Glass Grump

My glass grump is ongoing. This one is lasting a long time and if I'm honest, this is the closest I've come to giving up lampwork in the eighteen-odd years I've been doing it. However, I'm a stubborn cow and I actually do love melting glass so I'm determined to hang on.

What's making me feel this way? I don't quite know. I mean, I sort of know, but it's hard to admit to myself.

Maybe people don't want my work like they used to?

There, I admitted it. 

I don't know the exact reason/s for this. Perhaps people simply no longer like my work? Or me? Oddly, I can deal with the latter better than the former. Or perhaps the current financial climate has meant people can no longer afford handmade jewellery and beads? Maybe it's because I refuse to play the social media game and become a content creator? Perhaps it's a combination of all of these things.

I can see other beadmakers are creating and selling less, though, and recently I've seen others retire from their torches. I don't blame people for doing that; sitting in a shed for hours, making beads and not knowing if anyone will buy them is pretty demoralising and it's the main driver of my bead grump.

If I make a set of very time-consuming, detailed beads, most people do not want to pay what they are worth. If I make spacers or 'simple' beads, which are also time-consuming, even though I can sell them for less, people might not want to buy them because they aren't fancy enough. If I make jewellery, people might buy it or might not, or even buy it to take it apart to get to the beads that they actually do want and let me tell you, that is even more demoralising and annoying than making beads that you're not sure anyone will buy. Trying to guess what people might want is a nightmare.

It could be that the answer is to be more active on social media, but I don't want to make Instagram stories, reels or videos. Do you have any idea how much beadmaking time that eats into? I don't want to be a YouTuber, a Facebooker or a TikTokker (absolutely screw TikTok). I don't want to give away my skills and knowledge for free in exchange for follows and likes because why should I? And I don't want to sell in Facebook groups or auctions because I cannot stand Facebook.

I am a beadmaker, not a content creator. So I'm going to carry on hanging on and just make the beads I feel like making whenever I sit down at the torch.

And besides, I've got so much glass and so many jewellery findings that I have to carry on because the idea of sorting, selling or chucking all of it makes me feel uneasy. And sad. And the sad thing is why I know I'm not ready to throw in the towel just yet.

ANYWAY...

Headpins. I made more headpins. These are all made on 20 gauge (0.8mm) copper wire.

And beads. Polka dotty ones, because polka dots are my favourite.

The headpins and beads pictured are in my shop and if you fancy 15% off anything in there, including jewellery, just enter the code XMAS15 at checkout. The code is valid until midnight (UK time) on Sunday 11th December. I'll be adding a few new bits to the shop between now and then so do have a check back later in the week.

Headpinning

I've been headpinning. At this point I'm in that zone I often find myself in where I keep making the same thing to find out why sometimes the outcome is this and other times that. This is resulting in an enormous amount of headpins. The daft thing is, I don't even know if people want to buy headpins.

Are some of you thinking "What is a headpin anyway?" and wondering what I'm droning on about?

Headpins are not hat pins or hair pins, neither are they finished items of jewellery. Headpins are used by jewellery makers to create pendants, earrings or charms. Beads are threaded onto the wire of a headpin and the glass part acts as a stopper and decorative end. The jewellery maker then finishes the piece with a loop and attaches it to a bail, earwires or whatever other finding they fancy dangling it from.

In most cases I melt the glass straight onto copper wire. Other times I make the glass component on the end of a mandrel and then epoxy in the wire afterwards. This is because some wire doesn't like being in a flame and also because sometimes it is easier to make the glass part on a sturdy mandrel end rather than it bouncing about on the end of a wire while you try and shape it. For example, my acorns and oak leaves are headpins; the acorns have their wires (copper with an antique bronze coating that cannot go in a flame) glued in after and the oak leaves are made directly on pure copper wire which I make darker with patination afterwards.

As you can see, I've been making a lot of leaf headpins. There's something very pleasing about the shape; it's very tactile, transparent ones catch the light beautifully and they would make great earrings.

