All over the place these days when it comes to beads.

It is ONE.  OF.  THOSE.  DAYS.

Whew.  You know, one of those days where you feel like you have two left feet and you’re all thumbs?  I don’t know where they come from but today is my turn to have one.  And it’s only 10:30 a.m. so in reality, there is still plenty of time for that to change.  In the meantime, something interesting happened on the way to the studio yesterday…

Actually, it’s been a-brewin’ for a while. Since my November studio show I’ve been busy with custom orders and requests. When I do take a custom order I usually provide a few choices. This is what is left from one of the bead requests:

The request was for one of my raku focal beads, made larger and with a “little more” white.  It was an interesting request because I never thought that white would go with with my black and raku beads.  I believe it was being purchased for someone who wore a lot of black and white.  The third bead shown here did have white however, it turned yellow which is kind of interesting.

On top of those types of orders I’ve been pumping out some simple but bread & butter production work.

Which led me to start to become a little stressed about the upcoming big Tucson show.  I haven’t had time to design a new line for this year and I’m tired of the older ones.  I’ve been kicking around the idea, again, of providing spacers or production items this year.  But somehow that doesn’t feel like the right thing to do in Tucson.  (although, as I type that, I realize that Tucson is the IDEAL place to sell that kind of work).  So then I started kicking around the idea of doing both with the inventory I already have in stock.

And then I wanted to scream because I just couldn’t steady my thoughts.

Then, I threw the new-series-for-this-year idea out the window because I just didn’t have time.  That was a hard pill to swallow.  My next strategy was to come up with something affordable for buyers.  Without having design time available (that is the most time consuming for me) I decided to go the play route…what I sit down to make, that is what you get.  I started out bright:

The shape is a manageable amount of glass so it doesn’t take forever to get on the mandrel and I did like the playfulness of the glass.  However, something was telling me that I needed to tone it down a bit.

So I did.  A little bit.  In the process I thought about the customers that I had possibly left behind when I went into this bright color phase a couple/few years ago.  I felt called to go more earthy for them too.

And that was good.  I do enjoy working with grays and silvered ivory.  I reached deep into my brain and mulled colors over in my head and briefly consulted Pantone (not like that ever helps me).  We needed just a little bit more color, a little reaction and this was the result:

I like.  I like a lot.  I have no idea if the colors are in, out or even desirable to others but this is where I’m headed.  At least, it’s where I’m going to start out today when I hit the torch in a few minutes.

Now.  Pricing.  Affordable was the goal.  I need to be able to sell them wholesale and not lose my shirt.  That wouldn’t be pretty.  So I’m thinking $26 retail.  And now I’m going through the same thing I go through every year around this time.  Do I list them for sale on my web site, etsy or ebay or do I hoard them for Tucson, like I should be doing?

How about this…if you like any of them for $26 tell me and you can buy them.  Otherwise, I’ll hold them for Tucson.  I have to or I’ll be sorry!

And for the record, wholesale is 50% of retail.  If you would like to buy wholesale you must SPEND $250 total and can also buy anything on my web site to get to that amount.  That means that retail pricing must reach $500 and you will get 50% off.

So there you go.  Enjoy the journey and eye candy or go shop!