Ouch

First thing Monday morning, before I'd even lit the torch, I cut my finger on a glass rod. I caught the pointy end of it with my forefinger as I was switching on my workbench light and the resulting cut was like a deep cat scratch - not overly painful but really annoying and requiring a plaster. The cut was on my mandrel-twirling finger and the plaster was too much of a beadmaking hindrance so I abandoned shed.

Yesterday I swapped the plaster for a smaller, less padded one and I found that I could twirl a 1mm mandrel with minimal irk so I made a load of little plain roundish beads using Reichenbach 104 Mystic Grey. This is a part transparent, part opaque glass with a sort of pearly shampoo thing going on. Pretty.

Top right: injured mandrel twirling finger

Now I have a wodge of nice grey beads in slightly varying sizes. I think I'll sort them into size order and string them as a necklace. I do like the 1mm mandrels, though. I've only ever used them for making headpins but I might experiment with small-holed beads further.

I might have given up on the beadmaking on Monday but I got some jewellery made instead. The customer who purchased the Lemon Sorbet and Creamsicle beads upgraded them to bracelets.

The bracelets are quite summery which is very not like the current weather here. Loads of places seem to have had snow but it's just damp and quite cold in Cambridge.

I'm off to find another tiny plaster and see how the mandrel-twirling goes.

Have a good Wednesday!

Cloudburst

The colours of these beads remind me of thundery skies and stormy weather. They're made with two beautiful glasses that look lovely but are right glassholes to work with.

The grey-blue-green is CiM Little Boy Blue and it's quite a streaky glass, by which I mean that it gets dark striations in it the more you work it.

The grey-blue is Effetre Navy Blue 238. It's not navy blue as I, and probably you, think of it but seeing as the glass is Italian maybe at some point in time the Italian navy wore a uniform this colour? I don't know. Whatever, it's a very lovely shade of grey-blue but it does that copper thing that a lot of the Italian blues and turquoises do where it will sometimes fizz and it'll also get a grey sheen if it's slightly cooled and reheated. The fizzing can cause pitting which is bothersome if you're not wanting an 'organic' look. The grey sheen on the surface is nothing a short soak in Harpic toilet cleaner won't fix. However, when you want to encase it the greying can cause a haziness between the two layers. To counteract this I find you have to get the base core bead right first time in one go. You can't re-roll it, you can't add more glass and you can't faff with it. You make the core, gently reheat it once to smooth out the chill marks and then encase it while it's still hot but not hot enough that you'll smoosh the core all about. It's a tightrope.

The clear here is Effetre Super Clear 006 and the decoration is Effetre Pearl Grey 268.

The beads are in my shop and a bracelet upgrade is available for them.

Back on Facebook

In an effort to get some beads sold I've reactivated my Facebook page. I left Facebook in a huff back in 2020, in the midst of Covid when everything seemed unbearably insane. I've not got any intention of using Facebook in a personal capacity but my old bead page lives again. I'll be using it to let people know when I have new beads and jewellery for sale.

Here's a link: www.facebook.com/beadsbylaura.co.uk

And here's a bracelet I made on Thursday.

I had the beads for this knocking about in a yoghurt pot for weeks and I finally got round to making them wearable.

I've kept the bracelet really simple, as is my wont, and the beads are strung with matt black seed beads and sterling silver.

The bracelet is available in my shop.

Yeah, more quintets

I'm stuck on making quintets. I know it must be boring but it's just where I'm at right now. I'm not bored. I keep thinking of new colour combinations and I have to try them out. The beads are stacking up in my shop and I'm kind of feeling like I'm wasting my time but can you be wasting time when you've got something to show for the time you've 'wasted'? I guess it's problematic if nobody wants the thing you've made but I keep shoving that thought to the back of my brain and hoping people will suddenly want the beads because if they don't I'm going to need to reconsider things.

Yeah, actually, thinking about it, spending hours making beads that you under-price but that only a couple of people want is indeed wasting time. And time is the most precious thing we have, isn't it? 

We've got plans to get a new shed next year, a proper large one that Chris and I can share, so I think I need to decide if that's going to be worth it or not. There's no point in building a space I might not need. I hate making big life decisions. I just want to make beads but when the beadmaking seems pointless it suddenly all feels a bit shit.

Anyway, that's enough moaning from me. I'll scoop all my bead angst back into its bottle and let it gnaw away at the back of my mind.

Here are some photos of shiny new beads along with details of the glass I used for them:

Creamsicle: CiM Foam encased with Effetre Super Clear 006 with decoration and spacers in CiM Creamsicle

Sepia: CiM Toto encased with CiM Sepia, decorated with CiM Toto with spacers in CiM Sepia

Mint & Lavender: Effetre Copper Green 219 encased with Effetre Pale Emerald Green 031 with decoration and spacers in Effetre Pastel Ink Blue/Lavender Blue 247

These beads are for sale in my shop and a bracelet upgrade is available for all three sets.

I'm off to make a few bits of jewellery now.

Thanks for listening to me whinge and I hope you have a good rest-of-Thursday.

Maraschino

The beads in this bracelet are made with CiM Maraschino which is the most perfectly-named glass. The red is the exact colour of cocktail cherries. This glass is semi-opaque and for these beads I layered it thinly over a base of clear. The beads might look opaque at first glance but if you hold them up to the light you'll see the translucency of them. The beads are decorated with Effetre White 204.

I've strung the beads with red Preciosa crystal beads which sparkle beautifully, white Japanese seed beads and plain sterling silver round beads. The bracelet is adjustable by way of its lobster clasp and extender chain.

The Maraschino bracelet is available in my shop.

Also in the shop are these rosy pink beads. They shift from a pink hue to a more bluish one depending on the light. I can tumble-etch these ones if you'd like and there's also a bracelet upgrade available for them.

These are CiM Foam encased with Effetre Dark Rosato/Lavender Blue 083 with decoration in Effetre White 204.

In knitting news, I've finished the cabled yoke of my jumper.

Now it's time for swathes of stocking stitch but I like that. I can knit stocking stitch in the round without looking which means I can switch from my reading glasses to my further-away-than-arm's-length specs and actually see the telly while I knit.

I'm six seasons through my annual Mad Men rewatch (I think this is my fifth go round and it only gets better with every repeat viewing) and it'll be nice for everyone to not be a blur. I've got to get some varifocals. Switching between two pairs of glasses all the time is so irritating.