Ladies with Idle Hands

I had a lovely day today... mimosas and crafty times with some friends. Wow was that nice!

New Portland Saturday Market Site

I took a few videos yesterday at the Portland Saturday Market to show off the new site, it was early morning and the crowds were not thick yet, so I thought it would be a great opportunity to walk around video-taping... I think next weekend I'll try again with the camera strapped to something rolling (like a baby stroller?) so that the video quality is a little bit better... but this give you a small glimpse into the beautiful new waterfront site

This past weekend was beautiful and exhausting. It was wonderful to see so many happy families spoiling their mothers and the sun glittering in the nearly cloudless sky. I am always thankful to meet other people that love mobiles and add to their collections. I hope they know how thankful I am that they help support my little business... THANK YOU!

My set-up has gotten more complicated... I have a bigger booth now, so I can fit more displays... and I am doing torchworking demonstrations again, so that entails setting up a mini glass studio... With all these additions to my booth its now taking me at least 2 hours to set-up and another 2 hours to take down each day. Whew! And my storage is an extra block away now, which seems trivial, but man oh man does it make it even more exhausting taking all those trips back and forth. Not that I am complaining - I am more just stating the obvious that my little feet hurt from endless trips back and forth. I am so so very appreciative that Tim helps me in the morning on Saturday and Tony helps me at night on Sunday. As it was my feet felt so humble and sore last night. I soaked them in salt in one of those vibrating foot baths last night, that helped too :)

Mom and Me

Happy Mothers Day!

I love you

.

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!!"