Recent Page 3

3 x 1.75"

Yep, poop in the toilet.  Flushing.  And she buys her toilet paper bulk, in 30-roll packages so she won't run out.  You thought those big round bales piled up under the rain shelter on the far side of the field was hay?  Nope, it's the herd's weekly supply of  Charmin Super Soft, so essential for the cow who doesn't want to chafe Delicate Bovine Underpinnings.  Unlike Monkey Pee Monkey Doo, this babe always flushes.  And when you take a look down past the udder into the clear part of the toilet bowl, you'll see the tastefully applied brown spirals deep down at the bottom. When I make toilets I have a choice - blobs or spirals - and I always decide which one to use thru The Process Of Elimination.   Boy, I think I'll stop writing text for awhile... I'm pooped.     (snicker)

1.5 x 1.5"

There's a breed of sheep common in Scotland that are born black, and as they get older their color shifts thru gray to ivory, and they're shorn at different times to produce different shades of natural wool.  The tour bus driver was firm on this, and also pointed out the sluices on the hills used by porridge factories, and gave us the complete rundown on the Jackalope.  So these are the newest breed, cloned on the range.. genetically engineered sheep bred specially to produce fine colored wool for sweaters.  The one on the bottom is the rare Dotted Swiss, a dying breed - when did you last see a polka dot sweater?

1.75 x 1.75"

I went to Venice and Murano (several times - ya gotta go, it's just amazing!) and every shop sold glass, and at the back of every shop there was a guy with a torch and a couple rods of glass whipping out 3-D sculptures of roses & frogs & stuff, and I thought (insert Thought Balloon here...)  "I can do that!  I can make little sculptural thingies and apply them to my beads to get REALLY 3-D effects!" and I came home and did it!  This bead has a goldfish with silver foil inside and big bulgy eyes, that I made as a stand-alone sculpture.  I stuck in the kiln to stay hot while I made an encased base bead with seaweed inside, then with one hand I kept the bead hot in the flame, and with my other hand I held open the kiln door, and with my OTHER hand I pulled out the fish with warmed tweezers (really longggg warmed tweezers).  Then I heated the fish in the flame and attached it to the base, added more squiggles of seaweed over everything, and BINGO-YIPPEEE,  all done!  Pretty cool bead - and the fish is *way* more dimensional than it looks in the picture!  

2.25 x 2"

small:  $112

2 x 1.75"

3.5 x 2"

For the last 20 years, whenever I'd visit my parents Dad would turn on the TV after supper and watch one of three things:  Hogan's Heroes,  Hawaii 5-0, or Lawrence Welk.   Unfortunately LarryW was in heavy re-run rotation and I got to experience it pretty much every night.  You know the difference between the Lawrence Welk Orchestra and a Water Buffalo?  With the buffalo, the horns are in the front and the ass is in the back....  ack..  sorry, I couldn't help myself, blame it on 'Anna-one, Anna-two' overdose.  But as usually happens, Good came out of Evil, and I got to hear and memorize every big band and swing tune ever written, and almost all of them had HUGE pun potential.  Like this -

2.5 x 1"

And like this!  I think everybody under 25 should be *forced* to watch the LarryW Show every single day, so they can recognize and appreciate all the old-lyric-derived rancid puns on this website!  I'm writing to my Congressperson right away - this is the kind of legislation that could be attached as a rider to something like Healthcare or Social Security - and what a surprise when the Britney fans discovered their new legal requirements!  We need to make sure everybody in America knows the origin of  'I Want A Gargoyle Just Like The Gargoyle That Marinated Dear Old Dad' and 'Days of Swine and Roses' and 'Swine On Harvest Moon' and 'Wake Up Little Sushi' (tho that's a lot more recent...)

