Not the Greatest Day . . . {{sigh}}

Well, yep - - at my title explains, I didn't have the greatest day today.   Tried doing a special, custom Dragon Eye for someone and it didn't quite work out.
I had high hopes, too, since the first eye I created for this year's shows turned out pretty dang good . . . (above picture).
So . . . I was confident and ready to go.  But, alas, the universe didn't feel the way I did.  My first DE cracked right at the end of an excruciating 2 hours at the torch.  Not to be deterred, I took a break and then tried again.  The second one came out alright, it's a keeper, but it didn't look "superb", which is what I really wanted the eye to be.  Oh well.  There is always tomorrow. . .

Production Season Begins . . .

Woohoo!  It's finally getting a little cooler here in AZ, so now is the time I start working my butt off in production for upcoming shows.
But, I haven't been just slacking here.  I have been torching almost daily, but not for full production days and not for specific pieces, mostly just making whatever comes to mind at the time, which is nice.
I have also updated my webpage with upcoming shows for 2014, and I also added a tutorial page which lists all my current YouTube tutorials with links to each one.  Here's a link to that specific page . . .
http://www.jeansbeads.com/tipstutorials.htm

I have started production for the 2014 year already, and decided to start with my most time-consuming and challenging pieces, my Dragon Eye pendants.  These are what the final pendants look like, in case you haven't seen them before.  They are large pendants, averaging about 2.5" long.

I make these pendants in a variety of background colors and with various eye colors, too.  I have been working on the eyes recently, which are made first and then later embedded in the pendants.  I am trying some new swirled and varied color backgrounds in some of them this year, so hopefully I will get some really unique-looking and enviable eyes this year.  Here are the eyes I have made so far . . .

Hopefully all, or at least most, of my pendants will come out well, and I hope to be posting some of the finished pendants in the coming days and weeks.  Right now, I am still focusing on the eye parts, but am hoping to start work on the pendants by this weekend.  Like I stated previously, these are very challenging and time consuming to make, so most days I can only complete one or two of these pendants, but hopefully they will be worth the wait!