Good Morning :) sitting here with my scrumdiddlyumptious coffee, in my magic red coffee cup, peering through the glass galleries of http://www.beadartists.org/ and http://www.glassartists.org/ no better way to start the day! Do you post there? do you ever go look? If not I highly suggest you spend a few minutes poking around, absolutely fantastic art! I admit I have been neglecting it a bit, so many forums, blogs, facebook etc, but every time I go back, I'm inspired!

I have a few listings up and getting ready to put some more fun ones up today, so of course I wanted to share :)

http://shop.ebay.com/everafterartistry/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p4340

There has been mentions few times recently about feeling uncomfortable about "pimping" our work out via the net, examples, facebook, twitter, blogs, websites etc. WHYYYYYYYYYYYY?

I don't know about you, but I'm guessing a lot of you do this to make some money, I sell 90 percent of my work via the internet, of course I'm going to use networking sites to advertise it, either that or I am simply wasting my time, and I'm hungry. Ha

I love all the networking sites, and I have a gazillion facebook friends, again a good 90 percent of them are artists many many glass and jewelry artists, Is it spam? to advertise there? ack I hope not. I'm just learning how to use twitter but you can bet Once I get the hang of it, Bam!! I'm going to be all over that place!

The only way to get out there n be seen is through marketing, and I can definitely tell when I am slacking, or caught up in other things, I post in show n tell galleries, on facebook, on ebay forums, the beadartist.org site, my blog, twitter, and If I don't, it definitely shows in my sales

I Love looking at other peoples work, they post in said galleries etc. Thats why I made them my friends! Well and also so I could throw the occasional bad joke at them. I have great friends!

I have to get to work! so I have more stuff to pimp!

Show me what you got!

By the way, some day I'm going to be famous :) are you?

Egg'sactly!

So much to ramble on about, Firstly I promised that I would share a copper/silver Patina technique that simply uses boiled eggs and no caustic chemicals :) Its very easy, and you could google egg patina technique and get all the "science" about it.

I made this copper bracelet, and learned two lessons during the process.

1. Do not tumble your jump rings before assembling the piece. of course it hardens them! duh

I really Love the egg Patina technique for a couple of reasons, I love the color it turns the copper, just kind of aged and worn, not too dark and black. Also that I do not have to mess with any nasty chemicals, I use a lot of re-purposed copper etc so even better to use a natural patina technique, at least in my lil worlds thoughts.

How to : After assembling your piece and tumbling it, I assemble everything but where I am going to add beads then cut a couple pieces of wire that I will use to wrap those and finish the project too.

Boil a couple eggs a little extra long, this is the one time we like the yolks to turn green on the edges, I put them in the pan bring to a boil and boil for 20 minutes, Peel them as soon as you can, the warmer the better, You really only need the yolks for this process. So If you have some lucky dogs, :) give them the whites.

In a Ziplock baggy Or glass jar, give the yolks a lil squoosh, and place them inside, lay your copper piece, and extra lengths inside and seal up tight, I leave them in over night, the darker you want them the longer you leave them. They do advise the copper doesn't touch the egg itself, I haven't found an issue with that, but in a jar you could hang your piece above the egg in the bottom from the lid.

When you are done, THROW THE EGG OUT! (from experience :) dont set the baggy full of egg aside on your desk and forget about it for three days, ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww! not pretty! and not enough febreeze in the world, when the egg decides to go bad, it goes really really bad!

So... make your peice, tumble, boil eggs, patina, then, throwwwwww the eggs out! :)

and thats that!

xo LPublish Post