Ever decreasing bead market

Alright?

Bead-wise, I've been quiet. We had Covid a couple of weeks back and then more heatwave happened which made the shed far too warm for work but I was back in there this week and I got a few beads made. I think the summer is slowly fading now, much like my pot marigolds, so give it a couple of months and I'll be wanging on about how cold my shed is instead.

The beads I made were these black and white 'Dapple' ones:

These are Effetre white 204, black 064 and light red 428. Encasing is Effetre super clear 006, as always.

The customer who purchased them asked me to turn them into a bracelet and earrings for her.

I also got my Whirly-Go-Round on and made these teal and blue ones: 

They're Effetre white 204, light teal 026, dark periwinkle 222 and super clear 006.

At the time of blogging, the Whirly-Go-Rounds are in my shop and a bracelet upgrade is available.

A note to my American customers:

I'm sure you're probably aware by now that the de minimis exemption will be no more as of the end of this month. This rule allowed you to receive parcels under the value of $800.00 without having to pay any tariffs or suchlike. 

Because of this, and because it's happened much sooner than people were expecting, I am unable to post beads to you for the foreseeable future. This is because there will be inevitable customs delays and potentially very high import charges that the buyer is responsible for. It seems nobody quite knows or understands exactly what the outcome will be but apparently things will be uncertain for the next few months, and platforms like Etsy are advising people not to send orders via Royal Mail. To say this is a bit of a bummer is an understatement. You Americans make up about 70% of my customer base. At the start of the year I lost all my EU customers due to their new postage and import rules, and now I've lost you too. A few years ago I could post packages to pretty much anywhere in the world and now I'm down to England, Scotland, Wales and Canada.

I've seen so much talk of Etsy shops shutting and people giving up their little craft businesses because of this and I totally understand why. I've not yet ruled out doing so myself but I'm going to hang on until I find out if this de minimis thing can be fixed in a way that works for me and my customers.

I think I just wanted to say "thank you" to my American customers for all your past orders and support and also that I'm sorry I can't send my makings to you right now. And I'm sorry too for anyone who is going to have to give up their businesses because of all this.

Who knows what my bead future will bring? Maybe I'll end up with so much bead stock I'll do an actual craft fair (URGH! and ARGH!) or something? Perhaps the US will sort its mind out with regards to import duties and tariffs? Or could it be that my time as a beadmaker is coming to an end? Who can say? What will be will be. In the meantime I shall just plod on.

Enjoy your day and if you're Bank Holiday Mondaying, I hope you have a nice one. Personally, I'm heading shedwards.

See you soon!

Giveaway winner

I've drawn the winner of the 'Hydrangea' Spotties pair giveaway and that person is Vicky W. Nice one, Vicky! I’ve sent you an email.

Thank you to everyone who entered the draw - I'll do another giveaway soon. Whenever I say that, 'soon' normally ends up being months and months but I'll try and sort a draw for September.

Beads, bracelet and a little giveaway

I can't quite capture the real-life sunshiny vibrancy of this orangey-yellow glass in a photo. It's a very summery colour and I've paired it with lavender-blue here. There's no encasing which always makes me feel a bit weird because the thing I love most about glass beads is the way the light shines through it but sometimes it's good to keep things really simple. Also, a lot of yellow glasses do not tolerate encasing and they can crack. I'm unsure if this particular yellow is a fussy bugger one and obviously an easy way to find out would be to actually make an encased bead with it, but it's been too hot in the shed to squander limited torch time on making 'risky' beads that might crack - that's a cooler weather task.

These are Effetre pastel yellow 418 and lavender blue/pastel ink blue 247. The beads are currently available in my shop and I can etch them and/or make them into a bracelet for you if you like. All details can be found here.

I made another batch of 'Hydrangea' spotties:

One of my customers opted for a bracelet upgrade for these which is great because now I have some photographs to show you exactly what these beads look like made wearable.

If you fancy your own 'Hydrangea' spotties bracelet you can order one here. The beads can also be purchased loose so you can do your own thing with them

I had a couple of leftover lavender ones from this batch and I thought I'd offer them as a giveaway here on my blog. I've not done a giveaway for donkey's yonks!

