My first batch of annealed beads!! I was surprised and pleased with just how many I ended up with.

I had bought some jewellery findings and string to put some of them together for gifts for family and friends for Christmas, so here is my first attempt at jewellery making, I don't have the right tools so my wire bending leaves a lot to be desired, but I was happy to have some finished pieces. I used the black silk thread for some because that way the recipients could pull the beads off quite easily and do what they wanted with them.


Bracelet and earrings


I hung some of my early beads on a bracelet that I had for years, also in this picture is my cat bead and two rats.


Keychains.


Simple Necklaces



And here's the necklace I strung together for my mum using some white glass beads from an older necklace along with the lampwork ones I had made.

A lady at a local bead shop made me feel really good when she saw my spirally worm guys, she went crazy over them and wanted to show them to a co-worker. I've promised I'll go back in the New Year and take some to show her, so now I have a mission, I have to get good at doing the eyes and making tidy tails. A worm with wonky eyes just does not look good!

I got some glass stuff for Christmas (yeeha!), a nice selection of coloured rods and stringers, a pair of glass shears and two marvers for adding more shapes to my beads. Unfortunately it's too cold at the minute to work in the sunporch, once the holidays are over and Rebeka and James have gone back to Newfoundland I'll set up in her old bedroom again and get back to work.

Here's the latest round of pictures and hopefully some helpful words to go with them. This first one is a disc bead, I forget what it's real name is so I'll call it a wonky disc. I used tweezers to grab and twist little kinks around the edge or the bead. I also used my mashers to get a more even disc shape to start with, something I hadn't tried before and it worked quite well - not that you'd know it from the finished bead!


I'm also trying to learn how to control stringer better. This is a very hard thing to do. You have to find just the right spot in the flame, or to the side of the flame so that everything is hot enough and the stringer softens, but not melts in a big blob. I think I need thinner stringer to wrap beads with, that means it will be even harder to control probably!



Bubbles bubbles, I'm managing to get bubbles in beads and keep trying different melted in dot methods. It's hard to place dots equally around the bead, well I find it hard, that affects the way the dots melt - if they are not spaced equally they will melt and move around in ways that you don't necessarily want them to.



I like the way the blue/black bead turned out, it was supposed to be triangles and diamonds but the dots weren't equal so I got a big mishmash, but I like it anyway. Here to is my (tadadada) very first real encased flower bead!!! Don't laugh - its the one with the blue blob with a bubble in the middle. I started with a base bead in green, put some clear on top, then added some pea green stringer, more clear and then tried to make two flowers, one each side, both with three petals. The petals all kind of melted in to one another, so it looks like some kind of trumpet flower if you have a really good imagination ;o)


I learned a good tip to help with spacing of dots. Put a tiny flag of glass on your mandrel, that way you put your first dot parallel with the flag, turn the bead 180 and you can see where to put the next dot because the flag will be at the back of the mandrel, then it's easy to place one or two dots in between each of the first two, making them much more evenly spaced.

Look at the bead on the right, I did this one with a flag on the mandrel and managed much better spacing than the other beads in the row.

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Arrrrgh! I just lost my post when I tried to upload images! Now I forget what I had written. I'll try again.

My glass order arrived very quickly and I was so anxious to get started using it that I forgot to take a picture of all the lovely colours. I figure this batch will keep me going well into the new year. I stuck to the regular, cheaper colours as I feel I've got enough to think about without trying to get special effects from some of the more expensive rods. I haven't tried frit or millifiore yet either.

I made this little guy and had such fun with him that I thought it would be nice to make more and try some 'fireflies' as well.


I learned an important lesson, while the bugs will work on the right size thread, some of the flies will not. It is important to think how the bead is going to work/hang on a finished article!

I've also been working more on my barrels and getting some better shapes -





Then I had been trying to figure out how to do the beads with triangle shapes in them, I wasn't having much luck (below left), until I found a good tutorial at this address (lots of good info here) http://www.sgb-midatlantic.org/how-tos.html - I tried a few more and I'm getting better!



Now I have to try and figure out what I'm going to do with some of these so I can give them as Christmas presents to family. I'm hoping to get my first batch annealed this week, I'm excited and nervous - worried in case they all crack, or explode in the kiln! I know it's unlikely but I'd hate to loose them at this point.