2.5" x 1.5"

This is the only one - and had to haul it to THREE shows before one of the Silly Bead Minions, in a gesture of mercy that I still appreciate,  bought the stinkin' thing and took it away.  I'd been telling the joke that goes with this bead at least a dozen times every day - and these were 12 show days, total.  Can you imagine just how $@#!%!! sick I was of the Peg Leg Pig Joke?   So you don't really think I'm gonna write it out and plug it in here, don't you?  NOT A CHANCE!  But if you send me an email I'll shoot it out to you... it's so amazingly gross and good at the same time that it's worth knowing!  And if you order one of these, you get the joke along with...  but try to control that impulse. 

1 x 2"

Sons of OctoBall.  See the round spiky beads on the Octoball Necklace on the Jewelry page?  These magnificent Flying GollyWhollopers were born when something went Terribly Wrong during the Octoball Harvest, leaving me with large lopsided hollow beads that would never, ever go symmetrical again.  So I turned up the torch, blasted the octopod bumpies with heat and melted em into the body, added legs, face and tail (or is it? These are the Sons of...   no. Couldn't be), and The Incredible Flying GollyWholloper Troupe was born.   Still hollow, so they're a lot lighter than you'd expect.  Cute little buggers, aren't they?  My failures are so good....  arms are in all different positions, depending on how the Wonkiness Went!

1.5 x 1.5"

Daughters of OctoBall.  These went lopsided down at the bottom, and the only way I could fix em was to wind more glass onto the mandrel to make legs, and plop on some feet with colored toenails (these are the Daughters of OctoBall, after all...)  The best part of this kind of hollow bead mess-up is that I can carve nice deep perky butts into the non-face end, and even apply Anatomically Correct Details (indented dots, okay?)  GollieBabes make nice pendants, and you can make them into Compound Bead Extravaganzas by stringing them on other beads, much like I do with the critters in the Circus Series! 

2 x 1.25"

This is a peculiar merge of Landscape Bead and Carousel Horse, but it works!  Doesn't matter which direction this rotates while you're wearing it, there's no side that doesn't have a nice bit critter on a  landscape background.  It's X-Treme 3-D Sculptural Relief in action - a lot like the figures on the Pediments of the Parthenon, ya know, the ones that are carved so deeply that entire nations of pigeons could live in there and except for the whitewash, the tourists would never know?   See?  Art History education at work!  This is the Lion, Master of His Domain - and you can see a bit of his Domain on the right, just under the base of the tail.  Yep, Lion.  Big mane, big balls.  You expected class here?   Piffle!

2 x 1.25"

The cow was my 1st test of the Cylinder design, and when I make the next one it'll be on a base bead shaped like the lion and the elephant - I like the look better, and with a fatter base I'll be able to give it thicker, fatter legs with big knobby knees.  Will probably make the ears stick out more, too... The elephant turned out great, big & round & fat with a nice dimensional trunk complete with all the options - poked pink tip and notches all the way up.  Both of these are females - ya want male, ya gotta ask! 

6.5" x 1.5"

This is a another big one! It has a hollow body but no wings (it's a worm, folks!) and since it's The Season For Love, it's doing a barfably nauseating goofy-eyed love stare and clutching a bunch of flowers for its sweetie.  It's apparently been on quite an odyssey looking for the above mentioned sweetie;  it's had several owners, and just recently made its way back to me.  I put a stop to its Rovin' Ways by donating it to the permanent collection of The Bead Museum in Washington, DC.  It'll be on display as part of their The Tiny Mighty Bead exhibition, January to June, 2005 - stop by & say Hi, you may be the long-lost tootsie its been searching for.  If you are, be prepared...  it's a Bookworm.  It'll eat your paperbacks,  it poops sawdust, and it reeks of mucilage - kind of like a graduate student..  

3.5 x 1.5"

Kinda puts you off nice Cajun restaurants, doesn't it?  Here we all thought we were eating those ugly gray bottom feeders with the long tendril whiskers,  fried crispy with a nice breadcrumb coating and one too many shots of BAM!, served on a white oval plate with tartar sauce.  We're the victims of Spin Control and Dis-Information, folks.  The New Orleans Chamber of Commerce is behind the campaign - if people know that the catfish they're ordering at K-Paul's started out looking like the specimen to the left, nobody would ever eat the stuff again and the all the Blackened-Fish, Cajun, and Bayou Cookin' places in the South would go (pardon this...) Belly Up.  Now that you know, spread the word - save the species!

