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I have been fascinated by glass since I was little. In 2003, I took an intro class, and was hooked. Instantly. Even though I am not so fond of tools and torches. I had to do this. My husband was thrilled to see me lugging home a torch and propane and oxygen hoses. Seriously. He loves that kind of thing. Me? Truth be told, I was kind of nervous to light it up at first.

My fabulous husband, an electrical engineer, built my studios (2), and they are awesome. Awesome and safe. The torch is one thing, that danger is obvious, so a proper lighting techniques and a fire extinguisher are must haves. But it is the melting of glass and vaporizing of heavy metals (what gives glass its color), that make it insidiously dangerous. So he built me an incredible ventilation system.

I learned how to make beads by reading everything I could get my hands on – books, forums, web sites. Mostly though, I learned by way of the 3 P’s – practice, practice, practice.

I had made jewelry for years, so my primary (only?) intent was to make very unique, individual round beads for earrings and bracelets. That’s it. Round beads. Small beads. None of those silly sculptural beads.

But then… I discovered that making round beads, perfectly round beads, is really hard. LOL Not wanting to waste glass, I would squish them, put fins on them, and make fish. Just until I could get the round bead thing going. Along the way, I realized my heart was in the sculptural beads. Fish, dogs, cats, roosters, flowers, all of them!

Round beads were kinda boring now.

Fish were my first. Roosters are my favorites.

But what people always ask about are dog bones!

A few years ago, I was part of a show on HGTV called That’s Clever. They filmed it in 2006. Then nothing. I never saw the episode. Not a word from HGTV, and I thought they ditched the series. Hmmm. Finally, in the summer of 2010, through the magic of TeeVee, the episode finally appeared. I had no idea it had even aired, but people emailed me after it seeing it. I have edited it to show the (very quick) making of a glass dog bone bead.

Now, be warned: I am NOT a video editing type. In fact, I have never edited a ‘live’ video (I have made slideshows, but that’s it), so please excuse any glitchiness you may see. I also removed the audio, since it was more of a tutorial piece with funky HGTV music, it was really choppy with sound. Sophie makes an appearance for this Dog Bone Collar Charm Bead episode.

The first prize alert was mentioned at the bottom of the Hour #1 post. Since this is a bead-related post, we should have a bead giveaway here, too! I have decided that as beads are won, people can choose their favorite bead from the photo below. I’ll update the photo and mark them “taken” as the prize patrol rolls on.

Bead Prize Question: I dearly love all of  my  cats. Some of you may know that my “heart cat” was named Herman. I talk about him a lot on Veterinary Medicine at About.com. The first person to comment on this post with Herman’s FULL NAME, spelled correctly, and what holiday gift item he appeared on in gift idea list will win a bead of your choice from this photo:

Going, going, gone!

I have uploaded the bead close-up photos to Flickr – you can get a “quick view” with the viewer below. The second icon on the right side of the photo will pop it out full size on Flickr.

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