Thursday 31 December 2009

Happy New Year! Bonne année!

Balmedie beach (26/12/2009)

Dernier jour de l'année! Bonne nouvelle année!

Friday 25 December 2009

Joyeux Noël! Merry Christmas!

Wednesday 9 December 2009

What I am up to and prize draw

I have not updated my blog for a month and a half ...bad blogger me!

So what I have been doing during all this time? Nothing new really...mostly making beads.

I am enjoying making sea themed beads at the moment and particularly these type of beads below. I call them coast bead, not a very original name (I know at least a dozen of bead makers who make beads called 'Coast' beads) but I could not manage to think of another name as these were very much inspired by the 'Coast' program which shows beautiful aerial coastal views.

I have also been experimenting with and developing some new designs that involve stringer control and precise dot placements. I have nothing worth showing at the moment but I am hoping to have some beads in the near future that combine organic (which I love) and more structured features.

Prize draw:

I am organizing a prize draw. The prize is this bead:



This bead was meant to be a pressed rockpool focal bead. Unfortunately, the bead release on my mandrel broke (the bead release is like a clay product that you put on the stainless steel rod (the mandrel) to stop the glass sticking to it). This usually means that the bead is doomed as it spins freely on the mandrel and you completely lose control of a big bit of molten glass.

I was not happy!!! I had spent an hour to get to this point, so I decided to not ditch it in my water jar (the water makes it explode in thousands of little bits which can be quite soothing in this kind of situation :-) ).

Instead, I decided to stick it in the kiln and give it to my little girl who inherits all my failed beads for her 'collection', gave up making beads for the day and ordered some heavy duty bead release to stop this problem happening again.

I opened the kiln the next day and found a rockpool bead that actually looked like a rock. It was never intended to look like this but it turned out a good bead.


Send me an email if you would like to be entered in the draw for a chance to win it.

Added on the 10th: My email address is millbank.cottageatdsl.pipex.com (replace at with @). I will draw a name on 31st December.