Expanding our Horizons

   My hubby was watching the Sharks show the other day.  If you don't know the show, it's about ordinary people who have small businesses or patents and they try to sell their idea to 4 or 5 rich business people to gain investments and/or partners.  It could be pretty brutal!
   I am not sure of the product in this case, but one of the "sharks" said, "Don't you know that people are not buying jewelry these days?"  (I am assuming it was a jewelry-type item).
   That got me thinking that maybe it's time to expand my horizons.  I have been mostly sticking to beads as my main venue, but now it's probably time to incorporate some other items besides "jewelry".
   In these hard economic times, we cannot have "all our eggs in one basket", so they say.  It's time to expand, innovate, and think of new ideas to boost our businesses as well as our artistic talent.
   In my case, being a lampworker, I have decided to make murrini (little chips of glass with designs or pictures in them) as a item to sell to other glass workers who use them.  On top of that, I would also like to place more focus on creating little figurines (animals, faeries, dragons, etc.) that are stand-alone art pieces (not beads), as well as paperweights (mini ones) and/or marbles.
   To kick off my "new outlook", I am working on the eye murrini which I made to make little glass doll eyes.  I will probably still try and make those (they are pretty tough, being so small - some as little as 2mm round!), but also, they could be cut into murrini to sell to anyone who wants some cool eyes in their beads or glass art pieces.