like this anymore than you do ...