Hi!
Working like crazy, preppin' for Tucson. I can't wait, and I dread going. I've never been away from Azalea for more than a few days. I hope I don't crack. That girl is my shooting star!

I've had a couple requests to see pics of my dolls, so here are a couple. They are made from paper clay, polymer, wire, acrylic paint, and natural fibers.

A customer sent a pic of Steven Tyler wearing one of our beads (hot lips) in his hair! Greg has the pic on his blog www.gregogden.blogspot.com Another celebrity sighting! If you spot one of our beads on a star let us know or take picture (I'm sure they would love that, it instills a feeling of being important) and we will send you free beads! I must admit I like seeing our stuff all over the place, it makes all the slaving feel less like slaving and more like working really hard.

Jeremiah (long time buddy and fabulous artist)has a new blog, and it is loads of fun http://smallandround.vox.com/ check it out and see what you think.

I'm on the look out for a good blood orange marmalade recipe. I had one from Martha but I can't find it and its not on her site. If you have one and wish to bring a little happiness to my life, let me know. Speaking blood, i found a flower I love, love, love! A blood lily! Or Scadoxus Multiflorus, to be accurate. See them on this site www.easytogrowbulbs.com and love them too.

Working non-stop for the ginormous Tucson Show. If you've never been, it's flippin' amazing! Overwhelming is an understatement. I've gone every year for ten years and I have never seen all of the shows going on. The entire town is taken over by gem and mineral (and bead!) dealers from around the world, lasting nearly a month. We will be at The Best Bead Show (www.crystalmyths.com) and also at The Manning House Mansion or The To Bead True Blue Show (www.tobeadtrueblue.com) The dates are between jan. 31 -feb.4 (check websites for details).

I'm tired, my hands ache and my eyes burn - and I still have hours of work to do! Yikes! Waxes are a pain in the ass to clean up for casting. We use dark red jewelers wax to make our shibuichi pieces- I will show a pic of how many I just finished, I was like a little machine! All worth it though. I love going out west, meeting my buddies and shopping for sparklies!

I have to get back to repairing waxes. These better cast right or I will yell till I pop!
This is a pic of our newest pieces, soon to be available! Frick, the amazing 30 lb. big-boned beast of a cat, and his nemesis, Azalea Belle in b+w.

Hello! Just rolled in from a fun trip to Florida. We did the Fort Lauderdale show hosted by Jane's Bead Mercantile and had an amazing time. To start, the hotel was flippin' awesome, we felt like rock stars! Priceline got us the Hyatt for $80 a night! An i-pod dock, a bidae(a sort of strange low sink for washing private zones - its a european thing) and a waterfall pool (which we enjoyed most of the night) along with a full spa added to our happiness. I love Priceline. The show was a great success, we saw many of our long-time customers (really old friends by now) and I enjoyed shopping with my favorite vendors. If you get a chance to go to a Bead Mercantile Show, be sure to look at Scarlett Fire for really exotic bead choices and NaBoRow for good prices and unique silver from Thailand. I got some inspiring goods.

Greg surprised me with a few comments suggesting Florida wouldn't be a bad place to live (as we splashed around an outdoor pool at night in winter) and I agreed. I have to say I like it more everytime we go, which is good, 'cause I went through an anti-Florida stage (I'm from Orlando). So now I want to move, especially since I came home to snow covering everything. I've never been to the Carribean, but I think it would suit us. Or New Zealand. Basically warm and on a coast, and has to be beautiful.

Yesterday we walked ourselves into exhaustion at Disney World. I hadn't been in close to 10 years so it seemed really updated and exciting. We went on the Pirates ride, Flying Carpet, Haunted Mansion, Small World, Buzz Lightyear, lunch at the Cosmic Cafe and took the train around the park. Whew! What a fun day! Azalea nearly lost her mind with happiness!

I have a lot of sample necklaces from 2006 and I think I want to do a giveaway, or contest. I would appreciate any ideas for a fun game to win samples. How about to start, the person that suggests the contest/game/etc. that we use gets a necklace! So comment to win.

