• The sizzle of a molten end of glass when I tap it in the water
• The memory or learning to break a stringer clean in the water at BeadCamp with great friends (thanks Misha)
• The lure of the kiln in the morning
• Seeing a pic of a bead and thinking - “wow, that looks great”
• Waking to emails from customers on the other side of the globe with nice things to say
• Watching the creation of large glass sculptures from the furnace
• Feeling like a tuba player after a day of furnace work
• Getting to know my UPS, Fed-Ex and USPS guys
• Laughing at the looks from neighbors who don’t just walk over and ask what I’m doing when I’m sitting on the front yard taking pictures of marbles or sawing huge rods of glass in the garage
• Having huge rolls of paper for my kids to draw on always at hand
• Making my hand dizzy unwrapping new glass
• Pulling a bead that didn’t make the first cut out of the tumbler and finding there was a pretty bead underneath

• I need to stop trying over reactive frits on ivory
• I should keep a list of which enamel color combos I like
• I should attend more glass events
• cell phones need to be in secured pockets

• Ornaments are fragile
• Ornaments will make good Christmas gifts next year
• I need to narrow focus
• I am not yet the person I want to be

• I will not be giving boro ornaments as presents this year

• wine and olives do not make good beads
• dogs don’t like green olives- at least not enough to move

The question was raised by Flaming Hot - How do I present beads for sale?

Since I don’t generally make sets, I think my job is often easier than others presenting beads for sale. I don’t need to worry about arrangements or angles of various beads most times.

I have these great lucite stands from Jeribeads- I get emails every month asking where they came from- not the secret is out. I set my bead on top of white paper in direct sun on a stand and shoot pics from every angle. i also add an obligatory hand shot for size.

Initially, I took some that were more artsy. I was spending so much time arranging a bead that I was losing time to make more. The beads were also being bought as functional pieces- they didn’t need the artsy pics. I think the artistic pictures work when your beads are made to either stand alone or as a small sculpture. My beads are most often used as a statement focal in a larger piece- so I use a white background to let the imagination of the jewelry designer work on the bead. I’ve found that a true designer can do much more with my beads that I had imagined - I need to give them the room to develop without imposing my own ideas.

Recently, I have been playing with having my main picture on a background. This is just to make them stand out in the ebay listings from every other white background bead. Time will tell if I keep up with this idea.

How would you like to see focals? Am I on the right track or would you rather have more in the picture?

• I’ve missed opal yellow
• super davinci heated like raku is awesome
• if the bead release lets go at a bead hole, I should stop working
• regular foster fire is better on my 3/32″ mandrels
• foster fire smooth and tough is better on my 1/16″ mandrels
• The glass that looked white, wasn’t
• Using expensive glass as a big bead base is just wasteful -unless you have nothing better to do with it

• Some shows are worth it for the neighbors, not the money
• If my beads take a concrete roller coaster ride I should check them immediately
• My credit card acceptance does not accept debit cards
• I take up a lot of space

Sometimes I go into a bead knowing the name beforehand. Generally, I look at a group of beads and name them together. I am a serial monogamist when it comes to naming beads- I run on one theme at a time generally.

• Weather names
• Words from other languages
• Cities
• Insects
• Peacock themes
• Seasonal
• One word picked from a title of the first page I hit when choosing random “stumble upon”
• 7 Seas
• Hurricane Names
• Lines from Songs
• First thought in my mind
• Baby name lists

 Today I learned that my beads are often easier to name than others because I have an arsenal of assistance at my fingertips.

• Poked aventurine is a fun marble
• Rounding marbles gets harder when they get larger than half inch on a torch
• I need a light to torch