Fun Little Project With A Lot Of Possibilities

I was wasting my morning browsing Pinterest researching creative projects when I came across a post about melted bead art. Have you already heard of this? This is new to me and since I have been thinking about getting rid of stuff in my crap room Art Studio, it was perfect. Way back in the day when my kids were really into making geckos from pony beads and lanyard ( does anyone else remember that craze?) we built quite a collection of the little buggers.

I have been hanging on to them for God only knows why.Uuntil today, now I know why too. First you find a metal bowl and you pour a cup of coffee. I live in the Northwest and we don't do anything without coffee.

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 Then you start picking out colors that you like. I recently got a peacock tattoo so I picked peacock colored beads. You can see my pattern started off really even but quickly got a bit wonky. This does not matter to the end result. (see previous post about embracing imperfection)

By the time I got to the top rim of the bowl I started to question my decision on that 5th cup of coffee. You have to have a steady hand and I found that when I did drop or misplace a bead a wooden skewer was perfect for moving them. In fact I got so nervous about carrying the thing without messing it up that I forgot to take a picture until it was inside the oven.You can see that by the time I got to the top it was pretty wonky.

I baked it on 400 degrees for 20 minutes and then another 15 minutes because it wasn't melty enough for me. So 35 minutes total. I also kept my stove vent on high to help with the fumes that come off of melting plastic. There are a lot of fumes and I wouldn't do it unless you have a good vent.

This is what it looked like when I took it out of the oven. I was so excited I forgot to take a close up before I cooled it.

 I used a metal bowl just because I knew that I would not be patient enough to wait for it to cool on it's own. I read that you can use glass but if you did then you would not be able to dunk it in cold water to cool it off. As soon as it cooled it came right out of the bowl and looked like this:

I can't wait to play with this idea some more. If you left a hole in the center it would make a really neat lamp shade. I saw some online somewhere and they were pretty. The edges are kind of sharp and I think when I do another I will leave it in a bit longer to see if the bottom will flatten out a bit.

A Worthy Venture

I met Tom and Vicky Brown several years ago when they came to buy a goat from my farm. They didn't buy the one they came for but they did buy a goat. This goat was beautiful but we had a love/hate relationship. I could not have been happier when Vicky told me that Layla had chosen her. Layla was the first baby born on our farm way back in the beginning when the goats were the sole responsibility of my middle daughter, Sarah. Sarah was a young teen then and we hadn't yet realized that the reason Sarah was miserable most of the time was that she was allergic to pretty much everything to do with farming. Sarah loved her goats though and she took good care of them. She let her pet Jo raise her own baby, Layla but always would go out and give them scratches before school and share her toast with them. Layla loved to be scratched through the fence because of this. However, when it came time for her to be a mama and be a milker she did not want to get on the milk stand and pretty much did not want to be touched anywhere near her hind end. Scratches through the fence, yes, milking, no. But she was so well put together and she kept birthing quads every year and yes, she was also a big giant pain in my butt. The year that she gave me quad bucklings I threatened her with her life. On a dairy farm bucklings are pretty hard to use and harder to find good lasting homes for, if you know what I mean. When it came time for the next breeding season I looked at Layla and told her in my best angry voice, " I will let you live and I will even forgive you if you give me girls this year." and I really meant it. I awaited the births anxiously as I always did and I watched Layla grow bigger and bigger each day.  I reminded her often that her future depended on those babies being girls. Well when the blahs of winter were solidly upon me it was time for baby goats to arrive and Layla did it up in style by giving birth to 3 healthy doelings and 1 beautiful buckling. They were gorgeous and I told her that I would forgive her. She did not ever really enjoy milking the way my other goats did and so while I forgave her I really didn't like her very much. 
Enter The Browns, they came to look at some goats that my niece was trying to sell so  of course, I didn't mention any of my own. Layla persistently came to the fence to get her scratches from Vicky. She just wouldn't leave her alone while Vicky was looking at the goats that were for sale. This was typical behavior for her but Vicky was so enjoying it that I didn't have the heart to tell her that Layla would do that with anyone. When she told me that she felt that Layla had chosen her and that she she wanted to buy her instead of the goats that were for sale I was truly laughing on the inside. I jumped on my opportunity,knowing that my niece would also get a good laugh about this and made her a fair deal. I have to admit that I giggled out loud when they drove away. The browns have come a long way since then and I truly admire their hard work. They are trying to expand their farm, which is a huge undertaking so when I found out, I had to help. I wasn't able to give a lot but if everyone could give a little they could certainly reach their goal. They are getting down to the wire so please check out the link. What they are doing is important work and I wish them the best. Support them if you can.
Promote the Goat!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/littlebrownfarm/cheese-cave-and-classes-and-farm-store-at-the-litt 


This is Layla and her mother in one of my favorite old pictures of my past life of farming. I call it Butt Head. Layla is the goat in the front.