My kiln is currently doing a bisque fire for a large number of items–mostly beads, but also some experimental things, such as some freeform pendants, some adorable little buttons, a bangle bracelet, and a little inkwell. I still have some bisqueware waiting too be glazed, too!

The popularity of my handmade beads seems to be steadily growing, which is very encouraging. I found out today that my work has been featured in two blogs: Art Bead Scene and Creativadoration.

My new policy of relisting items at least once a day, when I have nothing else to list, seems to be helping, as well, because my sales and Etsy hearts have both been going up steadily.

Right now I’m finally doing test tiles, which is taking a while and slowing down new item listing, but it’s definitely worth it: I’m finding out a lot about my glazes and I think it’ll significantly improve the appearance of my products in future.

It’s strange, because it seems like only a few days ago I was worrying about how far behind on my work I was, and now I’m breathing a sigh of relief: “Ah, right on schedule.”

Oh, and I’ve made some big updates to the Handmade Supplies Resource, too!

…making Treasuries! I made a new one: it can be seen here until tomorrow morning, but can be viewed on Flickr indefinitely:

I’ve also listed some more of my handmade beads, my favorites being these lovely sunset-colored pink and brown rounds:

And glazing away in my kiln right now are six vessels of various sizes and shapes! Woohoo!

At this point I’m just waiting for a couple things to finish drying before I do my first bisque fire. This was my workspace yesterday:

As you can see, I’ve made lots of beads, I appear to have successfully made several bead molds, with more on the way (we’ll see how they survive the firing) and I have some other misc. stuff in the works–not pictured is a vase I made last week, plus today I made a dozen teeny little pinch pots, intended for use when I’m sorting out this big bag of mixed-up glass beads I have. And, later last night I also finished the big cup you can see in progress in that picture.

I’ve been trying to make a massive amount of test tiles, but I can’t find an efficient, uniform way to do it. I’ve decided to find a simple cookie cutter, or make something similar myself.