Vintage Page 3

Don't they have cute fat little faces?  All the slugs in the San Francisco Bay Area look like this... makes it really hard to get out the snail bait and the salt.  These guys come in lots of colors, and all have rippley side-thingies and spots (see the yellow guy for a back view).   If I can figure out how to give em fingers, someday there'll be a version called 'The Slugger' holding a baseball bat,  and maybe someday they'll also have a little bit of sparkly dichroic slime at the bottom - but don't hold your breath. Note:  the Suspects on the Left are old designs...  the Porker on the Right is what they look like these days.

4.5 x 1.5"

This is what happens when I doodle with glass.  I was messing around back in 1998 playing with heads & bodies, making little test versions to see if details would look okay.  I do that before making big ones, so I won't be 90 minutes into a bead before finding out something's gonna look barfable (that's a technical term I learned in Data Processing).  All the test bits get tossed into the bits & pieces box, now full of rubble from the last 12 years. Book worms were born when the box was only a couple years full -  I found my first frog head, and a little body piece testing arms and fingers, and they were the same color.  So I put them together, and all they needed was a tail, and BINGO! Recombinant Bead DNA Bookworms were born!  I've only done two, but if you really need one I can make more.  Chances are good they'd be better...  I've had 9 years practice since then.   

2.25 x 1.25"

OH the luxury of too many names!  This design was born while I was teaching my First Ever class in Phoenix.  My hostess, a wonderful woman who will remain nameless (she greeted me at the airport wearing a big rubber nose so I'd recognize her - there was a 5 foot space all around her because the other folks were afraid to get too close.  This kind of person SHOULD remain nameless.... Jean.)  Anyway, during the class we covered Inspiration and Morphing Designs, and this nutso modified her cat assignment by planting it in a poop box.  Stinkin' Brilliant!  I came up with a couple names, and we share them and the design - hers are Process of Elimination, and mine are Cat Ass Trophy (snicker) and Do Doo That Poo Doo That You Doo So Well.   Brilliant minds... dangerous!  The dirt box is full of glass frit (nubbly gravel bits - realistic!) and lots of (glass) poop - if you're gonna do it, do it right! 

See? Cats aren't the only critters with removable fur suits.  Teddy Bares come in lots of different colors, can be standing or sitting, and can be made holding things (fish & honey & hunters are good), but every one of em has a problem with the Bear-Suit-Butt-Flap.  Just can't get good tailoring anymore....  but have you ever wondered just *how* the little yellow buttons attach, down below? 

3.75 x .25"

I've gotta make another one of these, too - this picture is 4 years old!  This is another Spontaneous TV Design (damn, I love communications technology!)  Blame it on Victor/Victoria  - the movie came on when I was in the middle of a Brogue Elephant, going nuts trying to get a nice even pattern on the kilt.  I looked up just as Lesley Ann Warren was starting her biggest Fabulous Over-the-Top Showgirl Bimbo scene, and I stuck the work-in-progress in the kiln unfinished (it's still unfinished) and started making Bimbo Boobs.  Someday when I'm good enough, I'm gonna re-watch that movie and see if I can do the Definitive Lesley Ann, in costume - THAT would be a bead!   This version comes with a color coordinated rhinestone choker, a handbag (she *is* a Baggins, after all) and one of those lovely fluffy Fatter-Thinner-Fatter-Thinner pipe cleaners, just great for a feather boa...

3 x 2" 

A little kid down the street started me doing nursery rhymes, and I eventually got to the Three Blind Mice and did two of them on chunks o' cheese, like the one on the left (that's Imported Swiss).    I called these guys 'It Ain't Easy Bein' Cheesy'.  The third mouse was planted on top of a big black & white cat head with an evil grin - that one was called 'Oh, Shitttttttt!!!'  It sold so fast I made a half dozen more...  should have taken a picture, darnitall!    Then came the Glorious Premiere of Men In Black - the second movie to make me snort soda up my nose - and suddenly these mice weren't blind anymore, they'd become Earth's Last Line Of  Defense, scourge of  Alien Bugs! And the cheese  morphed into a moon... the technical term for this is Reality Shift.  (fyi A Fish Called Wanda was 1st)

4.5 x 1.5"

Now THIS is a concept.... makes me proud.   

Melding wildlife, the circus, gymnastics, a rancid techno pun and politically incorrect, inappropriate nose placement in one Artistic Design is the sign of True Genius.  If I ever make another one, you won't be seeing the seal's head... (snicker)

*discontinued*

4 x 1.5"

Actually, this was a pretty good idea and I'm gonna give it another try sometime - just as soon as I lick the problem of the unnatural-looking drips!  

