Grinning Beads ~ teeth and all

My poor beads must only eat jello because none of them have teeth. I've given an occasional tooth to a gator, but that's really about it. Teeth are a rare feature on my beads (almost as rare as tongues). My beads are awfully jealous of the toothy grins they're seeing on other lampwork critters (and I'm awfully jealous of their creators' mad skills).

Until I can figure out how to make turtle teeth, my beads will have to keep on gumming it. And I'll keep on grinning every time I see beads like these:

This Patriotic Big Hole Cat Bead Set by PuddyTatGlass just cracks me up. The expressions say it all.

This whimsical brooch by PattyLakinsmith features one of her very own "Meanies" beads - teeth and tongue! Bonus!

Cuteset Porkchop evah! This little piggy is made by Gelly, who must keep extra floss on hand to keep her beads teeth so clean.

Murrini Monday

As promised, I have a Murrini Monday post! It's been a while, so let's get right to it. Murrini for this edition of Murrini Monday is brought to you by Lori and Kim.

Beppe the brown owl is proudly sporting a gorgeous slice of Lori and Kim murrini in earthy tones. Notice the goldstone sparkle? Nice.

Meet Anthony the happy weiner dog. He shows his cheeriness with a smiley face murrini affixed to one side.

This periwinkle owl sees life through orange and purple colored murrini (glasses). When I have two pieces of murrini that are approximately the same size and shape, I can't help but use them for owl eyes.

Pugs for peace. This murrini is from the same blend as the smiley face murrini. I lurve it!

Lori Peterson, half of the Lori and Kim duo that creates the beautiful murrini that I hoard, made these gorgeous murrini-filled Robin Rounds. She combines murrini and twisties and encases the whole lot in clear to make these super-fun glass bead balls. Lori is always coming up with new ways to showcase their murrini, so be sure to keep an eye on loribeads. Lori and Kim are also having a big Summer Sale - so check that out, too, at Lori and Kim.

As you can see, I have quite a bit of murrini. This is almost my entire collection, but there are still a few baggies of goodness that I haven't put into containers yet. I'm really trying to make a dent in it to justify another purchase. Of course, that hasn't stopped me before!

Happy Murrini Monday!

Randomness

Look at all the orioles that stopped by to feed!!!*

~ Thank you for all the comments on my turtle rings (on a post a while back). I am making one for Dee of Cherry Obsidia, who left the first comment. She lives in the UK, so I get to learn how to convert her size P to a US size. Also, she is a lampworker and jewelry designer, so she will have a nice critical eye. I've made a few turtles and I'm now deciding which one to turn into a ring.

*~ So about a week ago we were at our daughter's softball game and our next door neighbor sent me a text and he was freaking out because there were FIVE Baltimore orioles on our feeder. He said he was running to get his camera. I of course didn't take him seriously because we had yet to attract even one orange bird. He eventually texted back to say they were "impostor" birds LOL. I figured he just didn't know his birds. So about an hour later we get home and my husband walks over to the window where we can see the feeders, and he says something like "I think we got some orioles!" Now we're all excited and running to the window. But after further inspection, we realize they are impostors! Fake birds! We hear laughing coming from the basement steps and our son comes up, laughing his head off. Apparently my dad had been secretly contacting our son to find out when we wouldn't be home (during the softball game, as it turns out) so he could drop off some fake-but-realistic-looking orioles. It was our son's job to position them on the feeders and the fence and in the garden (there was a whole flock!). Very nice. You got us, dad. And you really got our neighbors.

~ Summer tip: While most adults probably prefer to eat watermelon cut into nice little cubes or scooped into neat balls with a melon baller, kids (and kids at heart) much prefer to eat it off the rind. So if you're having a summer barbecue with both kids and adults, I suggest you have two options for eating watermelon and see who picks what.

~ I finally bought Bitter Apple (thank you for the suggestions!) to hopefully deter our cat Bert from chewing on cords. The final straw was when he bit through the mouse cord while my husband was using it. The cord must have been hanging down under computer and all of the sudden it didn't work, so my husband pulls the cord up and it was bitten in half. That cat is very sly.

~ Our poor dog is afraid of thunder. But poor us - we've had thunderstorms the last two nights and he keeps running from one side of our bed to the other, checking to see if anyone will let him in. Usually he sits in the shower to wait them out. I'm now wondering if Thunder Shirts really work - anyone try time on their scared pooches?

~ Now that my kids are out of school for the summer, my torch time has taken a dive. The kids go to bed much later, so I don't really torch after dinner. What I need to do is have some early morning torch sessions, when the house is quiet.

~ I showed no willpower today when I bought whip cream (the kind you spray from a can). It's not for ice cream - I plan on using it on iced coffees (once the temps go back up above 70).

~ I planted green bean seeds in the garden the other day. I also planted Kaleidoscope Mix Carrots - hoping to have purple carrots to show off in a few months. How cool would that be?

