Bead Talk

Thank you all for waiting patiently for some news, ANY news about when I’ll be selling my beads on a regular basis again. Believe me, for each time you ask yourselves “when?? when??” I am telling myself “next week, next week” a hundred times over.

A friend of mine once asked me if I was dangling my torch time out there as some sort of reward for when I finally deserve it. Well, sort of. I’ve been working hard taking pictures for The Red Bead online store The Red Bead Boutique. It’s been a dream of mine for some time. I’ve got a long way to go.

Since I have literally thousands of items left to go, I don’t intend to wait quite that long before seeing how rusty these old beadmaker’s hands are. I do, however, hope to get a respectable amount of items up before I ”reward” myself with my own art.

The good news is I have a stockpile of my beads. The bad news is they are showing up in the Boutique in dribs and drabs because the photo set-up I use for them is different than for other items. I hope in the meantime you will look around the Boutique, possibly find some ”wants” or “needs” and if you think of a category or line of items you would like to see, drop me a line at maryann”at”theredbead.com.   

 Glue-on Bails added to The Red Bead Boutique.

I’ve really got to get this train back on the tracks, don’t I? I’ve had my nose buried behind a camera for months now (years it seems!) in an effort to put an entire retail store online. Sigh. At times it seems like a long, dusty train ride with my lampwork torch at the other end. Luckily I enjoy taking photographs (edited to say most times), and continue to learn as I go.

From my stats I see that many of you continue to check up on me (though I only see the number of people, no names) and I thank you for that. I’ve been putting a few of my lampwork beads on The Red Bead Boutique from my stash, and still have my fingers crossed that I will be adding to that stash in the next couple of months. The torch is set up, after all. The glass is in its cubby and hasn’t abandoned me for another mistress, though why I don’t know. The propane tank is full. My hands? Well, they show signs of the abuse they’ve endured over the years but they’ve never let me down, though goodness knows I’ve demanded a lot from them. 

At times it seems like the past 4 years have whizzed past in a blur, at other times, it seems like (as Billy once said) they have been measured in dog years.

As I set up my studio, dusting off the remnants of my previous life in glass, I worry that the connection has been broke, that too many years have gone by and that my artistic path that was once so clearly defined has now become too blurred.

My head is reaching out in multiple directions, current responsibilities, past artistic loves, future possibilities, and the net effect is that I sit artistically immobilized. I was once the person who could take off at a run, grasping at a parachute on the way, and know that it would open as I leapt off whatever cliff I had chosen to point myself toward.

It always worked out, sometimes with a smooth effortless ride and others with scrapes and cuts, but it always worked out. Now I sit wondering if the parachute will be there. My cliff has turned into a huge rock wall.

Time to go to the studio and start breaking down that rock wall…..