This is a 5-piece extravaganza, everything nicely textured and flavored, with optional chocolate chips.  The sugar cone has the appropriate grooves, and if you ever want one all you have to do is specify how many scoops, what flavors, and I'll get to work on it Lickity Split...  

1.75 x 1.5"

Haven't you dreamed of owning your very own Important Small Glass Sculpture of a rabid little pooch hanging on to a bone?  No?  Well snap out of it, here's your chance!   These were only available as part of a glorious dog-themed necklace that you would have had to mortgage your house and rent out your kids to sweatshops and win several lotto jackpots to afford - but now, because the Coordinator of the 2004 Lampwork Festival at the Kyohei Fujita Museum of Glass in Matsushima, Japan (a nice guy!) asked me to include a couple of these when I sent my other work, I had to $%#$#@#$!!! figure out how to make the stinkin' things again!  It looks simple, but ya know how many times I blew off the legs?

1.25 x 2"

Here they are, my very own Rhesus Pieces!  Actually, these are all the heads I made to put on the big Toilet Extravaganza:  Monkey Pee, Monkey Doo.   Then I never got around to making the bodies (poor things were discommoded!)  So I stuck hats on the heads, and they were pretty darned cute.  Three of the four Chapeau Styles are shown here - the other is a wide brim floral hat, kinda like the cows & pigs in dresses wear.  Monkeys are Social Climbers, and will copy anybody. 

*Discontinued* 

1.5 x 1.5"

I've used this name before - it's such a shame to let a really nice pun fall into disuse!  It was a huge necklace - it had two big hamsters at the top leering, drooling, and batting their eyes across at each other (just exactly like the two on the right, in fact!) and I planned to string 50 babies below, alternating with cute little red hearts (valentine, not auricle/ventricle -but wouldn't THAT have been a sight?)  The babies were in all shades of white, ivory, gold, brown, rust and black, and I'm a Primary Babe - the brighter the colors, the happier I am - and I wasn't enjoying the prospect of a week working earth tones.  One day I made one too many hamster-ettes I went nuts, tore the almost-done necklace apart, and started selling off the pieces.  But I'll still make the parents - and if you ask nicely, I'll make em Red, and Blue, and Green, and Orange, and Yellow!

$85 

2.5 x 1"

This is the only ring-tail Lemur did - back in 2000, maybe? The next one's gonna have a MUCH FATTER tail! The sitting position looks cool with all kinds of rodents - Think I'll do one immortalizing the Marmot From Hell who took out a tendon in my knee in the middle of a 60 mile hike on the John Muir trail!  The miserable sucker (ohh... but cute!  A huge apricot Teddy Bear Hamster!) popped up out of a hole right next to me, just like a Whack-a-Mole game, and I jumped in surprise and went right down the embankment to the lower loop of the trail, leaving the above-mentioned tendon behind.  My knee blew up like a basketball, and Lucky Me... everybody else had gone ahead, and it took me 3 hours to drag into camp.  That's when they put me on the Half Clydesdale packhorse who leaned over canyons and I got a serious levi-seam chafe in areas we don't talk about in polite company, which led to the Marx Brothers smartass visit to what was to become my ex-Gynecologist.  As me for the whole story at a Gathering, but buy me a drink first.... the punch line is pretty damn funny.  Now.  It took 25 years, but it's funny.  Now.

No WAY I'm making more of these...    

3 x 15"

Every year the Society of Glass Beadmakers has a convention, and every convention has a Silly Bead contest organized by Donna Milliron, an internationally recognized glass artist who is one seriously nutso, warped babe (reading this, Donna?)  So in 1998 she picked Cootie Bugs, and we had to make the damthings, and this was one of my two entries.  The rest of the beadmakers entered  work so good that the Judge (Donna, the creep) sneered at this.  But I gave it The Old College Tie....   heheeeeeeee

2 x 1.25"

How could I do something this tacky?  You don't actually think I'd get requests for owl beads and pass up a rancid pun like this???   The perspective on this scan stinks, so you can't see just how much cleavage this bird's actually got, but trust me, it's a double-D.   The ones who aren't quite as well- endowed actually have better survival skills - when they're hunting they can stuff their bras with moles, voles, and field mice (much like cheerleaders did back in my high school days), and fly home to ply their Little Hooters with huge dinners.    I've heard the Sierra Club is doing a study on this....