Mom and Me

Happy Mothers Day!

I love you

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Spring Flowers Mobile

I want to share pictures of the various mobiles I have around my house - this particular one hangs right above my head as I sleep.

With all the trees blooming as spring warms up, I have been taking lots of pictures of flowering branches... so I thought it was too perfect to share a picture of this mobile I made years ago.

I was inspired to make some sort of cherry blossom type of mobile, so I made lots of different five petaled flower beads, all about the size of a nickle. Then I took some thin wire and fixed the beads to the ends and went about trying to make a mobile... it ended up different than I had intended (at first I was thinking some sort of chaotic chandelier of blossoms...) but that proved to make my head hurt trying to manifest. I wanted to use thin wire that was not too stiff to add some character, so the wire was pretty soft. In order to make the "branches" stiffer I wound the wires together making mini-clusters and then free-form branches out of a few clusters. Wound together like this the wire was stronger, but quickly the mobile grew and before long it was quite large and very simple. Not chaotic like I had intended, but very calm and beautiful none the less.

I was then left with a lot of extra flower beads, so one thing I made out them was this fun tree.

In the end I was happy with my creations, but sorta disappointed as well. Its not really something that I could ship or package, the wire is too pliable... but if I used a stiffer steel I wouldn't get the organic branch look that is possible with the thin stuff... I could do a really amazing installation in a gallery, but its not something I could really sell online and just put in a box and ship. Once hung it takes a bit of tweaking and standing back and staring at it, then playing with the branches a bit more, and then its just simple and perfect. And the tree was fun to make, I have always like the wire trees that are made from twisted up fine wires...

So long story short, its a one-of-a-kind sorta creation. And so it hangs in my bedroom, treasured by me. :)

I smashed my eyeglasses today :(

What a huge bummer. Here's how it happened: I was wearing a particle mask in the studio today and at one point as I took the mask off I didn't realize my glasses came off too! I didn't even hear them fall, I simply felt myself step down on something and crush it. Some swearing and profanities followed as I picked up the pieces.

I cannot tell you how much I loved these glass, they were troupers. And expensive...

But I must move on, find new glasses, and I don't want to spend much money. I have contacts and I dug up an old pair of glasses to wear tonight... but new frames are in order!

Here's a picture of the new glasses I just picked out and purchased online:
A friend told me about this online company ZenniOptial, that has the best deals on glasses anywhere - and I've always wanted to try them out, so now I have a reason to. Here's the deal, ZenniOptical.com uses no middlemen, no retail overhead, and no advertising. The glasses range from $8.00 to $25.95 - including lenses! Seems too good to be true - $8 for glasses!!! Wha?! Shipping only cost $4.95.

I've seen my friend's glasses that she has ordered from ZenniOptical over the years and they are great!

These frames I picked out (I bought the black/orange frame) cost $23.95!!! That's my grand total for the frames, lenses and shipping, total, INSANE!! I was able to enter my prescription from the last time I visited the eye doctor and place my order in a matter of minutes online.

I am wowed. And sad all at the same time, I liked my old glasses. Hope I like the new ones, if I do I'm going back to order 3 more pairs. :) You can even get sunglasses tint for a mere $5 more, so I could get prescription sunglasses for $20! That's just crazy-talk :)

Learning to use my Nikon D80

I've been studying the manual, and reading literature about the D80 and watching UTube video tutorials... little by little I am learning how to use it.

One big hurdle is learning to use it with my indoor photo light setup... I used a paperweight from my grandma Bergstrum's old collection... the glare is pretty bad but it was a good process of not using the AUTO funtion and setting the apperature and shutter speeds manually... then I tried to set the white balance... this I will have to spend some more time studying, becuase I am not sure what I did :)
Then I went outside, it was lightly raining, so I took the tripod and an umbrella and the lens hood...
The glass discs hanging from my tree looked so pretty dripping and spinning in the rain.

New Portland Saturday Market Site

Okay, I got my butt kicked by mother nature today. For realz.
This picture shows how the weather man was so wrong - it was supposed to rain all day, but the clouds burned away and it was beautiful. For a few hours.

