Babies, Beads and Toilet Bowl Cleaner.

Hello friends!

Lots of exciting things going on here. 

On October 25, 2014,  a star has fallen from heaven down to earth. My beautiful niece, Ayla Isadora Copeland was born at 1:37pm. She is a healthy 6 lb 13oz, 20 1/2" baby girl ♡  Finally our sweet baby girl is here for us all to enjoy. I took the photo only 2 short hours after her birth in my mom's arms. Isn't she a sweet little thing :)

I finally got back to my somewhat regular schedule of making beads. I tried a new spin on my batik style design and here is what I came up with. I wasn't sure if this was a "one hit wonder" or if I should continue making more. I had such an overwhelmingly positive response to them I SOLD OUT before even getting a chance to list them!  I really wanted to get some more of these beads in the shop, so off to work I went cranking out more beads, but....

I ran into a few road blocks. Some of our glasses produce a muddy metallic sheen from being heated and cooled slowly in the kiln striking the glass. This color combo is no exception. Well I did my normal toilet bowl cleaner treatment to clean up the beads, but ran out of my old bottle. To my surprise they CHANGED THE FORMULA from 20% hydrogen chloride to 10%. ACK! In this photo from left to right you can see the difference in each bead and headpin. The far left is untreated, middle is the new 10% hydrogen chloride(still a slight metallic sheen), and the 20% hydrogen chloride from my older bottle(very clean look with no metallic sheen). Well shit! 

So I went to my trust glass collective, The International Society of Glass Beadmakers for some help. I started a thread on their facebook page and got a wealth of other techniques to clean off the metallics. So much, that I will be posting a blog about all of these other great techniques! 

Here is my series of, "Tanzanite and Sky Silver Thread Batiks". Pretty schnazzy huh?! 

Here's a closer look at the new pretties in the shop!

Like my *fancy* photo collages? Learn how to use Pic Monkey with my video tutorial here.

Well I must be off! Lots of beads to tie, and pack up before heading out to spend some time in the sweet sunshine. It's supposed to be 67 today!

Have a great weekend!

Thanks for stopping by!

xo Genea