Critter Visit from NLC Beads

Looky what came in the mail yesterday! An adorable kitty cat (with beautiful scrollwork that's hard to see in the picture), a 3-eyed alien with murrini, AND a screaming alien, cyclops-style. They are all from Nikki at NLC Beads. 

It's ok to be jealous. It's a perfectly natural emotion to feel when you see someone else with a handful of Nikki's beads. I'm lucky enough to own several of Nikki's awesome critters. My other screaming alien serves as the best fan-pull ever, right over our kitchen table, screaming his little head off. This new screaming alien has been a little, shall we say, nervous, since he's hopped out of the mailing envelope.  And it doesn't help that his travel companions aren't very compassionate to his anxiety. After all, he screamed the entire way here from Ohio.

The critters were checking out their new surroundings and they talked the screaming alien into trying out the playpen. He didn't like it.

Then they put him in the baby buggy. He was not amused.

They had to pry him away from the mirror. He kept scaring himself.

He finally relaxed a little when they sang Happy Birthday to him. And it's not even his birthday.

Some of my other NLC critters agreed to a group picture with the the newbie beads. I think they're all going to get along very well. :)

Thank you, Nikki!!!

Murrini Monday

The critters around here are getting antsy for the holidays. So they've started rifling through my murrini stash and decorating the trees.

The tree on the left has murrini from lori and kim, rosebud101 and nlcbeads. Talk about a Merry Murrini Christmas!

These German Short-haired Pointers are big-hole beads for a custom order. I dressed up a couple of them with murrini collars.

And look where I found a fun piece of lori and kim murrini? It's on a turtle named Groovy in my friend Eileen's shop. DorsetHillBeads is filled with wonderful glass focal beads, bead sets and lots of new earring pairs.

Murrini Monday

My torch time has been limited lately, so receiving murrini in the mail has been like torture! But I've managed to sneak in a few murrini-filled beads with my new stash. Who needs sleep?

This blend of murrini is called Smudges, and it's from rosebud101. It is fabulous to work with, and as my daughter says, it looks like beach balls. I'm a huge fan of rainbow glass (who isn't?), so I've been having tons of fun with Smudges.

I named this pandora-style snake bead Smudge, after the murrini he's sporting.

I spy a beach ball in this sweet penguin's belly - nope! It's more Smudges murrini, and the shy penguin can be found at nlcbeads on Etsy.

This murrini from Lori and Kim is aptly called Jitterbug, and I did my own giddy version of the dance when I opened my pack of it last week.

See how happy Nellie the turtle is with the Jitterbug murrini atop her shell? She's up on her hind legs showing it off.

Therapy Thursday

As you know, I make critter beads. You may also know that I didn't set out to make them. I skipped the chapter on critter beads in my glass bead books, kind of like I skipped the chapter on colic in the What to Expect When You're Expecting book - it would never affect me, I thought. Wrong. On both counts. My son had a bad case of colic up until he was around 3 months, just like the book said (I did go back and read it once his doctor explained why he was crying non-stop for hours on end). We finally figured out that running the vacuum cleaner all night was the only thing that soothed him. So in my first month or so making glass beads, I came upon a penguin tutorial online and something possessed me to give it a go. After that first, semi-recognizable penguin, I went back and read about critter beads in my lampwork books. I began trying different critters, honing my skills and creating my own critter style. This involved a lot of research online. Ok, it was more like online stalking. I quickly found a critter bead artist (Nikki the Sheep Goddess from NLC Beads) that I wanted to emulate. And if I couldn't accomplish that, which I couldn't, I'd at least spend a lot of time looking at her beads every day. It was research, after all.

Now I happen to be lucky enough to own some of Nikki's beads. But with two new kittens in the house, I didn't feel the beads were safe unless they were way out of little paws' reach. So I put up a little shelf and placed my beloved collection on it. I included a gorgeous focal bead by Martha Brogdon that I received in a bead exchange - so the critters have some lovely artwork to gaze at up there on the shelf. Artwork for my artwork.

I love my new collection of critter beads - a yellow dinosaur, a red and white cow and a perfect pink sheep. Looking at them makes me feel happy. It's as simple as that. What could be more therapeutic?

What do you have on display that makes you happy to look at?