2.25 x 1.5"

Philosophical musing aside, what we've got here is a lousy picture of a nice little crouching cat sitting on a fancy decorated box.  I was in a twisty-stringer mood that day, made about 50 and then had to use em for something, and I made enough boxes to keep my circus going for the next couple years!  For those who don't work glass, twisties are the candy cane spiral bits going up the edges of the box.  You make em by heating the last inch or so of two different colored rods of glass.  Then you overlap the hot parts so one's on top of the other, heat till melty, remove from the flame, and twist like the Very Devil while pulling the glass out into a thin strand.  Great for all kinds of decorations - I use em on cow dresses a lot. 

1.25 x 1.25"

Grip your token tightly - it'll allow you passage thru the (low) turnstile into the Anteroom of the Kitty Underground, immortalized in the prints of Furrier & Ives - a place of sandy floors, push-pedal fountains of cream, Louis XIV chairs for sleeping and scratching, and hot & cold running mice.  And this is just the Anteroom. If you're brave or foolish enough to crawl thru the exit under the table (it looks like a giant brown paper bag), you'll Boldly Go Where No (hu)Man Has Gone Before... been nice knowing you!  

6.5 x 1.5"

What, you didn't know 3-Eyed Aliens like a snort once in awhile, too? Good heavens, he even has a subscription to Modern Drunkard magazine (it really exists - do a web search if you don't believe me!)  Yep, it can be a problem, all alone in the UFO for all those parsecs, and nothing to do but siphon off the stuff that fuels the Warp Drive - Jack Daniel's No.7 Black Label.  

THIS is why we've had so stinkin' many UFO sightings all these years - did you ever hear of any before the Jack Daniel's Distillery was founded?  Not a chance!  And now that Jack has reduced the alcohol content of the above-mentioned sippage from 86 to 80 proof, we're gonna be seeing a lot more erratically looping Lights In The Sky as they come back to refuel both driver and ship... 

 (special order)

9" tall, not counting base

'Send us a piece to exhibit', they said, 'you have 6 square inches of space to fill'.  'How tall is the case?' I asked.  'It's a shelf - they're 18" apart'.   And with a WHOO HOO, I proceeded to make something that would fit my allotted area and sure wouldn't escape anyone's attention!  

Meet the Germ Stack -  a totem pole with 14 beads (9 little separators, 4 big Contagions, 1 barrel at the bottom), all mounted on a 3/32" steel rod that's fixed into a clear rectangular Lucite base.  Allow me introduce you to, from the top, The Common Cold;  E. Coli;  Measles; and Whooping Cough.  I also made a Mad Cow Disease in black & white, but it just didn't fit in well with the others...  darn.

Don't you feel better about your ailments, now that you know they're caused by Insufferably Cute Microscopic Critters?  I sure do... wheeze... snort... atchooo!!!

*discontinued*

1.75 x 2.25 x1.5" (nee)deep

Yeah, okay, you can kick me.  But then I wouldn't tell you about this baby frog's soft, silky bottom (or, for that matter, it's pond's soft silky bottom... but let's stop.)  This is a stinker to make - they blow apart way too often - only 2 have actually turned out!  I make the baby frog separately, plop it into a kiln to stay warm, then make most of mama, heat her belly molten, grab the kid and bond him in place, then finish mom's arms and legs.  This is usually the point her eyes blow off...  Nothing like a challenge! 

This is so hot off the kiln, I haven't even removed it from the mandrel yet.  It's Assignment 5 from Sylvie Lansdowne's online Creativity Workshop (a great class!), and turned out so friggin' cool I had to stick it up somewhere.  So this illustrates lots of special techniques: 1) Crossed eyes are murrini 2) Fly is component work - I made it separately, kept it warm in the kiln, then stuck it on the nose at the very end 3) Hair made with twisty and ribbon cane  4) Assorted sculptural techniques honed in Loren Stump's class  5) Artistic License - I dropped some weight, gave myself a chin job, and trimmed my hair.  Ain't Art Wonderful?

