An Amazon executive on Saturday took a swipe at a Washington Post report that said the e-commerce giant was in advanced talks about opening its second headquarters, nicknamed HQ2, in Crystal City, Virginia. The report in the Jeff Bezos-owned Post, which cited “people close to the process,” said the Washington DC suburb is a frontrunner for the complex, which is expected to create 50,000 jobs and cost $5 billion.
Called Amazon 4-Star, the new concept will stock items that customers have rated four stars or above, on average, according to a blog post announcing the store. That means it will include only the best of the best; Amazon says the current assortment averages 4.4 stars.
When investing, it’s always a good idea to spread the wealth. Whether you invest only as much as can be insured, or you use different financial managers with unique areas of expertise, your goal is to maximize your capital. Everyone gets a piece of the pie, and within portfolios there’s still more diversification.
When it comes to digital marketing, advertisers are wise to spread their budgets around, but the places to spend in an effective way have dwindled. Over the past few years, fewer and fewer players in online advertising have a piece of the pie–especially those trying to protect consumer information–and advertisers looking for the best conversion rates have increasingly directed their ad budgets to a handful of companies where privacy practices and protections are less than stellar.
Amazon Storefronts is a new way for small and medium-sized businesses to sell products directly through Amazon. Amazon has established a separate section where it will highlight small businesses, feature curated collections of unique products and provide a platform for an online small business experience. Instead of navigating thousands of online sellers, Amazon wants customers to interact with small businesses and have an intimate, mom-and-pop-shop experience through the online platform.
Many local grocery and warehouse stores have sold out of basics like cases of water, so some locals have turned online to buy goods to prepare for the storm. What they’ve found is water cases that cost over $20 for a few dozen bottles — far more than their usual cost.
In this video I demonstrate how I create an encased silver glass bead with tiny raised dots on the surface.
With the right type of flame, the silver in the silver glass is brought to the surface of the bead causing it to develop a slightly metallic sheen. Once I see that sheen I quickly and carefully capture that luster beneath a layer of crystal clear glass.
After encasing, and shaping and smoothing the bead, I apply three rows of alternating dots with a silver glass stringer pulled thin.
Once applied, the raised glass dots are spun through the heat of the flame just enough to allow them to melt about half way down. If they were not melted in far enough the dots would be at risk of being popped off when worn. But melting them too far down can cause them to lose their dimension and disappear into the bead altogether. It’s a tricky balance between too much and too little heat.
Little by little I’m uploading lots of my bead photos, and will upload some videos there too…if I can figure out how to do that. 🙂
Now that the weather has cooled down I am gearing up to get back to the torch. I have so many new ideas for designs, I can’t wait! I need to make a few adjustments to my current torch set-up first, but once that’s done I’ll be good-to-go.
Thank you for your continued support (and patience) while I found my inspiration to make beautiful beads again.
I’m back with another tutorial to teach you all the tips, tricks, techniques and secrets to creating GORGEOUS encased murrini beads! 😀
My first tutorial Making Beautiful Murrini was the prequel to this tutorial. It seemed natural to me that after teaching you how to make amazing murrini you would want to know the best ways to use them in your beads.
While I adore flattening murrini onto the surface of my beads, my absolute favorite way to use them is encased. There’s something so magical about peering into one of these beads to see all the little dimensional design elements suspended inside a thick layer of crystal clear glass.
My customers who buy these beads tell me how much they enjoy just staring at them. They seem to notice new things in the design each time they look at them.
This style bead is probably one of my all time best selling designs which I can hardly keep stocked. If I vary too much from this particular encased design the beads don’t sell nearly as quickly as these do. That has taught me a lot about what works and what doesn’t, and what customers really want in this style bead.
After making dozens and dozens (if not hundreds) of these beads, I have come up with a fool-proof formula that produces an amazing bead each and every time.
Before I developed this method of making encased murrini beads, I would approach this style bead rather haphazardly. The beads were good, but not always great in my opinion – at least not as great as I really wanted them to be, and my results were often hit and miss.
What I set out to do was create a reliable system, a series of steps that I could reproduce time and again (swapping out colors and different murrini designs on each bead), knowing that every time I would create a truly beautiful bead that my customers would love.
If you have tried making encased murrini beads before and struggled with getting consistent results, maybe even feeling like you were wasting too many expensive materials trying over and over to get it right like I used to do – this tutorial is for you!
I have put the most detailed instructions I could into this tutorial – which is why there are SO many photographs (over 200!) and 90 pages (over 80 of them instructional).
I wanted you to feel like I was standing right beside you, guiding you every step of the way. I didn’t want to leave out any bit of information that I thought would help you.
