I haven't updated in while, and in MY life, that's actually a good thing. Unless I don't update for over two month, THEN there's reason to worry....thanks for checking!

Underwater Inspiration

The pictures below were taken at the "Maui Ocean Center". Probably not the best "almost underwater photography", but for the Canon Mini-Dude, not a bad job. If THESE pictures don't inspire anyone to make aquarium beads, I don't know what else will. Hmmm, maybe BETTER pictures, taken from a Scuba-diver. I sure wish I could do that. Tried it once many years ago in the Red Sea, but my ears were hurting like crazy after only 5 meters, so, that's unfortunately not a view of the world I will ever get to enjoy. Thank God there are Aquariums for poor people like me...and it's still a dream of mine to take a group of beadmaking students to an Aquarium - and then return to the studio and make what we saw....maybe some day out of Graceful Customs studio, the Monterey Aquarium is close enough....and in many ways more interesting than the Maui Ocean Center....

This picture was taken outside, where the fish were swimming in a shallow basin. Wish I could create the light reflections in glass...



The next fish (Angelfish??? the Aquariums identification plates were few and far between...) is perfect for the "raking technique" of fish in a bead - stacking dots to achieve the various colors and then raking through it into the slender fins - versus making a murrini, like for a clownfish...



The next one would definitely be a murrini....
(I just had to laugh at myself - when a beadmaker visits an aquarium, he/she thinks of how to MAKE the fish. When a Japanese visits and aquarium, he/she thinks of how to PREPARE the fish ("Hmmm, this one would make perfect Sushi...). I had two Japanese boyfriends when I was in College, so I know what I'm talking about.



The picture is poor, but I just love these Unicorn fish. The one on the left looks like something from Cirque De Soleil, don't you think?



One of the problems with taking pictures of fish is that they swim so darn fast....I never get more than either the head or the tail of this fish, the colors where incredible....just too fast.



Okay, enough of fish, I LOVE all the plant life (oh, I guess half of those "plants" are fish after all, what do I know?!)







This next picture is my favorite of the bunch, the plant looks "out of this world", as if it's stretching into a starry sky. Amazing!













Hope that some of these might inspire you to take a "dive" into the world of Aquarium beads...Now I just hope that someone from Orlando will invite me for a class, because that's where America's most interesting Aquarium is located....

A quick trip to the Easter Island

This Easter Sunday I thought I would take a quick drive to the mall to get something I needed from Sephora, and maybe take a peek at the new Apple iPad at the Apple store. I was totally prepared to be stomped down by the shopping hordes - but to my great surprise (and intellectual pleasure): 95 percent of the stores were closed: Religious Observance overruling Commerce.

But there was some stomping going on anyways, and luckily I had my Canon Mini-dude on me to capture the dangerous moment:




Dark faces were lurking in the lush green



and all kinds of bizarre flying objects:







and hopping things:



and utterly strange things:



Did I hit my head at the mall and went into some kind of psychedelic Coma? No, I entered the Mall at the Rainforest Cafe entrance:



But with all the majestic elephants, colorful birds and oversized mushrooms, my favorite creatures by far were these two:

absolutely amazing

Here are the pictures I promised in my newsletter, you can find more at the artists website.

Never Wash Your Hands?
It'll take him four hours to do one hand. He then photographs it for posterity. I cannot imagine how he does it, the eyes are so remarkably lifelike. It took him 10 hours to do the two-handed Eagle picture.
















I hope you enjoyed these as much as I did!

Death and Taxes

Okay, nobody has died during the preparation of my taxes, but I sure felt like killing something...I HATE having to do this every year, and after laboring two or three days solid over entering deposits, debits and credit card splits, I promise myself that from now on I will enter my numbers faithfully every day. I have promised that for 10 years now, and it has NEVER happened, and I finally figured out why: I would have NOTHING to complain about. I guess we all make our bed, even the uncomfortable tax-bed.

I'll hope to be done tomorrow and move on to more interesting blog-topics - cheerio!