New Year, New Studio!

Well I'm a little late to wish you all a Happy New Year but I hope 2016 will be happy, healthy and prosperous for you. For Helen G Beads there are already some exciting things on the horizon, not least of which is a studio move.

I will still be in the same area as it's just 6 miles from my current location but will be bigger with much better access once a few updates have been made.
The building itself has an interesting history and was built circa 1920 and was the village reading room. We are keeping the original name of the building with the addition of the word "studios" so it will be known as The Old Reading Room Studios. I will be sharing the space with my mum who is an accomplished textile artist and it will be lovely for us to spend more time together.

This is the stage we are at at the moment so there is still a bit to do but I would hope to be working from there in April. I'll try and keep the blog updated with progress.

Other News

The next show on the horizon for me is a Flaming Hot Glass event and The Tartan Trout and I will be at  Sewing For Pleasure at the NEC. Application are coming in fast for the year ahead and as soon as I have confirmation will update the events page on the website but I am hoping to be at the same events as attended last year. 

I Won A Prize!

As mentioned in my last post, Axe Vale Festival was the next show I was due to be exhibiting at. Again the weather was lovely and that meant plenty of visitors and as I was demonstrating, I needed an assistant and so mum came to the rescue. 

Couldn't resist a little "stand selfie"

Now I knew there were prizes for the floral, craft, food and various other marquees, but had no idea there was a prize for the best outside demo stand. So you can imagine my surprise when I was told I'd won! I thought it was just the certificate but no, there was a tasty cash prize too which was very much appreciated.

The judges said they'd felt I was explaining really clearly what I was doing and engaging with the visitors. As a child, one of my favourite games was pretending to be a Blue Peter presenter whenever I was making anything, which as the creative sort was quite often. I'd talk through what I was doing to the cat or dog (not myself of course!) and so it seems all that practise may have had some use after all!

These are the demo beads from the 2 days.

Exeter Festival

The next event on my calendar is the lovely Exeter Craft Festival on the cathedral green. This is a curated show so a lovely standard of over 100 contemporary crafts from the West Country. There is plenty of entertainment too with dancing, music, Punch & Judy and food and even better, it's FREE ENTRY!! More details in the link above. 

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A Busy Few Weeks, And More Ahead!

I seem to have a glut of shows from the end of May until the middle of July this year, the first of which was The International Festival of Glass in Stourbridge. Stourbridge has been a major glass making centre for over 400 years and and the festival brings glass makers and collectors from around the world. Although attendance was a little on the low side, I did reasonably well and had a great time. I went with Sarah from The Tartan Trout and on the Saturday evening we went along to a pub quiz and curry night at The Ruskin Centre. We teamed up with John and Craig of Deacons glass and Elaine Forbes of Weelainy thinking we would be in with a chance as the questions were glass based. We didn't do so well, the questions were a little biased towards Stourbridge, well that was our excuse anyway! We had fun though and the curry was fab.

The 5th to the 7th was The Contemporary Craft Festival in Bovey Tracey, if you like quality craft events then this show is well worth a visit, even if it means a weekend away in Devon! Friday (the 5th) was the private view and then the gates opened at 10am on Saturday to the public. I went with Sarah and we were there as Flaming Hot Glass. For those that don't know, I often share larger events with Sarah which allows us to give customers better attention, offer a more diverse selection of beads and jewellery and of course share the costs involved. This was the first time we were able to demonstrate lampworking at a show and I have to say it went down very well. It was fun but exhausting as it meant we were both on the go all day as the show was very well attended. We thoroughly enjoyed it and are keeping our fingers crossed that they'll have us back next year.

Me in the demo booth.

Our little corner of the show.

Next weekend you will find me at The Axe Vale Festival although I am not in the craft marquee but in the shopping mall that runs along the outside of it. This allows me the space to demonstrate and keeps the health and safety team happier. No Sarah at this one so mum has been roped in to help me. I have a lot of work to do in the run up to it but that's due to good sales at the last event so I can't complain and unless it sells beforehand, the necklace below will be on sale there.

Until next time...

Helen

Places To Follow Me.

Pink beads as featured in Sodalime Times

So here I am to hopefully get in the habit of blogging far more regularly as recommended in a another fabulous meeting for creative women run by Helen Bottrill of Kindred Rose. I'll blog about Helen's meetings another time but they are well worth attending if you can.

I have also made some updates to my website, including a newsletter sign up page here but I promise not to bombard your inbox with loads of emails if you join. What I will do is inform you of anything I feel might be of interest to do with Helen G Beads and may even do a few "newsletter exclusive" offers to entice you to subscribe.

Tweeting is becoming a little clearer now and I am finally getting to grips with it so if you are a twitter user my twitter user name is @helengbeads

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Thanks for reading.

Helen