Traffic!!

Why oh why didn't we just take the train??

Friday saw the opening day of my eldest stepdaughter, Megan's new shop in Southport and so we just had to be there. We left at 10:30am which should have meant we got there around 3-3:30pm. We should be so lucky! We finally got there after hours sat in standing traffic at 5:20pm. "Discovered For You" as she has called it is beautiful though, there is a range of unique clothes and accessories. Some of the clothes have been handmade combining various vintage pieces and are really quite beautiful.

Megan also has an online shop selling accessories for you and your home - Discovered For You -so you can still treat yourself or buy a gift for someone even if you don't live anywhere near Southport ;-)

Buttons finally up for sale!

After 2 hours of editing photo's, uploading, writing descriptions, tagging etc, etc I have finally listed my buttons in my etsy shop so go take a peak. To temp you here are just some of those I've added.

Selection of focal buttons

Set of shank buttons

Buttons finally up for sale1

Days that just fly!

I've had one of those days that despite being up early (well early for me) and not wasting any time (well not much) I still have a list as long as my arm of stuff I wanted to get done today. And I've not even lit the torch!

These are from yesterdays session

Flowers

I've been in a floral mood lately and been making a few of these, mostly as gifts for friends but this one will be going on my etsy shop at the weekend....if I get my finger out!!
Off out to the studio to check yesterdays goodies in the kiln-I love my job :-)

Twitter

Yes I'm tweeting!

I have it on good authority that it makes good business sense so thought I'd give it a whirl. If you're on twitter I am helengbeads....what else ;-)

I feel like I'm bumbling around in the dark a bit but think I'm beginning to get the hang of it. I've had a busy week this week with appointments, meetings, web based stuff and...OK, lunch with a girlfriend. Tomorrow sees me heading of to Birmingham with my box of silver and gold scrap in the hope of some pennies to spend so yet again the torch won't be lit. I'm hoping to spend most of Saturday in the studio though so hopefully some beads or buttons to show you late (I'm teaching during the day) on Sunday.

In the mean time I thought I'd share this with you:

Isn't nature strange? Why have these guys (excuse bad photo, I didn't have the right lens with me).................................

.......................on here (a half finished "pond" for growing rainbow trout in on our trout farm)..................................................................................when you could have them on here just a few yards away still on the farm!? In my eyes no debate but then I'm not a duck :-D

My Lastest Obsession!

Many of you will have seen these before........

Buttons!!!!!I hold a fellow lampworker fully responsible for this latest craze as she has released a fab tutorial on how she makes her style of buttons and having read it from cover to cover my own button journey started. Her name is Julie Fountain of Lush Lampwork and so a big thank you to you Julie ;-)

The button's shown are approximately 2cm diameter and of course can be made in virtually any colour combination you care to think of. I will be offering these for sale very soon so I'll keep you posted.

Helen x

IMG_2463

IMG_2463, a photo by Helen G Beads on Flickr.

I loved making these and I am heading out to the studio to make more now. Have a lovely day x

IMG_2492

IMG_2492, a photo by Helen G Beads on Flickr.

Well I was rather chuffed when this chap came out of the kiln :-)

Kristina Logan

Well, it's better late than never as the saying goes!

You've probably seen the beads in this post before but I thought I'd finally tell you a bit about them. Back in March, I was lucky enough to attend a 2 day course with Kristina Logan. When I first started on my lampworking journey Kristina's work was some of the first I came across and at the time it left me virtually speechless marveling at her skill. As you can imagine when I heard she was coming to the UK I just had to be there.

Kristina is known as "the dot queen" as a lot of her work is made up of patterns comprising of a series of dots which in lampwork beads is not unusual but her precision in applying the dots is second to none. I was astounded to learn that she does them all with a whole rod of glass, as in a pencil thick rod. I pull the glass into much, much thinner rods that lampworkers call stringers, often less than a millimetre in diameter!

After watching intently it was our turn (there were 10 students altogether) to put into practise what Kristina had shown us. Below is a bead made using a technique of dragging the dots. Prior to this course I had struggled to do this without leaving behind a furrow deep enough to plant potato's in!

Kristina makes lots of beads with really big holes and sets them into her hand forged silver jewellery pieces. I was intrigued to watch how she applies the initial wrap of glass to the mandrel as it needs to be done in a smooth and controlled way in order to get the edges of the hole neat and tidy. She does this by heating the centre of the glass rod, folding it in two and at the fold attaching a second rod of glass so you are left with something resembling a tuning fork. This allows you to get a larger than normal gather of molten glass on the end and then it's a bit of a balancing act to wrap it around the mandrel in one go before it starts to get too cool. Although the back of this bead cracked while I was busy decorating the side you see, it is the bead I am most proud of to date.

I having been playing around in the studio today and if the kiln fairies are kind to me I should have another bead similar to this style to show you very soon ;-)

Helen x