3.35 x 2 x 1.25"

This is what happens the first time you put a kitten in front of a mirror.... it's pretty much the funniest thing in existence, and the arching and hissing and bouncing and grabbing will go on till the little nutcase collapses into sudden & absolute deep sleep - sometimes in the middle of a leap.  I'm so glad this stage only lasts a year or so -  you can get a bit of sleep the next 17 or so years!  This is a 2 part design, head & body separated by a rhinestone collar.  The body is hollow, so it's a lot lighter than it looks.  It's pretty big - I have it sitting in my bead display cabinet as a sculpture, and it looks way good!  

1.5 x 1.5 x 1.25"

(the nose sticks out some!) 

All that's missing is the drool - with this guy, there should be a lot of it.  Maybe you could put clear iridized glass drops into the necklace?  This is your basic ivory, tea-stained hound dog, with a nice wet nose, floppy jowls with little whisker dots, and pink tongue hanging off to the right.  The hole goes vertically, from under the chin up thru the top of his head.  This guy brings his breakfast with him... he comes with two bones (1.25" to 1.5" long - they vary!)  Now all you need is a water bowl, poop scoop, chew toy, leash, squirrels, flea dip, and a porch he can sleep under...

1 x 1.5 x 1"

I bet you're really getting sick of all these stinkin'  puns by now, aren't you?  I'm in the middle of a massive text marathon, writing up descriptions to go with ... what is it?  WAY over 100 new pictures, and I'm starting to go into wonky pun overdrive... in the last 5 minutes I thought up the nasty specimen above, and a bunch more - Mastodontia (it'd have braces, I guess?) and Elephantry, My Dear Watson (cap & pipe?) and From Tusk Till Dawn (the scourge of Pachyderm Vampires? Sliding into Bunnicula territory here...).  I may not be fit for normal company for awhile, if you can call any of my cronies normal.  A hard bead to get a good pic of - if you lay it on its back so you can see the size & scope of the ears, the trunk is coming right up at the camera and all you see is a big gray blob that blocks the eyes.  On the side like this you get the face, but the ears go away with foreshortening... ah, the evils of Depth and Perspective!  This makes a nice pendant, especially when paired with big ivory tea-stained nubbly peanuts (roasted, unsalted, in the shell) -  make you one of those for $15, or a small pair great for earrings for $25.  Go ahead, go nuts - they're all they're cracked up to be!

2.5 x 2 x 1.25"

I've only made two of these - the first one's the prototype that miraculously survived (with only one fixable glitch) - it lives in Washington state with Corina Tettinger, who made him famous in her 'Spotlight on Hollow Beads and Vessels (you can get a copy, and sooooo much more, at corinabeads.com)  The second one lives with me, and keeps the house free of flies and other small aerial insect life.  You can't tell from the picture, but in addition to the Gloriously Lightweight hollow body, this critter also has a sticky 12' tongue that snaps out at the least sign of Lunch Activity.  I'm sure Corina's found this out by now...  you can't wear shiny earrings anywhere near the thing.  My specimen is much like hers, but has a double rhinestone choker instead of green beads for the neck (owe you a couple, Ms. C!).  The Choker is appropriate, considering what it does with those long skinny fingers when it snags the Flying Snack... 

2.5 x 1.5"

I'll probably hear from the lawyers for this one, won't I , guys?  Just hold up - this is a one-of-a-kind, I'm not making em for mass sale!  But I had to make one -  a pun of this Extravagant Rancidocity just *COULD NOT* be left undone once I'd thought of it.  

So if you'll dispense with the Cease & Desist, I'll overcome the urge to put the World's BEST Lawyer joke in here....  you know, the one about the Statue of a Rat?  heheheeeeeeeeee...