Monday, December 31, 2007

Sunday, December 30, 2007

A new set of beads headed to Etsy tonight. They have been finished since before Christmas but I have not had time to turn them into a set until today. Enjoy!

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Hi! I know that I have been absent quite a bit lately when I have actually been home and able to post. I am sorry about the lack of eye candy but lots has been happening and I have been so very busy. This time of year we often reevaluate the things we are doing our business's our lives just stuff. Well I really started back in July to look at many of the ways my life has been going. I have not been doing the volunteer work that I used to do and love so much when my son was young and we have not be thinking about the environment in our day to day lives. At the Gathering ( A huge glass bead event put on by the International Society of Glass Bead makers) things started to form in my mind and then when we took a trip to Florida the next week and my son and I ended up doing a very long week of flying and driving we talked a lot about different things. Some of the things that have come out of this are probably going to seem a little odd.

First I want to try to do more for an organization called Beads of Courage. It is a program for children with cancer. I want to find other ways of giving back as well but this is where I plan to start.

Secondly I want to be more environmentally friendly. We live in a community that has very little in the way of recycling programs but they do sort things at the local dump and I am sure many of you know that I go every fall and collect firewood to help offset the fuel we use to heat the house and the studio. Since my studio is in the barn this really helps I keep the furnace turned all the way down just so things don't freeze and only use the wood stove when I am out there. It helps more in the house at night when I am in and can keep the stove full but it at least helps and the wood I use has already been considered waste by some one else.

We use our junk mail and cardboard to start these fires. The boxes and pacaging that comes in here that I do not reuse I take to the UPS store. All those plastic peanuts get reused.

We save and take our soda cans to the recyclers and our many water bottles while not recycled are at least reused by the puppies at the humane society where they give them to the dogs as chew toys. (Yes I know it would be better not to buy water in bottles but you should taste our water even after filtering it is way to yucky to drink)

I have been collecting and reusing glass bottles from wine and soda to make pendent rings and lately melting them to make beads. I have also been using these bottles to make some beach glass like pieces. There is a lot more of this to come as my mind is running wild with ideas.

Now comes the big one and the reason I have not posted in over a week. I have been reading everything I can get my hands on about running straight vegetable oil in a diesel truck. I have also been hunting everywhere for a truck. You would think they would be easy to come by here in the Midwest but no they are few and far between. This idea is a little different than taking the waste oil to make bio diesel and requires more set up to the truck but less to process the fuel and so uses even less energy to use a product that is already considered waste. My son and I talked about this for hours on those rides back in August. Now why you ask would I ever want to do this. Well I put a lot of miles on my vehicle in a year going to shows all over the Midwest and often needing to drive to Florida to visit family, my van has over 170,000 miles on it and while it gets good gas mileage and is running great it is time to think about something newer. I also do a lot of this driving alone so I need something reliable. Also the idea of lowering my impact on the environment really appeals to me. Crazy I know and my husband said so at first but the last few days he has been really getting on board with the whole thing.

Wow after writing that novel I feel better that I have been doing something to move toward the place I would like to be. Now if I can find the energy to plant and maintain a garden this year I will be doing okay. I hope I can find more ways to reduce and reuse and recycle so you know I am open to any ideas you all have.

Have a great Holiday and I will try to get some eye candy up soon!

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Saturday, December 15, 2007



Well a quick drive by to say hello since I have not been here much. Here are a couple of neck wires I made the other day. I really like them simple with I hope a striking bead. Well I am off to other chores. Have a great weekend.

Monday, December 10, 2007

Well I finally got some jewelry made. I really like how these came out, I just started out to make the bracelet but decided to make a necklace and earrings to match or at least that could all be worn together. The bracelet was hard to see in the picture of everything so I did a close up of just it. Now to go pound some more copper rings.


Saturday, December 08, 2007

Lumpy Bumpy Bottle Beads. Well it took me a few days to get these posted, just been busy I guess. These beads were all made from recycled bottles as part of my recycling project. Now do they have to be lumpy and bumpy? No! of course not. I just wanted them that way. I wanted something different with these beads. I really like them and will be making more and soon.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007




Sonja Harms sent me a couple of pictures of one of the necklaces she has made with the bottle pendants that I have been making. I just love the seed bead fringe piece she has used to decorate it. These pendant pieces are just some of the ideas I have for recycling glass bottles. I have been having friends save all there cool bottles for me and then I have been cutting them up and melting them and also tumbling them to get cool beach glass pieces. The recycling thing is something I have been thinking about for a while as glass is so easy to use again and yet so hard to get recycling centers to take. Here in Huron we have no recycling programs at all. The metal we can take in to a shop that does cans and other metals and my plastic drink bottles I take to the Human Society as the puppies love them to chew on but that is about all we can do. It bugs me to waste things so and to send them to the dump. So I have been trying out some new ideas at least for the glass. Okay enough of a rant on to other things.

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Oh I know not very Christmasy but then we just got our tree up over the weekend and we just had our first real snow as well. I think warm thoughts all the time so you got Yellow Petals today. Sorry for the lack of eye candy lately but the past few days I have been working on cleaning out things like cupboards and going through magazines for fear the clutter will eat me alive if I don't. I made some real progress on the magazines but made more of a mess than I had when I started too. Such is the plan to get organized for the new year. I have however just added a bunch of new sets to my bead sets page on my website you might want to take a look. www.tanyamcguire.com