To have a shot at winning this pair of beads with coordinating spacers you need to do the following:

• Entries for the giveaway are now closed. The winner has been announced here.

I will put all the names in a hat and draw a winner on the evening of Friday 1st August. I won't be using your email address or details for anything else and your message will be deleted once the draw is over and done with.

Good luck!

Where there are scrolls there are spots

Crafting beads with scrolls on involves pulling a fair amount of stringer and the application of it produces many stray ends that aren't long enough to do anything useful with. Instead of throwing all these stringer oddments away I use some of them for applying spots to beads.

Making spotty beads is always a nice 'effort break' from scrolly ones, not that both don't take effort, but scrolls are way more intensive and go-wrongable than random spots.

'Summer Blues' Scrolls

These 'Summer Blues' scrolly beads are Effetre dark periwinkle 222 encased with Effetre pale aquamarine 038 with scrolls in Effetre light turquoise 232 and spacers in CiM Peacock Feather.

I then used some of the light turquoise stringer for spots on these 'Hydrangea' spotties.

'Hydrangea' Spotties

These are Effetre white 204 encased with Effetre dark lavender 081, and Effetre light turquoise 232 encased with Effetre pale aquamarine 038 with spots in Effetre lavender blue 247.

'Steel Grey' Scrolls

These 'Steel Grey' scroll beads are Effetre white 204 encased with Effetre dark steel grey 088 with scrolls in Effetre white 204.

'Serene' Spotties

I used leftover white stringer on these 'Serene' spotties which have Effetre white 204 cores encased with Effetre pale aquamarine 038 and pale emerald green 031.

Whew! That was a lot of glass numbers but I know some of you like to know exactly what I use for my beads. It's always a handy reminder for myself too.

At the time of typing, the 'Steel Grey' scrolls and the 'Hydrangea' spotties are in my shop with tumble-etching and/or bracelet upgrades available for both.

It's raining here today which means it's quite cool so hopefully I'll get a few hours of shed time in.

Have a good Thursday and I'll see you soon!

Iced Tea

This is CiM Burnt Sugar which is a transparent brown that has a warm rosy tint to it. It catches the light in such a pretty way. I've used it over CiM Foam here (I'm almost out of this and I will really miss it when it's gone) and the scrolls are Effetre White 204.

I can tumble-etch these 'Iced Tea' beads, although I think they look best left shiny. There's also the option of a bracelet upgrade if you'd like me to make them wearable for you. All the details can be found here.

Talking of bracelet upgrades, one of my customers asked if I could turn a set of the Bubblebumps beads into a bracelet for her.

I made some pink spacers and strung the beads with turquoise seed beads and sterling silver.

The result was a very juicy-fruity and utterly summery bracelet. I hope my customer likes it and enjoys wearing it.

In knitting news...

I have got some pairs that aren't striped in the Pile-o-Socks but yeah, here are some more striped ones.

These are Yarnsmiths Merino Sock in 2K172 Duckling and 2K045 Off White.

I was going for a custard cream thing and now custard creams are all I think of whenever I look at them.

Apparently it's going to be another warm day today so I'd better go and water the garden plants before I head off to the foodbank for a hot and sweaty morning hefting crates of food about in the warehouse.

Have a good Friday and enjoy your weekend!

Seaweed, Socks & Knots

This green is CiM Peat Moss and it's one of my favourite greens. It reminds me of so many things - moss, olives, ferns - but today it's reminding me of seaweed so that's what I've called these beads.

A classic Laurabeads quintet with spacers. These would look great tumble-etched. The strand is currently available in my shop.

In knitting news...

Another pair from the sock pile, this time stripes.

Cuff down, five row stripes, slip stitch heel, job's a good'un.

These were knitted in Yarnsmiths Merino Sock in shades 2K060 Parchment and 2K201 Moss Green

And in other news...

I recently bought a tiny little silver inch plant; I fell in love with his glittery silvery green and purple leaves and I just had to take him home. He's grown so fast and started trailing and I wanted to get a macramé pot hanger for him. When I looked them up online I was like "I'm not paying that plus delivery when I'm pretty sure I can buy some cord and make my own!" so that's exactly what I did.

