New Beads & Free Shipping in Etsy!

 I have lots of beads to show you today, but first a bit of a change in my Etsy shop.  I have decided to have FREE SHIPPING (for Canada and the USA) in my Etsy shop - that's right, I will pay the shipping.  I am not sure how long I will do this for - at least a couple of months.  I guess it will depend on how much money I lose - LOL!

Now, on to the beads.  I am having a ball making these small disc posies (flowers).  Here are the latest three sets I have made.

I have also been making lots of trees - all variations from my tutorial.

All these beads can be found in my Etsy shop - some will be later this evening.

Thanks for looking, and have a great weekend!

Copper Bails for Disc Type Beads

I have finally figured out how to hang disc type beads without them wobbling back and forth.  Thanks to the ladies who commented on a previous post, and got my brain thinking in the right direction.

This first picture shows the front of the finished piece.  The disc bead has been attached to the bail, and then I have slipped a rubber tubing neck cord through the hole/channel.  I have also made some smaller channeled ones that will be great for a finer leather cord that I have.

The second photo shows the back of the finished piece, and gives you an idea of how I attached the disc bead and the danglies.

The third and last photo shows the bails I made from sheet copper before being attached to the disc.  I think these will work perfectly with the poppy disc flowers that I made too.

Thank you to all of you who made me think outside the box to figure this out!

To all my Canadian followers - hope you are having a great Thanksgiving weekend.  I am cooking today's dinner/feast - ham, yam and potato bake, carrots from our garden, and sprouts in lemon sauce.  Dessert is baked apples from one of our trees with vanilla ice cream (of course).



......and the winner is.......

In a previous blog post I requested some help with ideas for hanging one of my disc flowers.  Four lovely ladies replied, and thanks to them I have some ideas on how to proceed.  I will post the photos of the results in a future post.  OK, so you are saying "get on with the draw"!  I put the 4 names into a box and pulled one out - congratulations Alice!  I will be sending you the ruffled flower disc and leaves just as soon as you email me with your address.  If you would prefer a different flower (see the photo in a previous post), just let me know.

Once again, thank you very much for all your help ladies!

Disc Challenge

At the February meeting of our glass group "Island Fireflies", which was held here at my place, I challenged everyone in our group to make a set of 5 discs for the next meeting.  We have started doing these challenges in order to push ourselves a bit outside our comfort zones.  The host/hostess gets to pick the challenge.  There were a lot of groans when I told them what I had picked - lol.  Discs are something I have always had a lot of trouble with, and as you can see in the photo, I still have trouble with a lot of the softer colours.  For those of you not familiar with glass, some of the colours melt much quicker than others and those "soft" colours can be difficult to control.  Note the set of 3 orange very rustic discs in the middle - lol - I gave up after 3.

I was dissappointed to have to miss the last meeting on April 9th, as my back trouble made it impossible to go.  I am goint to try and convince them all to bring the discs to the next meeting.  Anyway, I think they are getting back at me for choosing discs, because this months challenge is encased florals - groan.  I haven't done encased florals for ages, probably because I always smear the floral.  Oh well, practise, practise, practise.  Hopefully my back will be better by next week and I will be able to get out to the studio to do some of that practising.

Have a great day!