Then it got cloudy and cold and in a matter of moments all hell broke loose and suddenly I found myself clinging to my booth (that seemed more like a ship sail than a protective booth) as the rain and thunder and lightning and HAIL came horizontally down and straight into me. My glass mobiles were fine, they could care less that it was raining and crazy... but all my packages and labels and paper signs got ruined. And I became a cold soggy mess. I am going back tomorrow (glutton for punishment?) so tonight I have to repackage things and print new signs. ug.

Big shout-out THANK YOU goes out to Aimee and Mike who helped hold down my booth during the storm. I think I might have blown away and suffered miserably without you guys.
Other than the terrible afternoon storm, the real news of the day was that the new site is absolutely beautiful. And my booth choice proved its point, there were photographers from all walks of life taking pictures of the new site and my red LeahGlass sign will be in many of those pictures. That was my plan, and it worked.

But the weather really kicked my ass and now I am tired and grumpy. If you were wondering why I was so nervous about my new spot, today prooved to me why I was feeling so anxious. I am very vulnerable and exposed up there in front of the market. If mother nature feels spiteful, I am poised for a beating with nothing to protect me. Ug.

On a last final note, as I was taking down my wet self this evening, the rain stopped and there was a beautiful rainbow. My neighbor's 8 year old son proclaimed "Theres a pot of gold at the end of that rainbow!!"

New Portland Saturday Market Site

The new Portland Saturday Market site construction gates opened up this afternoon at 3:30pm. We are finally allowed to walk onto the site! You bet I was there to take pictures :)

Here's my first step onto the new site, documented by my little camera!
The move-in has begun! The food court booths are rolling in this evening and the craft will begin to set up in the morning.

I went and dropped off a bigger booth in my storage this afternoon (I rent storage for my booth and displays down under the sidewalk on the west side of the Burnside bridge) and excitedly went to take pictures of the brand new site. There were still city crews there laying some concrete (wha?!) and finishing up various things... and market crews there beginning to set up for the weekend and beginning to tackle to un-known factors of the new site.
In the picture above you can see Rhea laying out the markings for where our booths will sit.

It looks great! Check out the beautiful dark wood that lines the upper inside of the canopy
The only part of the site that is not finished is the water fountain
Here is Jan pointing out her new spot, number 806

I feel unprepared and nervous for the move-in. Something about showing up tomorrow morning and having to look ready by 10am has me anxious. In a way I can't wait for this weekend to be over so I can process the experience and go from there. At this point I have no idea what it will be like (how windy?!) and how I will want to change my retail set-up. So for now I will just show up tomorrow morning and put up my big red LeahGlass sign and do my best to look good in the spot. And get rained on. The weather is looking dismal.

Live Online Q+A from Etsy's CEO Maria Thomas

Pictured above is a screen-shot of what was going on the Etsy Virtual Labs earlier today. Maria Thomas, Etsy's CEO, was giving a talk at the Summit of Awesome by Hello Craft. She briefly talked about her life journey that led her to moving to Brooklyn and working for Etsy. Then questions were answered, all simultaneously online viewers were commenting on the left side of the screen.

To quote Maria (this was my most favorite line from her talk - she is referring to her role as CEO of Etsy):

"The best thing we can do for our sellers is bring them buyers."

I liked this line so much I wrote it down and decided to blog here about it!

This online video forum is an interesting program that Etsy unveiled a few years ago. Users can gather in this multi-functional website "rooms" and there can be video, chatting, and there are all sorts of little functions... for instance, you can throw cookies, beer or paper airplanes at the other users (along with many other little animated objects)... you can view the items in other users shop and throw up a little box with an ad for one of their items to float around the screen so other viewers can see.

Anyhow, its really a great little program, and it was a fun talk to listen to.

The first time I experienced the "Virtual Labs" it was an early experiment with the programers and Etsy users... they put on a puppet show, invited Etsy artist StaceyRebecca to showcase her work in a little performance. The Virtual Lab was set up like a stage and the video screen was inside the "stage" and you could "sit" around in the audience by moving your avatar to the little boxes that denoted virtual seats. The puppet show was great too, I laughed out loud as Stacey poked fun of Etsy and the users. So funny. And I really enjoyed this platform of online interaction. So now I occasionally check it out when a friend or an interesting topic is scheduled to appear.