The only macramé I've done before is friendship bracelets when I was a kid, and basic square knot bead bracelets over the last few years. I got a roll of 3mm cord, watched a few YouTube videos and got to knotty work and a couple of hours later I had a pot hanger.

I'm so chuffed with it. I'm going to make another, larger one for one of my golden pothos plants and I might knot in a few beads too. I've just got to decide what colour beads to make for it now.

It's hot. Obvs.

Obviously it's hot. Because it's summer. But hot weather means very limited beadmaking time because on a very warm day the shed reaches 34°C by lunchtime and my brain stops working at about 30°C and I start making stupid mistakes and crap beads, so on the days where anything above temperatures of 27°C are forecast I don't even attempt making beads.

As such, I've been working sporadically – a couple of hours here, a couple there – and I only have a few beads to show you. June was a bit of a write-off, really, not just because of the heat but because I had a couple of doctor and hospital appointments and a wodge of worry and stress alongside them but it's OK because it all turned out fine in the end. It was just my woman hormones making my boobs go mental, is all. Fun.

But yep, beads. There are the very jolly Bubblebumps ones which are un-encased orange beads decorated with turquoise scrolls, little slightly raised blue dots, and pink 'bubblebumps' which are raised bumps with a bubble trapped inside each one. Innovative naming.

I don't know what the orange is. It's definitely Effetre and it's not their standard orange – it's some kind of special – but the label has long fallen off the bundle of rods so I can't be sure exactly. It's a glorious colour, though. The pink is Double Helix Rhea Light which seems to vary in its hot pinkness from batch to batch.

I also have these double encased spotties:

A couple of weeks back I got a bit obsessed with double encasing. I wanted to make beads with an opaque cylindrical core encased with a coloured transparent and then encased again with clear but so that you could clearly see the demarcation between the coloured transparent and the clear. I managed it eventually and I worked out how to do it so that the opaque core doesn’t bleed onto the encasing layer whilst also making sure that the encasing doesn’t overshoot the core, all while keeping the opaque core cylindrical.

The effect is one of those things that easily goes unnoticed, after all, it’s just a little bead, right? I mean most people wouldn’t look twice at one of these and consider all the things that I just told you about. It’s not a fancy floral, it hasn’t got any inclusions, it’s got no silver glass – it’s a basic fat donut-shaped bead. So why bother? I think I just enjoy setting myself a bead challenge and completing it, really. Normally those challenges involve making the most simple-looking beads but simple-looking isn’t always simple to achieve and getting it right is where I get my glassy kicks.

I made a couple of other beads in the same colours (Effetre Light Violet 041 and Light Turquoise 034) and then it got too hot to carry on that day so I ended up with just a trio.

The spacers here are Bullseye Light Aqua 1408 which is a bit greener than Effetre's Aqua. Lovely colour.

All of the beads pictured above are currently available to purchase in my shop.

In knitting news...

I've finally taken some sock photos because there is nothing like contorting your legs into photographable positions while wearing wool socks in peak summer, is there? I had to do it as the finished pairs pile was going a bit Tower of Pisa.

Today I'm showing you these ones. The pattern is Soma by Summer Lee from her book The Sock Project.

They're knitted with Yarnsmiths Merino Sock in shade 2K367 Magenta.

And in other news...

I went to London last week to spend a couple of days there with my friend Jen. It was hot and Londony and we walked and talked and we went to Hackney City Farm to pet goats and sheep, and I barely took any photos because I just don't tend to when I'm doing stuff, plus in London there's a constant fear that someone will snatch your phone as they ride past on an electric scooter or bike. Do not even get me started on those things. Living in Cambridge was already a bike nightmare but now electric bikes and scooters are here being a pedestrian is more perilous than ever. But anyway, yes, I shall leave you with the one photo I took of the adorable and very vocal sheep and goats of Hackney City Farm.

Thanks for stopping by. Enjoy the rest of your weekend, don't overheat and make sure you've put a bowl of water out for the birds and other garden wildlife. Bye!