Sometimes Things Work Out Better Than You Expect

I never thought about making fused glass crosses. I love playing with colors and patterns, but shapes don't fascinate me nearly as much. When my mom called and asked me to make a cross for my sister to give to one of her bakery employees I told her I'd give it a shot. I really didn't expect to end up with anything that anyone would want to wear, but I didn't tell her that.

My first challenge was designing a cross that wouldn't turn out lumpy and blobby. The easiest thing to do would be to layer one piece of glass on top of the other, but I knew that would come out of the kiln with an interesting shape. Not necessarily the shape of a cross, but interesting. I don't have a saw in my studio yet, so trying to cut a single piece of glass in a cross shape was out of the question.

This left me with no other option but to cut small pieces and fit them together, like a puzzle. Ahhh, the challenge of symmetry! Making two things exactly alike is not one of my strong points, and a lopsided cross can't even be called interesting. After making 6 or so (not very good) crosses I created the one in the photo, and both my mom and sister love it! It's pink from some angles, and shifts to green and yellow at other angles.

In fact they like this cross so much they've been showing it off all over town. My mom's always been my best sales rep, and last night she called with a list of custom cross pendant orders. Can I make one with the same pink-to-green glass? And a purple one? Do I have any blue? So I'm headed into my studio to cut and piece more crosses. If I can manage to create a few extra I'll list them in my Etsy shop. Feel free to follow my mom's lead and put in your color requests!

I Never Thought I'd Get Excited About Dishcloths

Really. Who gets excited about dishcloths?

We desperately needed some new ones, so I searched Etsy and found this beautiful set of orange and yellow cloths hand crocheted from Yarn Coture. These cloths are bright and cheerful, soft, absorbent, and extremely well made. They're a thousand times better than anything I've bought from a big-box retailer, and you know how I love supporting small businesses whenever I can.




I was even more excited when I discovered Yarn Coture has an amazing selection of hand knitted and crocheted goods. Aren't these necktie scarves gorgeous?

I've Got New Ads from Promo Pixie!

Up until now I've made my own not-so-good ads. It takes me hours to create the most simple 125x125 ad possible, and I feel mega-stressed the entire time. I want to expand my advertising and needed a variety of ad shapes and sizes--the thought of trying to do that myself was too overwhelming.

Then I found Promo Pixie! She created these ads for me--and quite a few more--much more quickly than I expected. Promo Pixie was cheerful and professional through the bazillion revisions I asked for. I've been placing the new ads on blogs and other websites and I get such a thrill when I see a page with my new ad!

The Joy of Hand Washing

I've been working on a series of fused glass soap dishes for a few weeks now, and I've finally got one listed in my Etsy shop! Each dish needs several rounds in the kiln, and each kiln firing takes about 24 hours to heat up, hold, and then cool, so it's a long process from start to finish. I've got quite a few soap dishes in various stages of completion so I hope to be able to show more off soon.

I'm doubly excited about this because with the purchase of any soap dish you'll also receive a fabulous sample size soap from Karen's Soaps. Her lime essential oil soap would look beautiful in the sparkly green soap dish!