For the leaves pictured throughout this post I've been using a set of mashers which I bought from LampworkTool on Etsy.

They're really good mashers and I highly recommend them.

I've also been experimenting with making hollow headpins.

These are quite tricky but it's ever so rewarding when they turn out well. 

These hollow ones would be perfect for earrings as they are nice and light.

Right now there are some green leaf headpin pairs in my shop and this weekend I'm going to sort out the big pile of assorted headpins that I've gathered over the past week or so and put some mixes of them in the shop too.

I'm feeling a bit lost with the glass right now, to be honest. I'm just making what I feel like making. I've totally given up trying to predict what people might like or what they want. And when I do make what people have asked me to make ("Damn, I missed them, please make more!" etc) the stuff just ends up sitting there. So yep, I'm making what I want to make and if someone wants to buy it, then bonus.

Do I sound like a glass grump? That'll be because I'm being a bit of a glass grump. It'll pass. *sigh*

A trip down muscle memory lane

Up until Thursday I'd not made an oak leaf headpin for five years. I approached the task slightly nervously because I was pretty convinced I'd forgotten how to make one but within two attempts my brain and hands had remembered exactly what to do. It was almost like I was watching someone else dab on the glass here, swipe it there, shaping and coaxing everything into an oak leaf kind of shape. Then I was off and away, muscle memory well and truly jogged.

I make my headpins in different ways, depending on what wire I want to use for them. The acorns I make on the end of a mandrel. This is because I'm working with a glob of glass that requires shaping by gravity and for that I need something sturdy to work on rather than a thin bit of wire which results in the acorn bit boinging about far more than is desirable. After the acorns are cool and cleaned I epoxy in non-tarnish antique bronze finish copper wire. I make my oak leaves straight on the wire because the shaping and clean-up of them is easier that way. Because the wire I use for the acorns has a non-tarnish finish I can't put it in the flame so I use bare copper wire for the oak leaves. (This already feels like way more information than anyone wants to know about this process but I've started so I'll finish.) This results in acorns with brownish coloured wires and oak leaves with bright, shiny copper ones. To make the shiny copper wires less shiny I give them a bit of a patina with some liver of sulphur. This darkens the copper and makes it less blingy. It's a very simple process but my word does it stink! It's like being stuck in a lift with a group of people from the Hard-Boiled Egg Sandwich Appreciation Society conference who’ve been eating egg sarnies for the whole weekend. Honestly, I cannot describe how egg-farty the stench of liver of sulphur is. It does the job, though, and fear not, the offensive scent gets washed off in the clean-up.

This morning I turned the finished acorns and oak leaves into necklaces.

I've only made five and they're in my shop at the time of typing, but if they sell out I'll make them available to order for a while.

I made some actual beads this week too.

These are CiM Little Boy Blue encased with a thin layer of Effetre Super Clear 006, decorated with spots in Effetre White 204. I never tire of the 'floaty' spots thing. There's one set of these left in my shop.

And I've also made another chain maille bracelet. This one is the 'Sweet Pea' weave which creates these little clusters linked to one another.

The bracelet is pure copper and it's available in the chain maille section of my shop.

Metal bubble bath

Yesterday afternoon while I was tidying away my jewellery making stuff  I found a bag of tiny anodised aluminium jump rings. At just over 4mm diameter they're smaller than the rings I used for the shaggy loops earrings in my previous post and I wondered if the smaller rings would work for the same weave. A few hours later I'd made this bracelet.

It's unbelievably light and it has a wonderful fluidity and texture to it. Chris said it's "like metal bubble bath foam" and that's a really good description. It's frothy.

I've put it in the chain maille section of my shop.

The three pairs of chocolate 'Acorn' earrings I had have all sold but all is not lost; I've added them to the Available to Order page. I don't know how long they'll be there but probably long enough for anyone to buy some as Christmas presents.

In non-bead/jewellery news, I've just finished reading another book. I read and listen to a ridiculous number of books, of all different types, and I only ever think to mention the occasional one here on my blog. Maybe I should do more book blogging? Anyway, the one I've just finished is called Dark Folklore by Mark Norman and Tracey Norman.

