Happy New Year! Bonne année!

Balmedie beach (26/12/2009)

Dernier jour de l'année! Bonne nouvelle année!

Joyeux Noël! Merry Christmas!

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.

...and the winner of the prize draw is...

....................Trudy!


Thank you to everyone who took part, please keep an eye on my blog as they will be more before Christmas.

Prize Draw - Tirage au sort

I am organising a prize draw!
The bead set that you might win is shown below. This is a set of 18 tiny beads made in silver glass.

Send me an email with your name (or any name that you will recognize if you do not prefer to have your name published in my blog, should you be the winner) and 'Prize draw' in the subject line.


My email address is : millbank.cottage@dsl.pipex.com

I will draw a name at the end of October.



J'organise un tirage au sort.

Contactez-moi par email avec votre nom ou pseudo en précisant dans le sujet qu'il s'agit du tirage au sort.
Le tirage du gagnant pour le set ci-dessus aura lieu à la fin du mois d'Octobre.

Blowing my own trumpet!

I am one of six people whose work (my carnelian galaxy bead) has been showcased on the weekly 'Beader's Showcase'!

I am delighted at this!

Here is a link for everybody interested: http://www.beadersshowcase.com/

The Scottish bead fair (and all the excitement) is over!!!

We started the day early and even had to get the kiddies out of bed (a first! as they are the ones who usually throw us out of bed at the crack of dawn!) and drove down to Fife to drop them off at their uncle Davy, auntie Jill and cousins' house for a day of fun.

We then swiftly made our way to Perth and felt very pleased and smug to have made it just in time (we have always been late on previous occasions...) only to realise that we forgot to take some very nice beads with us (the sea/rock pool themed beads pictured in my previous post)...

We felt a little bit down about forgetting the beads (a lot of work went into the beads and the accompanying display) but we set up our stand, the doors opened, everybody came in and the day soon brightened up.

It was busy day, with a steady stream of people throughout the afternoon. It was a pleasure as usual to speak to so many people who share my interest in beads and jewellery.

The fair is over now and once I have tidyed up my house (which looks like a bombsite at the moment) I will look forward to a little bit of time-off after an extremely busy month of August.

My website will be updated shortly with new beads, plus the nice beads I forgot to take at the bead fair and I will try to add new beads to it on a more regular basis.

Thanks to everybody who stopped to chat and especially to everybody who purchased my handmade lampwork beads.