My Camera's back

I am so very very happy to report the return of my camera, the poor thing had to go to the repair shop to have its shutter replaced ...having taken considerably over 20,000 pictures !! But now it is home again so I had a little celebration and went round taking photos in the garden of how the flowers are coming on.



Looking forward to taking lots of beady photos very soon... once I finish making the beads !!!

I know, unheard of, two posts in one day !!! I just wanted to say a HUGE thank you to everyone for the comments and emails about the Experimentaballs, and the flutterballs in particular. The response has been fantastic so many of you have been in touch and I cant tell you how amazing it has been. I am in the process of making some more but it will be next week before I have any online due to the amount of work that goes into them - those little babies have 3 goes in the kiln as well as the cold processes and of course the hand painting of the silver paint so please bear with me, there will be some available soon.

For anyone who is going to Stourbridge on the bank holiday weekend for the International festival of glass I have a stall on the glass market on the Saturday and I am hoping to have some focal flutterballs available.

In the meantime I have some sweet and simple disc beads that I spent an enjoyable time working on while I waited for some of the bits and pieces I needed for the flutterballs to arrive -

Bead and Beyond September Issue

Hello and welcome to anyone who has found there way here from Bead and Beyond Magazine who have been lovely and featured me on their review page in the current issue (out today !!)



This issue also holds all the information for entering their Jewellery Maker of the Year competition which has lots of prizes up for grabs and the opportunity to become involved with the Bead and Beyond design team !!

I hope you enjoy having a look around and reading about what I do, up there in the top right corner you will find links to my website and other places on the internet where you can see my work.

Thanks for dropping by !

Experimentaballs

I love round beads, there is something so gorgeous about the shape and it is so tactile so I decided it was about time i made some more as it has been rather a while. Then I decided to continue with some experiments I started a-g-e-s ago with dichro and these were some of the results.

Now Im not a huge fan of lots of dichro but I do love it etched, it glows almost like there is something moving inside the bead, a little bit of trapped sunshine or beam of light. So with that in mind may I present the Flutterballs -





And following on from another old experiment that needs more work I have another set - Sari, these are gorgeous they have been selectively etched so that there are glimmers of goldstone sparkling in places around which i have hand drawn gold sari patterns. They feel almost soft somehow and Im really pleased with the amount of detail I got into the size - they are only about 15mm. All that and a pink dichro core that is just stunning in sunshine... but you'll have to wait for a photo of that as currently its rather dull outside here.





I have lots of ideas for these little experiments and where I can take them, hopefully I'll have more to show you soon.

I made a treasury

I was feeling like it would be nice to make a collection of pretties so I had a good root around Etsy and this is what I came up with

Lavenders blue dilly dilly...

Ok enough of my singing virtual or otherwise !! The front of our house is currently covered in lavender, and (apart from making me come out in a rash of singing) its very very pretty and smells just divine, especially when its watered. The bees love it, we have gazillions of them buzzing and busying about out there just like this little one I managed to get a picture of -



The lavender is also invading my work ! I had a thought I needed to create some purple beads that were, well, lavender-y so here they are Lavender Rocks.





I frequently find myself creating things inspired by my surroundings, both from wandering around my garden to when I go on holiday, when I then spend lots of time trying to capture everything on the camera ! What do you find inspiring ? Does it have a direct influence on the things you create ??

Featured

My paisley focal bead that is on sale on Etsy has been featured on the Frit Happens Etsy Team blog !

For anyone who has not come across Etsy teams they are made up of groups of artists with a common interest and I am very pleased to be part of the Frit Happens Etsy team as FHF (Frit Happens Forum) is a place I like to go and hang out when I have spare minutes and chat to other flameworkers and glass addicts.

If you would like to see the work of other team members you can put the tag "FHFteam 2010" into the Etsy search box which will bring up lots of gorgeous work for you, grab a cup of tea and take a browse....