Thank you to everyone that stopped by to visit us in Fort Lauderdale! We appreciate your support!

Hello! Lots of work getting done around here! I've been working on making bezels for either resin or polymer, which are pretty neat. I know they will be useful to all of the miniature painters and collage artists looking for ways to make their art wearable. I'll post pics as soon as I find the camara card.

For those patient souls waiting for your fairies, know that I am re-sculpting them so we can get some clean casts (the original mold broke right after we put her up on the web), I worked all day on her tiny face- she will be done in two shakes of a lambs tail! Promise!

I found a doll artist that I just LOVE. They are strange, creepy and utterly charming, I almost don't want to give the site away until I get my doll, www.strangedolls.net . Not cute, so prepare yourself. Seeing the artists creations instilled an intense desire to shirk my duties and make dolls, a past time I enjoy more than leather carving or felting, but not more fun than testing new brands of chocolate. If you haven't tried it, I highly recommend it (doll making, that is).

It seems my last post caused a stink! The phrase 'plotting revenge' although said in jest, has upset the balance. I'm actually nice, so revenge would be more along the lines of keeping the truffles, rather than parting with them (which is, come to think of it, horribly cruel). I'm also a firm believer in things existing in a circular sort of way...you know, what comes around goes around...etc,etc.

Well, I'm off to work late into the night. I found a quote that I'm going to use on my next piece, one that I think is resoundingly beautiful:

"Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul"
-Emily Dickinson

Happy New Year! We enjoyed a nice holiday in Cincinnati and Columbus, visiting friends and family. We got reacquainted with the fabulous Andrew Bawidaman, who makes the best pin-up art around (www.bawidamann.com) his work was recently published in a collection of erotic art, a book called Ars Erotica ( Picasso and Kandinsky are in it!). It was fun reminiscing about our college days.

Azalea and I had fun frogging around with my good friend Jessica Wiesel (known as Weasel to her buddies). She is so brilliant, we have a good time just talking and bouncing ideas around. I wish she lived in Asheville.

My folks came up from Florida for a few days to see Azalea. She and my mom get along supremely well, so much so that this morning, at dawn she woke up looking for her Lula, as she calls my mama, and wouldn't stop looking and crying until I told her we would visit next week. I like that she loves my mom so much, but some primitive part of my brain gets jealous; when Gramma Lula is around, nobody else exists!

We have been working to catch up on work that has accumulated over the holidays, so we are back to being busy, which is good, because I hate feeling like a slacker! I made a few new beads, and sketched in my book, I'll post some pics to show my progress.

I'm shaking off some bad juju, trying to clear my mind of negativity. The holidays make me miss my older bro who's been missing for sixteen years. It puts into sharp focus the importance of being good to each other and not holding grudges - you might not see that person ever again. Which leads me to another source of agitation, folks snooping in my personal files on my lap top. I don't mind someone getting on the internet, but looking through personal files? That's rude. And disrespectful, like looking through someone's purse. I don't want to hold onto that anger (though I think some part of me is largely vindictive and is even now plotting revenge). I'm going to look at it as though I've just been educated about boundaries.

Greg ordered The Absolute Sandman for me! I love Neil Gaiman, but never read his comics, so I'm excited. I think Stardust is one of my all time favorites. American Gods is amazing - disturbing and exciting. I want to send him a bunch of my beads with a note proclaiming my admiration for his skills, his use of imagery, etc.,etc., but don't want to sound like I'm a stalker. Or a lunatic fan that wants to be his best friend, although the latter wouldn't be too far off the mark.

Azalea is asleep, exhausted after a rough and tumble visit to the mall playland. She is so nice, letting other kids go ahead of her on the slide, making sure they know to hold on. She is also extremely fast and hard to see in a crowd; let me just say I nearly had a heart attack when I saw her running away from the playland and into the mall, dissappearing around a corner. Needless to say we left directly, with lots of lecturing on the importance of staying near mama.

Well, I got some reading to do, have a good one!

