Mes nouvelles perles...

On my website on Monday, there will be:

What I have been up to...

I have been quiet for a while with no blog updates and not many updates to my website either.
I have a very good excuse...We got a puppy...! We have had him for nearly 4 weeks now and he has kept us quite busy..

He is a lovely, clever little dog. His name is Nougat (Pronounced the french way: Noo-gah), he is really my kids doggie but he is also a great bead making companion for me, sleeping on his back in a basket while I am making beads during the day.

Here is a picture of him (stealing my beads!) a couple of weeks ago (Sorry if you have already seen this picture on Flickr).

I have also been making a few beads, making old favourite style such as the galaxy beads:

I have also been experimenting with new designs and ideas...

and....I have managed a button which I am proud of. Now I need to knit something to be able to use it though!:

Summertime and the living is easy...

We are now back at my parents house after 10 days spent camping on a farm in a remote valley in Drôme provençale, surrounded by goats, lavender, walnut trees and mountain rivers.

I am not in a great writing mood so I have stuck a few pictures below.

We will be heading to Zeebruggen on Monday to catch our ferry back to Scotland after our long summer holiday. I wonder if I still know how to make beads?!!

Postcard from France where it is hot, hot, hot!

We have now been in France for two weeks and the weather has been hot with the occasional thunderstorm.

We are staying out of the sun under the trees, usually in a long reclining chair apart from the day on the pictures below when we had some more energetic fun.

I hope you are all having a lovely summer!

Thieving magpie and suncatcher

The magpie

Here is a little story that happened to me last week while I was photographing beads in the garden to make the most of a nice sunny day.

I set up all my equipment in the garden (background, camera on my tripod...) and displayed my first set of beads to be photographed on the background, a lovely Achreamie sunset little set which I was very proud of.

I then had to go back inside the house for a couple of minutes, came back out just in time to see a big magpie standing on my background.

It looked at me!!!!

I looked at it!!!...... and then in a split second it grabbed my set of beads and flew to the top of a Rowan tree in our garden.

I chased it and started climbing the first few branches of the tree while the snide bird was having a laugh looking at me...so I gave up and the thief flew far, far away in another garden with my beads.


The suncatcher

My children's wonderful teacher is retiring this year. I wanted to make something for her but she does not seem to be wearing very much jewellery...so I decided to make a suncatcher for her with some of my beads.


Below are a few pictures that I took yesterday (I did watch for the magpie!)

Stourbridge no more and tonnes of beads for sale on my website!

I have had to cancel my attendance at the Stourbridge Bead Fair!

I have mixed feelings about this! I was really looking forward to go there but I was getting quite stressed at the same time trying to juggle all my commitments in the summer.

As a result, I now have masses of beads for sale.
I loaded the first batch (23 sets!) on my website yesterday. Quite a few of them have sold already (which makes me very happy!) but I have many more coming up next week including a few orphans lots.

You are welcome to let me know (by commenting or email) which type of beads you would prefer to see on my website as I might not have time to load everything before my holiday in three weeks time.

Sports day and the winner is ...

Sports day:

It was the annual sports day at my kids school, last Wednesday.

The weather was sunny and warm, it was a lovely day!

Téo took part in various races and what a difference a tonsils and ears operation make in a boy!

Last year (and the year before), he did not seem to really care, daydreaming, missing the start of each race...

This year, however, he was much more focussed and had a competitiveness that I had not seen in him before...and It was nice because I think this is because he feels better.

Here's a picture of him doing the sack race.

and Juliette who had great fun doing the potato race (she laughed her head off each time she was dropping the potato).

I ran the mum's race! I love it! It's just like being back at school and I think all the mums should line up in the playground and race every week!

Now that I have bored you to death with my kiddies stories, let's move on to more exciting things:

The prize draw:

I have put all the names of the people who either left a comment or sent me an email in a hat and picked one out.

The winner is ...Sara!

I don't speak spanish so I have to trust the google translater on this one (and hope that I am not going to say something terribly rude!)

El ganador es...Sara!

