Good Fortune Lite

I just added a few things to the store this evening, including this necklace. I was going to wait a while longer to list finished pieces in the store, but given that I have a Showcase coming up on Friday, I decided to go ahead and post a couple items. This necklace is actually a significantly simplified version of the one that will be appearing in the July 2008 edition of BeadStyle Magazine. I took the colors from an impeccable source of Chinese cultural images - the place mat of a local Chinese restaurant. (Needless to say, I have my tongue firmly in my cheek on this one. I am not Chinese, and I don't mean to insult anyone who is. Taking the blue, yellow, red and orange color scheme from a Chinese eatery just seemed in keeping with the whole fortune cookie theme.) I started out using my own lampworked glass beads for the colors, but ended up switching them out in favor of stones. The strong color combination expressed more subtly with semiprecious stones just seemed to work better.

I have to say that the only real downside to this new venture that I have noticed so far is that I find myself glued to the computer even more so than usual. Even the Short One has been picking up on this and has demanded his fair share of Internet time over the past couple days. This usually takes the form of surfing to the Sesame Street website and playing the Oscar the Grouch Trash Sorting Game. Well, I say "play", but it's mostly me sorting trash, while the SO offers color commentary and dribbles a bit on the laptop. The only really noteworthy thing about these sessions is that one of the items of trash to be sorted during the game is a half-peeled banana. For some reason, every single time this segment comes up, when the SO sees the banana on the screen, he hops off of my lap, runs to the kitchen and complains until I peel him a banana. It doesn't matter what time of day it is, it doesn't matter if he's just finished eating a meal, he will want to eat a banana while playing the game. Weird, no? I've said it before, I'll say it again - I would pay good money to know what exactly he's thinking at times like this. (Practically speaking, it means I've had to be careful to buy extra bananas lately when we go grocery shopping.)

Anyway, after listing my new items on Etsy, I spent some time making a few more koi out of polymer clay. Really, I'm usually not so stuck on one design, but there's something about those little koi pendants that I find very appealing (no pun intended). I'm definitely going to try to have a new one listed in time for the Showcase.

Okay, it is way past my bedtime. I'm starting to get that eyelids-propped-open-with-toothpicks feeling (and how nasty is that?). Have a great Wednesday, everyone! I'll see you sometime tomorrow.