I've taken a break from staring at my laptop for hours on end, googling so often my dreams looked like search results - good dreams consisting of me finding perfect, informative websites that inspired and delighted. So, I took a break and crafted like never before! I made a doll for Azalea, that has taken almost a week of sewing and stuffing (and ripping out stitches) to complete. I think it looks really good. I got the pattern from www.magiccabin.com. I also ordered a book called 'wee folk' a pattern book for making tiny wire dolls. We've had friends over a lot this past couple of weeks, crafting till late at night. It has been loads of fun! Azalea helped rolling out polymer with the new pasta machine (I won't be making any lasagna with this aparatus!). We blended so many new colors, I think we did that for 2 days straight. I tried making canes, mokume gane slabs, and mirror beads - I have a new appreciation for all those polymer artists!

I got started on polymer after looking at a miniature artists work I found online, Angie Scarr, who makes the most amazing tiny things! I couldn't believe how detailed she could make an orange 1/12 scale! You could see individual segments! I immediately wanted to make miniature food. Look at her stuff, and feel the desire to become tiny and live in a dollhouse, www.angiescarr.co.uk .

We have never been this busy with orders! We found more of our pieces in the Special Issue of Bead Style Magazine! I wondered why Greg was working till 10 at night! It still hasn't slowed down this close to christmas, which it usually has in the past. Not complaining, we love it!

Kiwi, one of our lovebirds, had blood on the base of his feathers, and I freaked out and took him to the vet. They tested him for diseases and he's fine, apparently he is doing it to himself. I've been giving him meds and he has stopped. I guess he was itchy with new feathers and groomed a little too vigorously (he's completely fastidious!). My powder blue parrotlet Mochie gets so worked up every time I give him his meds! So jealous! I love my bird babies.

I just read Claudine's blog and noticed she tagged me to name 6 weird things about myself that people don't know, I could name far more, but I don't want to give the game away.

1. I'm catastraphobic. I obsess over the destruction of our civilization as we know it, terrified of not having hot water, refrigeration and online shopping. The mere mention of anthrax and Im hunting for my gas mask. The books 'Into the Forest' and the 'The Stand' gave me nightmares.

2. I'm super envious of anyone that can sing.

3. I love to work in absolute silence.

4. I like being alone and not talking for days and days...which happens very rarely.

5. I LOVE dried cuttlefish and shrimp chips as a snack, and could easily polish off a large bag in ten minutes.

6. I would rather look at seed pods than most fine art.

So, I guess I'm supposed to tag someone else to divulge their weird secrets. I think my bro www.andrew-thornton.blogspot.com and my buddy Tony Blackwell at www.zoaart.com should have to next.

Here's a picture of Andrew and Azalea at the park, getting ready to play in the massive playground after our Thanksgiving feast.
We put up the x-mas tree today, Azalea loved helping with the ornaments. It will probably stay up until june.
Today we received news today that we will be the featured artists in BeadWork Magazine spring issue! We are ecstatic, it's such a good magazine - loads of projects that one would actually do (I find lately that many bead publications focus on seed bead crafts, but how many people do you know have time to bead a christmas ornament?) I love Jewelry Arts, but again, really flippin' time consuming! I make a lot of the projects in Stringing - I think it is definitly the most fashion forward one of all. Anyway, we are sooo happy! The last article we were in (Bead and Button 04) really helped our business, allowing us to expand and try new things, like shibuichi casting.

Here are my new earth shoes. They are now extremely comfortable (after intense stretching around the gathered part). So, my walks are a little more strenuous now.

My darling sleeping with 'Roby' (the tattered bit of purple fabric in the background, which I've slept with since I was born!) I hope 'he' lives forever.

These are a few fast paintings I made incorporating layering and pen and ink. I've been trying different styles, but I think I am stuck with the whole foreground, middleground and background theme. Andrew is a whiz at collage and making atmospheric paintings full of textures and subtle coloring. I've been trying to acheive the same depth, and I'm too impatient with all the waiting for things to dry and cutting bits of paper...just give me tempera and I'll be happy. I just like being able to do everything I like! Good luck.






















This is an amulet
necklace I made a couple weeks ago. I like it. It puts me in mind of a shaman or medicine woman







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