The same procedure as every year

We, that's the firefly and me of course, play a very funny game every summer! It's really easy. 

On the first warm and  sunny day little flipflap starts to yell "Beach! Beach! Beach!" every now and then and at every opportunity. Honestly, that IS annoying. And when we are there the "Beach! Beach! Beach!" mantra ends and is relaced by a cheery "Salt water is yucky! It's too hot! I've got sand on my wings!"......Very funny! *grumpf* (Not to mention that we live 500 kilometer away from the beach.) 

But not this year! YEAH!

Looks like we found a "compromise": After several days of total ignorance wobbling wing capitulated and instead brought the beach home - sandless, saltless and well tempered! But nonetheless gorgeous! I love this little insect! :-)

Lets do the twist!

While the firefly has been busy beading and cutting and folding and....doing stuff, I entertained myself today with creating two twist treasuries. I'm in a very funny and creative Etsy team called "treasuries with a twist" . We create treasuries that do have a "twist", which means there is a kind of hidden puzzle or riddle in every treasury. Everyone can join the team. You do not have to create a twist treasury. Its just a lot of fun to guess what the treasuries "messages" are.

Here are two examples of what I mean:

Have a look, a guess and a lot of fun! :-)

The huffy fairies

Hello world!

We ended up in a really funny and nice treasury by relmeka. "Don't Piss Off the Fairies" -that's a good advice!

firefly 2.0

uh...ehh....hello? Can you hear me? Hi! It's me, the FIREFLY in insect! The storyteller is busy doing "domestic work" (don't know what it is, but it seem to be annoying). Normally I'm not allowed to use the computer, so I took the chance to tell you the great news by my own: I'm on facebook  now! And on twitter!.....I don't know what it is, but the storyteller told me that's a good thing, so I'm very happy about it.

Oh my god, these keys are really big! I have to use a pencil to press them down. Maybe I should leave the typing to the storyteller. Check out our new internet...things, pages, accounts...whatever it is!

Uhoh, SHE is coming and she's got the vacuum cleaner...I have to leave! 

....2102, 2103, 2104, 2105, 2106, 2107

After a little Easter / birthday vacation, we are back in business!

The basics

 And the little relaxed firefly has already been assiduous.

work in progress

It threaded two thousand one hundred seven small seed beads to a chain of more than 3 meter!

Done!

According to flipflap this seed bead chain will be used on its next project, which will have to do something with a Brothers Grimm fairy tale...

the firefly means business!

OMG!

This is getting serious! 
Wedding Fairy Lights 

It has even chosen the flowers:
Growing Sunflowers 
















 
An owl and a firefly. An o w l and a f i r e f l y! An OWL and a FIREFLY! I don’t know how to break this to little flipflap....*whew*

Of other storytellers and a lovesick firefly

Some days ago, I stumbled across some outstanding treasuries by ihana. The lovely and creative Finn has not only an eye for beautiful items, but also her extravaganzas tell fantastic stories!!!
Here are some of her “Chapters”:

The Day The Listings Found Each Other
A Biography
Four Stories About Growth

I admire this unique idea and the realization and am looking forward to read some more of these treasuries! So, please, please, please leave some encouraging and kind comments (maybe we get some more of this great stuff, then :-) )!

Though, I can imagine that the other storyteller is quiet busy right now, as she just (re-)opened her shop on artfire. I fear, I must learn to become more patient.
The firefly and me visited LuaTuomis' cute shop this morning - and the firefly fell in love!!! I can hardly keep it at bay (it already asked me about the shortest way from Germany to Finland...)!

Have a look at its “object of desire” (I must agree: It is cute!)

 
Thank you LuaTuomi!     
You made our day!                                             
We wish you and your owls a lot of sales and even more fun with each other!

What the hell is handoiled paper?

Good evening everyone!

While having a glass and a thimble of a delicious red wine, the firefly kept its promise and explained what the baby oil is for! That meant three and a half hours of paper, translucence, rubber ducks and different types of oil for me - and please don’t ask, what rubber ducks have got to do with it. Nothing! Absolutely nothing! My tiny friend just cannot stay on the track.

I try to summarize the important facts of this lesson for you:
Mostly, the firefly uses a kind of drawing paper (that is “Tonpapier” in German, I’m not sure about the correct English term) for its fairy lights. But before it starts to work with the paper, wacky-wing-that-must-not-be-interrupted lubricates it with baby oil (It tried other types, but as it puts it: “I don’t want to work in a @#!?# olive grove, and I’m sure a lot of people don’t want one in their sitting rooms!”).
Then the oil has to dry for three or four days - and that explains why our floor is always covered with paper sheets and I have to walk zigzag through our home. Easy task, when you have wings...

Nearly two hours later we finally reached the gist of the matter.
There are basically two reasons: First, the oil makes the paper more heat-resistant. At this point the little idiot nearly burned down the house to demonstrate it  - Promise me, that you NEVER try that!
Secondly, it’s a question of translucence. I added some pictures, to give you a better idea of what I mean. When the paper is oiled, the color darkens, as you can the on the first picture with the two different sheets. In fact, both sheets have the same color. The left (bright) sheet is not yet oiled, while the right (dark) one is: 

Left side: "normal" paper; Right side: "unnormal" paper

Light behind unoiled paper

Even though the paper becomes darker, the light effect becomes much more impressive. You can see the difference on the second and third picture.

same light, same paper + oil

There you go! That’s the whole secret!
I learned a lot of interesting things today (and a lot of crap) and now I have to put a little, drunken firefly to nest ;-)

Project peacemaker!

Hello world,

doubtless, you have noticed that the firefly and me have had some conflicts lately. But we’ve had a serious conversation last night and resolved our disputes! :-)
I was cheesed off by the fireflies’ short-tempered and secretive behavior. You know, it’s not easy to write item descriptions, do the promo stuff and all these things without having the slightest clue what’s actually going on. On the other hand, the firefly felt hemmed in and thronged by my repeating attempts to find out something about its projects and my constant questioning. It says, that’s disturbing its “creative flow”.
We solved the problem with this agreement: I now help the creative creature with the “mundane” parts of its work, like purchase the basic materials and cleaning up (as if I’m not doing this already), and therefor the firefly takes some time to explain what it is actually doing.
I’m very agog!

So, and now it's time to go shopping. Little flipflap just gave me its shopping list. Let’s see:
Paper (red, grass green, orange) - fine with me
Seed beads (translucent/long, peach/small) - I’ll do my best
Crafting wire (green) - yes, it needs a lot of this stuff
Baby oil - ??? Ok, we’ll definitely come back to this point!