New class I'll be teaching at Spring Beads in August.  Come get out of the Texas heat and fire up your torch in a cool classroom!

Drop dead gorgeous goodies from my last bead soup partner (we decided to trade again on the side).  Sabrina's soup arrived from Switzerland in a lovely box.

Here's a link to her website.  Hope you speak German.

A good portion of her blog is in English.

So many yummy colors and styles of glasswork beads made by Sabrina Straub.

The orange ones are mixed with charcoal gray, which is a cool combo.  The blues are heavenly and oceanly - deep, deep blues.  The group with the green-tipped one has a metallic look.  The rectangular ones appear to be ceramic and Sabrina's card didn't say...did you make them, Sabrina?  She sent two speckled jewels and another stunning focal.  Oh my, so many focals to play with.  I'm truly in heaven.  Love the copper closure with 4 strand option.

Here's a closeup of what I believe is Sabrina's latest design.  She told me a month or so ago that she was working on perfecting strawberries.  As you can tell, she succeeded.  She is a master at precision.

Thanks so much for the beautiful "side" soup.  Now I have two lovely soups to play with.

Afternoon at the Torch!

Here's the unveiling of my package from Kashmira Patel.

Even the envelope is fun and colorful.

And she wrote me a lovely note to explain about the beads.

Ahhh.  And now for the beautiful beads.

I'm a bit of a green freak, so I absolutely love the colors.  And such interesting shapes!  The focal may stump me for a few days, but that just makes it more challenging.

Thank you, Kashmira, for a wonderful soup.

Check out Kashmira's eSites:

http://sadafulee.blogspot.com

http://sadafulee.luulla.com

http://facebook.com/sadafulee

Whoo Hoo!  I mailed my bead soup today to my partner Kashmira Patel in Santa Clara, California.

Here's a teaser, Kashmira:

Kashmira sent my package last week but I was on vacation and wouldn't let myself open it until I put hers in the mail.  Now I get to open my package!

Just returned from a family vacation in Yellowstone to celebrate my 40th wedding anniversary, which is totally unbelievable to me.  Life goes by way too fast!  Here's a picture of my family on a fishing trip at Lake Yellowstone.  The beautiful young woman is my youngest son's girlfriend, Lily.  The boys, Kyle and Kendall, belong to us!

And here's a picture of an elk we happened upon in the woods.  You could hang a lot of jewelry from his rack!