Sterling Silver and Copper necklace with detachable/changeable focal and charm, focal hand-made borosilate glass…all by Tammy Vitale.  Necklace $75, focal $30, charm $6.

I will admit to my current obsession:  taking care of my pet dragon over at Facebook.  What can I say?  it's more fun than playing solitaire (which was my previous obsession) or the video game before that.  It makes me smile when my dragon is all sparkly from paying attention to her.  I don't know whether or not this is sad to the outside world.  In my own bubble it is quite delightful!

Have been up to my ears in work:  Calvert Artists' Guild show last week (where I sold a mask and a torso bead and traded another torso bead for an awesome print of a silk original by Linda Rosentahl titled The Foursome Mingle with Humanity originally based on a dream), a run up to Savage Mill (Savage MD) this past weekend to drop work for their show, PINK-a-Palooza, where I met amazing clay artist Charlene Randolph (go ahead, click over, you will not be disappointed!) - she gave me black clay, her scrap, which she said she wouldn't recycle.  A whole bag of it.  After showing me what it does to glaze.  I cannot wait! (Plug here for all clay artists:  they are the most amazingly genuine and generous bunch of folks I've every run into.  Across the board. Maybe it's being to intimately entwined with clay/earth/energy).

And I received my little Olympic Hotsie Kiln ordered for my birthday (which was pretty spectacular considering Husband was on his way home from Germany and I was on my own), and think I will save pennies for the computer controller.  It will be awesome for testing glazes on my black clay, and as soon as I figure out how to use it non computerized, for making cabuchons for my beadwork.

I have finished my third beadwork piece and am now planning a very large elaborate piece.  I think I will make beadworking my project/hobby work.

Last Tuesday I spent the whole day playing at making beads and then cleaning them out.  It was awesome!  I used every single mandrel I have and made the most beautiful bumpy bead I have ever made.  I do believe glass and I are making friends – I am getting used to what it will and won't do and when and how.  There is nothing more awesome than that!

I'm working at least 2 days a week for the Bead Boutique and managing to not spend everything I make there.  It takes up time but owner Tricia Hall is a wonderful teacher and wants her workers to be able to help clients so I'm getting tons of "private" teaching on making great jewelry. 

In other words, I am keeping myself very busy.  And I'm very happy with that!

Below:  my display at Calvert Artists' Guild's Show.  Mask on right is the one that sold – I had just added the feathers that morning!.  The bird in front of the moon is by Cindy Pond, my kiln glass mentor.  Next is Aurora my fused/slumped glass piece.  Cindy has this amazing piece of equipment called a ring saw that cuts glass in curves like butter.  I am in passionate love with it and must have one (I'm saving yet more of  my pennies).  Next are some of my beads, then Linda's piece, framed for the show (mine is just matted), and then my latest beadwork piece (that's Guadalupe jasper as the focal, an awesome piece of stone!).

thought for the day:  Everything in the physical universe becomes part of the journey into fear, or the journey back to love, depending on how it's used by the mind.  What we devote to love is used for love's purposes.  So we work within the worldly illusion, politically, socially, environmentally, etc., but we recognize that the real transformation of the world comes not from what we're doing, but from the consciousness with which we're doing it.  We're actually just buying time while the real transformation of global energies has a chance to kick in.   Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love:  Reflections on the Principles of a Course in Miracles.