Another birth!

Here's the video my husband, Eric, has produced for application to a juried, international design competition. It's his first and I think he did a wonderful editing job, with help (thanks, Keith).
One of the competition jurors had kindly extended an invitation for me to apply with my alphabet bracelet design, but I couldn't because I've been in business for just over 10 years - their criteria states no more than five. BrailleInk makes it in just before the bell!

I'm as proud of this format as I am of the alphabet bracelet because it grew out of our own frustrations and trials with Ethan in the early reading days...

I remember lying on the floor next to four-year-old, Ethan, reading one of his favorite books, Fuzzy Bear with the fuzzy fake fur jacket. He was doing such a great job of touching the pages 'reading' the dots, as we read aloud together, I didn't want to stop and ask him to move his fingers because I was having such a hard time reading the braille or the print!

We got through that evening's reading, but there were many more times when even his little hands covered the braille we were all just learning, as well as the print that would help me help him with words or letters he hadn't yet learned.

If you've had this situation in your family, you might want to take a look at the video and then at BrailleInk's web site, http://www.brailleink.org/, and check out the two books currently in publication.

With a monetary award like this one, they could actually get the presses up and running again - keep dreaming!

(A note to my friend, Elizabeth: thank goodness this is the only birthing going on around here. Half of us are too young; the other half too old!
 ;-D)

New Beginnings

Things are really changing fast around here. Our boys are getting older and even a little wiser (discounting Spencer's decision to go completely into the creek today on the last day of break) and I'm getting settled into my new, larger studio space, really trying to make useful choices instead of just making do with things I've had and/or added over the years in a hodgepodge fashion. (I can't believe all of the waste there was around me before; yikes!)

I'll be traveling to Ruidoso, NM this week to work with another silversmith who will be casting the sterling cell tiles. It's going to be wonderful having them cast Stateside, instead of overseas, and I'll have more input, and control, as well as the benefit of input from another metal worker, which is never a bad thing. I'm also hoping  to start casting my own designs - new and old - in pewter. Very exciting! I'll be learning to work with another metal, and have opportunities for making smaller run productions of various designs. That means even more variety, and lower prices! (The pewter heart with decorative bail is $10.00.) Often, though, I have plans to do new things and keep the wheels turning, but seem to be thwarted by the stuff of life (i.e., kids, housework, dance classes) that I don't get to the other side of the planning, so wish me well on this one, would you?!

There are a couple of new articles around -Flaunt Magazine (if anyone can even find a copy of it) and Southern Lady - about my braille jewelry and why I make it, as well as an upcoming news segment; I'll try to post these as soon as they're available to me. Hopefully, these will all go further toward propelling the braille literacy agenda. (Though, some of us are still hoping for A and B to adopt a child who's blind or v.i.!) ;-D

Let's all get going this new year in the directions we want to go in, with personal goals held high and dry, unforgotten, and braille literacy in mind!