Beads, beads and beads

I just would like to show some of the beads I have made in the last couple of weeks. Most are destined to the Stourbridge bead fair in August. A few of them have been inspired by my recent class with Andrea Guarino.

Wow...What a week!!! (My yearly escape)

Photo by Sarah Bedwell

I booked my course back in November as soon as I found out that American glass artist Andrea Guarino was teaching in the UK.

I had been coveting this class for a loooong time!

I organised childcare, booked my B&B and plane ticket ...and then a volcano in Iceland erupted...

Andrea had to fly all the way from Seattle and for a few days, I resolved myself to the fact that this course was probably not going to happen but then Heathrow re-opened and Andrea valiantly made it through the ash cloud and customs (but that is another story).

I ,on another hand, renounced my plane ticket (I don't like ash clouds) and travelled down by train to Rochester on Monday.

The course was fantastic! Andrea was a brilliant, funny and generous teacher and her beads are magic. They have got secrets all to do with glass alchemy and reactions and I had a lot of 'Oooh Aaaaah!' moments during the two days course.

The fact that the group of beadmakers (many of whom I had never met before) were a lovely, friendly bunch also contributed to the success of this escape.

I learned a lot, laughed a lot, ate a lot.

I came back home on the train on Thursday, refreshed, buzzing with new ideas wondering how 2 days can pass so quickly.

I cannot wait until my next yearly escape (which might be before next year!)

Photo by Andrea Guarino

Stourbridge in August and prize draw.

Busy, busy, busy!

I am trying to build up a good stock for the Stourbridge bead fair where I will be selling my beads on 28th and 29th of August.

I know that it looks as if there is still a lot of time until the end of August but 6 weeks of this time will be spent in France in the summer (just before the fair) and I don't have any beadmaking equipment there.

I am very much looking to this event and please come and say hello if you are around.


I am having a prize draw.

The prize is this set of beads:

Let me know if you would like a chance to win them by leaving a comment or sending me an email (millbank.cottageATdsl.pipex.com) before the 31st May.

Kids, life and Tiree

It has been a very long time since my last post (I know I begin nearly each post with the same sentence).

Life has been eventful in the past few months, my little boy has had an operation (to have his tonsils removed), we are busy getting our house ready for sale (we would like to move out of the town centre or in my dreams to France but it is not likely), and a long time friend of mine died.

This latest sad event took us to Tiree last week, a beautiful, peaceful and luminous little island off the West Coast of Scotland.
We went on the ferry in Oban on Tuesday, the weather was wild and the 3-4 hours journey through the sound of Mull, down to the island of Coll and then Tiree was very bumpy. The boat did not manage to dock in Coll because of the strong winds and snapped a rope.

The sea was blue and turquoise as ever despite the rough weather and I wonder if there is ever a dull day weather wise on this island. It is often referred to as the 'land beneath the waves' (it is very flat) and I think the weather is either stormy or sunny as there are no real hills capable of stopping the clouds and the wind.

The last day ,Thurday, was sunny and we spent most of our time on the little beaches of the island waiting for our ferry to take us back to Oban at 5.00 o'clock. These are some of the pictures I took.

I hope that life is now going to take a steadier pace and that I am going to be able to spend a little bit more time on my torch.

I had a look through my stash of Bullseye glass yesterday (washed it because it was very dusty). I have had this high quality glass for ages but I have never really used it. The colours are beautiful and a lot of ideas are now brewing in my head, so hopefully I will have some nice beads to show you soon.

Until my next post...

The collective auction

Long time, no posts...!!! and I don't have any valid excuse. Anyway, I am coming out of blog fog to let you know about the collective auction, a very worthwhile, charitable event organised by Mel, from Kookie Designs.

All the proceeds from this auction will go to Haiti via Oxfam.

There are fabulous lots of beads, jewellery and handmade items (I have my eyes on some of them).
Please follow this link to see what is on offer and more information.


These are the beads I have donated to the auction, a little spin on my normal rockpool beads: a shipwreck heart bead (Thank you for the inpiration, Lorna! ;-) )