~ I will definitely do Murrini Monday this coming Monday. I don't know what my problem is lately - I just haven't been blogging a lot. But I love Murrini Mondays, so if you have any suggestions (beads you've seen that show off murrini), just let me know!

Our daughter turned 8 a few days ago. See that cake? It's a half-sheet cake that feeds about 40 people. We have five people in our family. So we invited the neighbors. That made a total of eight people eating that cake. Five days later and the cake is just about gone. We love cake.

Have a great weekend!!!

Randomness

A few things that crossed my mind or happened this week . . .

~ I put the winter coats away. I can't remember ever packing up the heavy coats and boots in June, but I was afraid to do it sooner, because, you know, that would mean there would be a blizzard.

~ Gardening in low rise jeans = bad idea. Sorry neighbors.

~ The smell of my own burning skin is just not something I'd like to smell again. Or feel. Ouch.

~ My 7-year-old daughter didn't win the raffle for the class ant farm, and I'm truly disappointed. She sure wanted those ants. Her birthday is in a couple days . . .

~ The same daughter is calling her drinking straw a proboscis. So she is serious about these bugs.

~ I signed our son up for summer driving lessons yesterday. Wasn't he just playing with Matchbox cars? It goes by so fast.

~ Today is the last full day of school for the kids. I made a bookmark for my daughter's 2nd-grade teacher with animals from two of her favorite units - dinosaurs and penguins. All three of my kids have had this teacher (she is wonderful), and my youngest was born on my son's last day of school with her, almost 8 years ago.

~ This summer, I'm planning on being a tourist in Chicago. I want to take the kids on the train to the city, and I have a short list of places I'd love to go: The Shedd Aquarium for the JellyFish Exhibit, Lincoln Park Zoo (always a favorite) and China Town.

~ I'm getting our pool passes today. Is there still time to drop 10 pounds? Yeah, that's what I thought. :P

Happy Friday!

Bird Watching

My parents have a whole bunch of bird-feeders in their yard, and this year they have been attracting Baltimore orioles. These birds are a brilliant shade of orange, so it's no wonder that the way to attract them is with orange slices. Apparently the orange slices lure them in, where a nice cup of grape jelly is waiting for them to eat. This set-up can be as simple as half an orange nailed to a tree with a small dish of grape jelly next to it. Or, there are feeders designed with orioles in mind that have spots for two orange slices and a cup for the jelly in the middle. My dad set us up with one of these (after my attempts to lure an oriole with my own handmade version wasn't working), as well as a finch feeder and a feeder for suet logs.

It's only been about a week and a half since we put the feeders up and we've had great luck with the finch feeder. Here are a male and female goldfinch on a date at our feeder:

And here is a house finch on the feeder just this morning:

We still haven't had an oriole stop by, so last weekend I went to my parents' house to check out their birds. There were so many! I saw finches, woodpeckers, bluejays, a hummingbird and a Baltimore oriole:

The hummingbird was way too quick for me to get a photograph of it, but boy was it cool! Our kids are really enjoying the feeders, too. We look out the window every time we go by now, checking for birds. And we aren't the only ones:

Do you have feeders? What kind of birds do you get?

I'm still working on my bird beads. This little red hen is too chubby to fly up to the feeder, so she's just waiting on a lounge chair for someone to feed her.

Give Me The Finger

My current turtle finger companion.

That's right. I'm looking for a few good fingers, so flip 'em this way. I'd love to start selling my turtle rings (I wear one, my kids have them and my sister has one that glows in the dark), but I'd still like to experiment on someone and see how I do with sizing a ring for someone I don't see in person. I've really only used copper wire for the wire-wrapping, but hopefully I'll eventually venture out to different wires. So if you like turtles and would actually wear a glass turtle ring (made with copper wire), please leave me a comment with a way to reach you after this post. Also, make sure you know the ring size of the finger you would wear it on, and I'll contact one or two people from the comments to get the info. to make and size a ring. Thanks in advance!

Another angle of my ring.

Who You Callin' Short?

I recently moved my "studio" from my dining room to my basement. This forced me to clean off my table, and boy was that a long time coming. I was not looking forward to picking through all that glass, but I knew I'd find some goodies and glass rods I'd forgotten about buried under more glass rods. I also was hoping to find some murrini that had popped out of my tweezers while I was trying to apply it. But what I mostly wound up finding were shorts. Not the kind you wear, mind you, but short pieces of glass. Those short pieces, which are about one to two inches long, are what is left when you use a rod of glass down to where you can safely handle it. I'm pretty sure I've seen special tweezers that are made for holding those short pieces of glass, but I've never used them. Sometimes I use my mashers to hold those smaller pieces, and sometimes I'll fuse a couple of them together to make a longer usable rod. But mostly I just let them accumulate. I have a lot of shorts. I think I'd better get fusing - that's a lot of glass that could be used.

What do you do with your shorts?

Here is a random picture of my cats after I folded some warm towels. Ernie is the orange one burrowing in the blanket. Burt got the warm towels and the other black kitty is Buzz.