I'm on DaWanda!!

What's DaWanda, you say?? That's another online shopping site for handmade goods. It's similar to Etsy, but based in Europe. There is the original site, in German; a French DaWanda; and an English one. The German and French DaWanda definitely see more sales and traffic, but the English site is new and just getting going.

The site is super easy to use and learn. You don't pay per listing, just a small fee for when the item sells. There is also a nice forum filled with helpful people. The usual snarkiness of the Etsy forum is blessedly missing. I haven't noticed any of the nasty comments and general bad attitude that Etsy forums are prone to. Actually, that's probably one of the reasons I hang around the Etsy forums too much- for the drama!

Anyway, I digress! DaWanda now hosts my shop called Ferragamo Studio. I have an eclectic collection of items in that shop and will be adding more in the coming days and weeks. I hope to have it as robust as my etys shop soon.

Featured on Etsy Front Page!

My little Blue bird was featured on the front page of etsy today! I wanted to get a screenshot, but I never have gotten the hang of doing it properly. In any case, the front page changed a couple of minutes after I happened to see it. I usually forget to check it, but for some reason, I decided to look at it. Maybe it's because of that long, long, etsy forum thread about the same people being shown on the front page.

Well, I'm thankful I was there and got a couple hundred views out of it. Hooray!!

Fresh Hot Ceramic Beads

Here are my new beads that just came out of the kiln. This load has a nice selection of pendants as well. I made several Tiki Head beads that I want to make into pendants with sterling silver bails. I think those came out nice

In the photo above are a few of the pendants; hearts and odd shapes that I made. The circular one at the top is going to be filled with crushed glass and then fired again. I want to see how that comes out.
There are a nice selection of blue beads; a little irregularly shaped, but I like that. Too much uniformity makes me think it looks manufactured. I guess it's just a personal preference.

The Tiki Head beads were a lot of fun. I could make these all day long. The shino glazes that break along the high areas add so much too the look of these beads.I use a clay sculpting tool to press in the eyes and patterns into the clay.
Lots of great texture on these tube beads. I like the way the glaze broke and all the different colors that you see when you look closely; blues, lavender, brown, turquoise.

These are two large lentil beads that Imade from taking two of my pendants and pressing them together. It was a challenge to keep them from getting indented and firing was tough. I had to string the smaller one onto high temp wire because it wouldn't fit onto the mandrel. The large bead is massive, isn't it? I think someone will be excited by it. These were textured with a piece of cloth and until I saw them out of the kiln, I wasn't sure if I would like them. I think they are among my favorites. It's so cool to open the kiln and see what happened.

The green beads have some intense breaking and running of color. I pushed an X shape into the sides, but you can barely tell I did here. It gave the glaze a place to puddle, and that made it really look cool.

This is my workspace. What a mess! Check out the TV on the table. I could sit there for hours just making beads and watching Law and Order. Seriously, I think Law and Order is on 24 hours a day. If you look for it on your TV, I'm sure you'll find it.Finished pendants and beads. There are so many and I don't have a good system for storing them. Mostly, they sit here and I go through them and decide what to list on our etsy shop. Lots of these will be sorked up into finished jewelry.