Bead well ..... with your 5 a day!

I have been on a bit of a fruit and veg bead making stint this week, no real reason, just have.  This is a blog post on the fruit of my labours.

 

I am getting ready for the annual Flame Off event, a huge collection of lampwork glass artists, beads, torches, glass rods and tutors willing to demonstrate and share their skills.  This will be my 3rd year attending with my beads, every year has been a great success and although exhausting as I stay for the 3 days, 2 days of the Flame Off and the 3rd day is the bead fair in the same venue, I meet wonderful people, customers that buy my beads, new friends and old friends.

 

The down side is that I am now busy making beads to take with me and am unable to offer them for sale in my Etsy shop or on my Facebook Izzybeads page or on Ebay, but I can show pictures here and there when I have wired and strung the beads and taken photos with my new found skills!

 

First up is Chilli's and flowers.

 

Then we have bunny and carrots.

 





Oranges and lemons...

 



...and finished off with cherries, grapes, blackberries and of course a glass or two of home brewed wine!  Why else grow fruit??

 



 

I did have some strawberries but they sold so I will just have to make some more, I love my art!

 

Right I am now off with the daughter, gulp, another drive out in the country to photograph old and abandoned houses, won't be long before mine will look like one of those if I don't start dragging the hoover round and maybe a quick polish or dust.  Daughter is doing A Level Photography and 'abandoned' is her project, its been fun driving round and seeing some fantastic places, I really must do the blog on the wonderful house we found abandoned in Mordiford Woods in Hereford, all black and white, wattle and dab walls, very spooky but brilliant.

 



From dog towels to coal buckets.

The rain has been off and on this week, we have had spells of sunshine and I promised I would dig over my veggie plot again, but didn't. This morning the dog walk was through the veils of rain and poor Iz does suffer with soaking wet fur, Defi dries off almost immediately but poor Iz has to suffer being wrapped in a couple of towels to soak up the worst of the water.

 I had my car MOT'ed yesterday...it failed...but only on minor points so hubby can sort those out next week at the garage, I am using my daughters fabulous Rosie car and so I don't use  my big Penny the Peugeot Estate much, Rosie is nippy and fits into all those small spaces.  I have always named my cars, the kids think I am mad, but that doesn't stop my daughter from calling 'her' car Rosie.

 Daughters driving is improving, we have been out and about a bit more, she is still very hesitant when the daylight goes but we only had one shouting match, her to me, at some traffic lights when she couldn't stop stalling Rosie and got herself in a flap. 

I have been in the studio making more flower beads and loving every minute of it.  There is something about making flowers that makes me think of Spring and cheers me up.  In the evening I have been playing with seed beads and doing some bead embroidery and loving it.  I finished my first bead embroidery pendant last night, I used one of my lampwork cabochons and spent several hours in front of the telly of an evening this week placing small beads close together, its so relaxing and therapeutic.

 

These Rose hips and Blackberry beads are my favourite of the week and can be found on Ebay

 

 

 

 

And I will leave you with this photograph from this morning of our Gordy who took to sleeping in the empty coal bucket, empty of large pieces of coal but not of coal dust.....he does make me smile.

E-Magazine and 20% Sale

The lovely Leah from Beady Eyed Bunny has designed and published a lovely new e-magazine The Beading Glass   Its a really nice read full of tips, techniques and interviews as well as links to other websites, all do to with beads.

Over on my Izzybeads Etsy Shop  I am having a 24hour sale, it will end Monday morning, 3rd June, its a massive 20% off all items in the shop, just use the code sisforsale in the little box on checkout, to get the discount.

Glass bead stands now available in Izzybeads shop



 

 Laney x