After learning my techniques you will be searching for every spare murrini chip you can find on your workbench to create these amazing encased murrini beads. I warn you, they are incredibly addicting!
If you have my first tutorial, Making Beautiful Murrini, I know you already have a ton of your own murrini to use. In fact, if you have my first tutorial you can make an identical bead to the Basic Encased Murrini Bead taught in this tutorial, (and pictured above in the 2nd photo), since every murrini recipe taught in my first, murrini-making tutorial is used in this particular bead.
Of course, you can use any murrini you have on hand to make this bead. It is not necessary to use the exact ones I use – that’s the beauty of these encased murrini beads. There are infinite design possibilities! Any murrini you have available will work wonderfully in this style bead (keeping in mind that all glass used in your bead must be the same COE 😉
If you don’t have my first tutorial, and you want to give murrini making a try so you can create your own unique beads, I invite you to pick it up – it’s also available in my Etsy shop. I have gotten tons of positive feedback from people who have purchased my first tutorial and are finally experiencing great success making beautiful murrini.
This tutorial is written with the intermediate to advanced glass artist in mind who is well familiar with all aspects of lampworking including working with an open flame, melting glass rods, all safety precautions, etc.
However, if you consider yourself a beginner and are thinking about purchasing this tutorial but are unsure if you will benefit from it, please contact me. I may be able to help you decide if this tutorial is right for you at your current level of experience. 🙂
This tutorial is for every lampworker who has wanted to make murrini but didn’t because they were intimidated by the process, or perhaps has tried making murrini – spending many hours at the torch and using up lots of glass – only to be disappointed with the end result.
I was one of those lampworkers myself. I spent more hours and wasted more glass than I care to admit making hundreds of murrini canes with nothing worth using to show for it. Until, after much trial and error, I finally developed a fool-proof method and a series of reliable techniques, tips and tricks that helped me produce consistent results every time.
Once you learn to successfully make your own murrini cane the sky’s the limit! You can make custom designs anytime you want, in any colors you want. You can make murrini specifically for the style of beads you create.
You will be able to set your beads apart from the crowd making them more unique and individualized with murrini in color combinations and patterns you develop that are unavailable anywhere else.
*Choosing the best colors (I use COE 104 but you can easily adapt these tips and techniques to other COE glass)
Making murrini can be intimidating but it doesn’t have to be. When broken down into easy-to-follow instructions, (with color photos guiding you every step of the way), you will have all the information you need – and the confidence – to successfully create beautiful, miniature designs in murrini that will take your beads to the next level.
I suppose with all the rain, cloudy skies, and gloomy weather we’ve been having off and on lately, (not that I’m complaining because we desperately need the rain), I guess I needed a little brightness in my life.
But not just a little glow or shine, I’m talking out-of-control shimmer and sparkle like you would not believe!
Ok, I admit it – I LOVE all things sparkly. So when the idea popped into my head to combine the sparkliest elements I had to work with (glitter and dichroic glass), it was only a matter of time before I made it happen.
The result is my new Mirrorball series! And while these look nice in photos, wait till you get them in direct sunlight – WOW! Sunglasses are recommended…haha 😀
I also have some of my encased murrini beads available this week, and even snuck a little more dichroic glass into them as well. What can I say, I was on a roll! 😉
Watch me melt glass and play with fire! In this video I work step-by-step to create a hollow-looking murrini cane. I include narration throughout, so you might learn a little something along the way, (but if you get tired of hearing me talk, feel free to mute the video – haha). 😀
Looooong time, no beads! Yep – I know it’s been a while since I last posted some new beads. Maybe even 5 or 6 months – yikes! 😮
This happened for a few different reasons… First, it was blazing hot at the end of last summer. And our hot weather lasts well into October. I fully admit to being a hot-weather-wimp. Torching next to a 1600° flame, a 850° rod warmer, and a 960° kiln when it’s over 100° outside is downright miserable for me.
Then, we rearranged my glass studio area, and it took several months to get the new area all set up with a much improved, and more powerful ventilation system. Then came the holidays…and well, it just took a long time to get things back up to speed – what can I say? :-\
The downside is that I missed a few months of really good torching weather when it was nice and cool – and now the temperatures have already climbed back up into the high 80’s, low 90’s.
But, the good news is – that I am bursting at the seams with ideas and designs for new murrini, and new beads after being away for so long!
Sitting back down at the torch to make this new batch of beads was great fun. It’s good to know I haven’t lost my ‘mojo’, and I have renewed energy to make even more pretties! 😀
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