This is a fascinating read about the darker side of folklore, myths and social and cultural beliefs from all around the world. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on urban legends. Mark is a folklore researcher and author who writes and hosts The Folklore Podcast which I highly recommend to anyone who likes a bit of social history, folklore and information about ancient beliefs, customs and festivals. Marvellous stuff.

Rings in rings in rings

After my trip to the cemetery on Saturday I walked into the city centre, popped into a record shop, paid a visit to Fitzbillies for a couple of their famous and ridiculously delicious Chelsea buns, then caught the bus back home. At some point in that very small window of being out and surrounded by other people, I caught some kind of lurg. Four lateral flow tests say it's not Covid but I'm constantly coughing, sneezing and my energy levels are very low. Pre-Covid era I'd not had a cold for years so maybe it's just a bog standard one of those and I've forgotten what they feel like? Whatever, I've been next-to useless this week so not much beadmaking has happened.

However, I cannot ever bear to be doing nothing for long and if my hands aren't making something I get kind of edgy. I spent Monday in bed with a temperature but I wanted to be making something so I fished out my box of jump rings, grabbed two pairs of pliers and sat in bed making a chain maille bracelet.

'Byzantine' weave bracelet

The next day I lounged about downstairs and made two more bracelets and some earrings.

'Byzantine' weave bracelet with patina

'Shaggy Loops' earrings

I've said before with regards to crochet, I'm very much a process maker. I get so much enjoyment out of the process of creating things that I tend to make stuff just for the sake of making it. This is fine but it means I end up with all these finished things – blankets, socks, doilies, jewellery – that I don't need and am never going to use.

So I've resurrected the chain maille jewellery page of my shop and put some of the items I've made for sale on there. Maybe there's someone out there who would like to give a bracelet or earrings a new home?

I've tracked down the winner of the last prize draw and I've figured out a foolproof way for how I'm going to run the monthly draws from now on. More details on that soon.

The squirrels made me do it

I went for a wander round an old cemetery at the weekend. The cemetery is a Victorian one which is closed to new burials - the most recent grave I saw there was dated 1997 - but it's a lovely, peaceful place to be, full of magnificent trees, birds and squirrels. I sat for a while on a bench under a beautiful holly tree, watching the squirrels gathering acorns from underneath the massive oak tree on the other side of the path.

It's been quite a while since I last made acorns. I've always made them as necklaces with the addition of a glass oak leaf but I wanted to make some earrings and the oak leaf would be too much on those so I opted for just a single acorn.

I made a batch of acorns in dark chocolate brown and terracotta, paired up the ones that wanted to be together, and then I was left with a few odd ones so I made those into pendants and threaded them onto chains.

The acorn earrings and necklaces can be found in my shop.

Headpins

I made a little batch of headpins this week. My propane was running low and that affects any stringerwork or surface design and makes it go a bit feathery so I made a couple of fancy headpins until the feathery thing started happening and then I switched to plainer ones until the gas ran out.

Yesterday I turned the headpins into a pendant and some earrings.

The pendant was made with the fancier headpin which has a petal-like design on it:

Then there are these lavender earrings:

I love the way the CiM Wisteria reacted with the Effetre Lavender Blue 247 to create that purple band.

The other three earring pairs are made with headpins and globes of glass that are one third Effetre Light Turquoise 232 and two thirds CiM Fjord Milky. Again, the two glasses reacted with one another, making the turquoise go all mottled and cloudy. I kept one pair really simple and hung them from flower earwires...

...and I paired the other ones with copper findings and hypoallergenic niobium earwires.

The remaining pair aren't really headpins at all - no pins, so just... heads? I attached some sterling loops to these and dangled them from sterling drop shapes. These earrings are really light and swishy.

All of these are in my shop at the time of typing.

I still haven't been able to track down the winner of the prize draw so Tina G, if on the off-chance you're reading this, please contact me so I can get your beads to you. If I've not heard back from you by the end of November I'm going to do the draw again.