Welcome

This blog is intended to document my journey into the world of handmade artisan lampwork beads.

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Tour Bus Stop at the Money Farm

Yesterday was a wonderful opportunity to share some good music, meet some wonderful people from Louisville and visit with some talented friends.  Bonnie Wyatt (wonderful organic basket maker), Nancy Hayes (fabulous goat milk products), Moses Hamblin (handmade musical instruments) and Lonnie and Twyla Money (our hosts and very talented folk artists) shared our passions with a tour bus load of friends from Louisville.  We were on the beautiful farm of the Money's.  The music and company were wonderful.

I made a few new items for this event and of course my favorite one sold.  If it hadn't it might not have made it to another show.

 I really like this new bracelet also.
 I played around with some copper that I had etched a long time ago.
 This glass is really a pretty color of blue and is very streaky.
 Last a raku on black key necklace.

Danny has worked so hard on our garden this year, thought some of you would enjoy seeing our mulch-99 percent weed free system.

Thursday, April 25, 2013

So many ideas and not enough time.

In a past post I showed just a couple of these hollows that I am practicing on. This is where I am now.  If you can see the progression from large wonky to smaller and rounder.  If I only had some more time to practice.  I think I will eventually get it.

I recently had a few hours of heaven at the torch and had been thinking about my mom's love of the beach.  I have a really good friend that loves the beach and that I owe some jewelry in trade for a blood pressure cuff she didn't need.  So I practiced making some murrini that I hoped would emulate shells or barnacles.  Well that was more time consuming than I had anticipated but turned out better than my other attempts.  Then I made a ocean theme bead and put them on the sand part.  I rarely am really pleased with a first attempt, but I was pleasantly pleased and so was she.


I am going to make a pendant for her and maybe a loop at the bottom to hang some sea charms on.  What do you think?

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Some New Photographs

I love the new light box and photo tent combination.  Now I think I need to get more familiar with how to tweak my camera.  But for now I am very satisfied with these pictures.  I have sent in the paperwork for the Shaker Village show that is the first week end in August and I am send in jurying pictures for a relatively new art fair called Art in the Gardens.  It was by invitation only last year.  It is held on labor day weekend at a historic old residence in Frankfort, KY.  Then next show would be Art in the Vineyards on September 7th.  A really fun one day show in a beautiful vineyard.

I have changed my pinterest account to be named Beadroe so to tie to my website.  And I have linked my blog and etsy acct to my website.  The website still needs some more tweaking but I am getting there.

Thanks for stopping by.

Cheryl

Monday, March 4, 2013

Practice, Practice, Practice

I have made a vow to myself to make a concentrated effort to master the hollow technique using the puffy mandrel.  These are two attempts, it may not look like it but I see some progress.  Each time I am going to try with clear so I can sort of see what it going on with the air inside the bead.  They are definitely not round.  I added the black glass to try to mask the wonkyness. 

I absolutely love this combination.  This is a 104 COE German glass called multicolor combined with a crystal clear frit in a 96 COE.  The bead has hints of purple, green, and blue.  The bead is very shiny which indicates that there is silver at the surface.  I will definitely use this combination on a lot more beads. 

This bead is from a cobalt wine bottle.  I then added baking soda to the outside of the bead to give it a antique look.  It seems to age the look of the bead.  I may play with this idea more, maybe etch it and see if it adds another layer of depth.
This is a set that I made with a teacher in mind, but instead she liked the small lumpy hollow.  She wants a whole bracelet out of those.  Practice, Practice, Practice.

I also have been concentrating on adding items to my etsy store.  It was empty for awhile, now slowly filling it up.  This is the first time I have finished items for sale in my store.  I do not have any Art Fairs planned for the spring, so I thought I would try selling some pieces online. 

I have also still been tweaking my web site.  So far it has had over 300 page views, pretty cool.  Although I think some are for the wrong reasons, I am getting spam emails that seem to be aimed at hosting my web page.

Until next time, Cheryl.



Sunday, February 3, 2013

Finally a Real Web Site of My Own

I have needed a web site of my own for a long time.  I made inquiries 3 years ago of my son, but he was not interested in doing it for me.  I even tried bartering jewelry for help in making one.  That didn't work either.  I made a promise to myself that the first snow day this year, after finding the web site Weebly.com, that I would concentrate on this task.  Well so have it, the first snow day was two days after my first cataract surgery, so I didn't much feel like it.  But since then I have made some progress.  The site is easy to use and I am still tweaking some things, but fairly pleased so far.  Check it out at Beadroe.com.

Since my last post, I have also concentrated on learning to use the Jim Moore coring tool that I bought used.  The learning curve is very manageable.  I am pretty pleased with my results.  Here are some of my first tries.
All of these beads are fairly big and would be best suited to hang from a chain rather than be on a European charm bracelet.

I would welcome any feedback on these beads or my new website.

Thanks for looking.

Cheryl

Sunday, January 13, 2013

New Additions to my Studio


I have really been trying to get organized in the house and studio.  Before Christmas we made multiple visits to Goodwill.  They were the lucky recipients of lots of Christmas Decorations that I really did not need (like about 15 boxes or more). My studio has also seen some changes.  Danny has been working very hard to put up some new shelves that have freed up valuable space on my table near my torch.

This is the new rack he built for my Bead Rollers, they are made of graphite and would break if dropped so this gets them out of harms way unless I have using them.  At around $50.00 a piece they are my prized possessions.

This is the Photo tent we have been working on.  The frame is made of PVC pipe and surrounded by white fabric.  The directions in my jewelry magazine said to tape the fabric, but that just didn't suit me to I sewed casings that just fit over the pipe.  The hole is for the camera lens to fit through.  Danny made me some stands for the lights to be adjustable in height.  Here are some quick pictures that I took inside it to see how it was going to work.
I am pretty happy with the results.

This is our newest cat, Murphy.  He really is a hoot.