Taking Over Starbucks

We did that yesterday. Five beady ladies stitching away over lattes and chatting up a storm.
It was the first of the bead society's new regular 'Bead-Ins', the socialization of beading.

I'd always been envious when I read Marcia DeCoster's blog, she has a group of beading instructors close by and they frequently get together to bead and socialize. Now, I don't feel quite so envious. Beading can be so solitary and though I used to be very much the hermit, I'm not anymore, I like to be out amongst people.

Things are picking up, the craft store where I teach is changing how it does things, making the instructors more responsible for their classes which means we get more control. The best thing is I'll be able to sell kits for the projects, easier and often cheaper for the students it's also better financially for me, not that I'll be able to retire or anything. Ha! Beading is the thing that is supposed to give me a living until I retire and as I never see me retiring I'll probably be beading till I drop dead over a pile of Swarovskis.

On the bead front, the idea I had, but haven't as yet tried out, to increase the gloss on my beads, has been done by someone else with great success. I stumbled across a bead maker in Australia whose beads had a fabulous shine, I thought she glazed but it didn't look like glaze so I checked. She had done the exact thing I was planning to do, a thin layer of translucent clay over a finished bead, and it works. I wanted to try it over some of my finished beads but was apprehensive....now I feel good about it and my beads will increase in shine today! Yesterday Annabel, one of the beading group, said she had shown her husband my beads online and he said "Oh, she's a lampworker?" YAY! Though I would love to be a lampworker it's not in the budget right now so to have my PC beads look like lampwork is a JOY!