blogiversary

Woo Hoo !! Ive officially been blogging for a year so a huge and Mahoooosive THANK YOU to all my lovely readers. I think this calls for a give away, but it needs to be something special so I will have a think and see what loveliness I can come up with and put a post up later on with the details.

I wanted to share with you a cool site I came across when reading Metal Clay Magic I skipped over to try it and I love it, and Im not sharing how long I stayed to play on it lol but I suspect you could spend hours on there if like me you like to look at photos. The site I'm wittering about is Tag Galaxy and you put in tags for what you want to see pictures of and it brings up little worlds of pictures, whole galaxies of handmade loveliness if like me you choose at lampwork or silver clay ...and im sure I will be going back soon to look up lots of others.

Anyhow I must skip back of into the garage to slave over my torch :o) I will be back with info on the great giveaway later

286

That is how many glass colours I have, well I do also have a handful of random "odd lots" but for the sake of argument I have 286 colours. How do I know this ? Because I have put them all into some glass storage that my lovely man made for me.

I did have to spend a "few minutes" sorting the glass out into colour order first as my various different makes of glass needed to be merged from their different areas into the one unit. (that and the fact I like putting things into colour order, strange as it may be I find it very soothing)



and the next job ? labelling all the pigeon holes ...



hmm so i'll see you all sometime next year ??

No time like the present

So I made a start, I confess one of the beads may count as a bit of a cheat since it was the dotty bead that was part of my last post ! But I have finished my jens pind bracelet and started to fill it. If you fancy a jens pind bracelet like this for yourself, do pop over to designed by George where you can get one of Georges gorgeous handcrafted pieces.



Having finished the bracelet and appropriated the dotty bead, I decided it looked loney, so I made two beads to keep it company, one is one of my favorite styles, a simple etched bead with fine silver dots.



The other is something I have been meaning to try for a while, inspired by Denise of DKS Lampwork, She does beautiful florals on a background of mesh but Ive gone for a simpler approach and stopped having encased the mesh, Im very pleased with it and Im looking forward to trying this with a finer mesh very soon as I love the affect.



I suspect it will be a little while before I managed to make anymore but I am looking forward very much to continue filling it up, hopefully with some home made silver charms too !

Bisous

I have finally gotten round to making some more silver core beads, and I am quite pleased to say that I like them ! This is surprising in the case of three of them as they are made from pink glass... getting worrying this isnt it !! But this is special pink glass, it is Aurae from Double Helix Glassworks which is a silver rich glass that produces a range of colours and effects.



I also did something that I havent done for aaaages, I made a dotty bead (as you can see on the left of the picture) also using Aurae and it has a lovely mother of pearl shine on the dots.

One of the things I decided whilst I was working on these was that it was about time I made myself a set of beads for ME !! and that it is about time I finished making my jens pind bracelet so that I can wear the beads on it when I finially make them ... It is in that stage where I can wear it as a bracelet but not with beads on as it needs to be slightly longer for that to allow for the space the beads take. So that is a little goal I have set myself and I look forward to sharing the results !

Sma Bla Giveaway

Ok I had to share this with you in case you have not already come across the gorgeous work of Anna-Karin as this is your chance to win the gorgeous pair of earrings below which she is offering in a competition running on her blog until the 31st August.



I am lucky enough to own some of Anna-Karin's creations including her "nothing to hide bracelet" which is one of my favorite pieces of jewellery (pictured below)



Do check out her flickr pages too for some stunning eye candy - Sma Bla on Flickr and her etsy shop - Sma Bla on Etsy.

Let's Twist again..

I dont think this is an official addiction...but I'm not sure lol !! I have been making more twist beads, they just seem to work so beautifully for so many things, I love them etched where they look soft and have a flowing feel to them -



They are fantastic for showing off the metallic sheen of silver rich glass -



And the pearlescence of encased silver glass -



and even better they are fun to make ! What more can you ask for !!

Indian Summer

Im back from my little break which was fab, it was so nice to do absolutely nothing and that is what we did, just lounged about read books and had lots of peach juice and peach tea which are my favorite summer time drinks.



I have been busy since I got back making lots of beads inspired by my Indian Summer necklace (Pictured above) which is in issue 5 of Making Jewellery Magazine as a 6 step project. I had lots of fun designing and making the necklace which was inspired by thoughts of marrakech, filigree lamps and sumptuous silks. I also totally fell for the vintaj brass findings they were perfect for what I wanted and I am looking forward to making more pieces with them, if you want some for yourself then Josephine has them on her site, and if you want to do your own version of the necklace do take a wonder over to Chameleon Desings where you will find the sets of indian summer beads.



These have been great fun to make, I dont usually make sculptural beads so these twisty beads are a change for me but I love the feel of them and I can see me making more designs in this shape. The 24ct gold leaf is ..."challenging" to work with, it is a bit prone to flirking around my workbench if there is a puff of wind so I get to play catch every now and then, usually mid bead !! All the gold has been encased in glass so there is no danger of it rubbing away with wear and combined with the summery colours I am really pleased with these, I might even have to make something for myself with (and DONT laugh) the pink ones (Did I really just say that ?) I know, I know I am normally the most Anti Pink person but there is something about these that I really like... Maybe I need to go for a lie down :o)