Tapeley

While I was in Devon, Manda took me to Tapeley. This is a beautiful estate with Grade II listed gardens, and oh my, those are some gardens. Manda's lovely mum, Penny, came along too. Both Manda and Penny are brilliant proper camera photographers, whereas I'm an iPhoneographer, and the three of us had a lovely time wandering around the gardens taking pictures.

Agapanthus

Daisies and brick steps

Flower detail on a gate

Succulent flowers (flowers of succulents)

After a delicious lunch of smoked trout at the tea rooms, we wandered up to visit the pigs and chickens and then Penny suggested we take a look around the kitchen garden.

As we approached the garden, a sign told me it was a walled garden. My heart did an actual skippity-leap on learning this because I'm a massive fan of the old BBC Victorian Kitchen Garden series that starred Harry Dodson and Peter Thoday, so I found the idea of being in an actual factual old walled garden pretty thrilling, I can tell you.

Door in the wall of the walled garden

The garden was beautiful, and it's a working one so it was full of fruit and vegetables. There was a massive greenhouse along one of the walls and inside it grapes were growing. Back in the day, the greenhouse would have been heated by a system of cast iron pipes filled with hot water, warmed by a coal-fired furnace.

I loved the old things in the garden, like this Victorian glass cloche and the pretty cast iron grates.

There were also old varieties of apple and pear trees, as well as a patch of glorious purple-haired artichokes.

Moth on an artichoke flower

Artichoke flower macro

After lots more photography we left the garden and wandered back down, past the old Victorian ice house.

During the winter months, the ice house would have been packed with ice and snow and the building would have acted as a fridge and freezer.

Daisies on the ice house

Even the car park provided a final photo opportunity as it is next to a field of highland cattle.

Big thanks to Manda and Penny for a lovely day out at Tapeley. It was wonderful and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

MangoBeads Class

(I'm just going to ignore the disgustingly long gap between my last blog post and this one and pretend it never happened. *ignores the gap and pretends it never happened*)

Hello! Alright?

I'm here to tell you about the brilliant time I had teaching my class at MangoBeads in Devon. 

The class was over two days on the 9th and 10th of July and what a fab group of people it was.

Manda's workshop in Barnstaple is just so lovely. Spacious and comfy and oh so glassy. I loved it. I want to live in it. Look at all that space. And it's so tidy and organised.

The class I taught was a kind of 'improvers' class. I don't have a signature bead to teach as such, but I do have twelve years of glass-melting experience under my belt, so I went through encasing, stringer application, dots, gravity swirls, implosions and much more. Everyone did so well and they all made some great beads. We had lots of fun and many giggles. (Bertie, I will never forget your badger story for as long as I live.)

I stayed with Manda and David and they made me feel so welcome. Manda was one of my first bead customers back in the days when I used to sell my beads on eBay. We'd only met once before – fleetingly at the first UK Flame Off – but the minute I stepped off the train and into Manda's car it was like we'd known each other for always. (I hope she feels the same way or I'm going to sound like a right full-on weirdo.)

Max doing his best Princess Leia "Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?" pose

And this little fella is Max, Manda and David's adorable dachshund. We got on well too and on the final night of my stay Max got proper flirty with me on the sofa and snogged me. No really. He got very very face-licky and at one point he managed to lick the roof of my mouth. Manda and David found the whole me-trying-to-escape-the-amorous-sausage-dog-that-was-attached-to-my-head situation highly amusing.

Manda has invited me to teach again at the end of January. Again, it'll be an improvers class. If you can make a basic bead and want to have a go at encasing and other techniques to take your beads up a level, this one's for you. It would be an amazing Christmas present idea. All the details can be found on the MangoBeads website.

Big thanks to Manda and David for having me, and thank you to everyone in the class - you were so great and you all made some fabulous beads.

Randy doves, pink glitter, pasta and beads

I've had one of those weeks that never really gets going. Do you know what I mean? You start off on a Monday feeling ready to take on the world but all of a sudden it's Friday and you've not got much to show for it.

So what did I do with my week?

Well, amongst the whole not-feeling-very-beadish, I took a couple of photos. The one at the top of this post is a water droplet on a collared dove feather. We get so many collared doves in the garden and right now they are at peak randy. The man doves spend a large amount of their day doing that groovy, bob-up-and-down "Hello, lady dove, fancy a snog?" dance that they do. The lady doves never seem particularly interested, though, and when they do eventually go "Oh, alright Steve, just get on with it" there is much flappy wing flapping. This feather was left behind on the grass after said sexytime flappery.

Whilst I was grovelling about the place picking up feathers, I also took this photo of a daisy. Daisies are such simple flowers but they're just so lovely.

I'm into painting my nails at the moment. I go through phases of this. I cannot bear it when it gets chipped so I change it up quite often. At the weekend I got this bottle of Barry M glitter polish. I'm not usually a bright pink and glittery kind of person but something about this nail varnish made me go "Ooooh!" so I had to have it.

I think that's the thing I like about nail varnish. I don't wear very bright colours clothes-wise because I have zero fashion sense and I'm always worried I'll end up going full Timmy Mallett, but nails are a way to go a little bit colour crazy on a very small scale.

All three of those photos were taken with my iPhone and OlloClip. You can see more of my photos over on my iPhoneography Tumblr.

I did make beads this week, just not very many. I did a set of Luminobeads called 'Green Smoke' and these have been tumble-etched.

I finished them off with a light application of an olive oil and beeswax mixture to really bring out their soft 'glow'. This will eventually wear off but will be replenished by the natural oils of hands and skin during handling, or when the beads are worn.

As I type, 'Green Smoke' are still available to buy. There are also some bargains to be had in my SALE section.

I taught someone how to make beads this week. Kelly was a total beginner and she did so well. Just look at her beads.

I always say to beginner beadmakers that if they leave my shed having made a reasonably round bead with ends that won't injure anyone, then they'll have done really well. Kelly went beyond that and made some really lovely round frit beads and she even did some plunged bubble-dots. Top stuff!

If you'd like to come and learn how to make beads with me, I'm still taking bookings for one-to-one tuition in my shed here in Cambridge. There are only four places left on my two day course at MangoBeads in Devon in July so if you fancy that one, you'd best book a place; you can secure one with a £50.00 deposit.

I finished off the week with some nugget beads. These were made with a Vetrofond odd lot called 'Smoke Rings'. It's a filigrano - very pale amber-brown with an ivory core. I only had one rod of this now very rare glass, so this eight bead set is a one-off. These 'Wisp' Nuggets will be in my shop tonight.

Boy George is currently tumbling some more beads so I'll pop back and post a photo of the results later today.

Oh, I know - food highlight of the week - Chris and I cooked Antonio Carluccio's Penne Giardiniera, and my goodness it was so nice. We always have the Penne Giardiniera whenever we go to Carluccio's so being able to recreate it at home is a bonus. It was very quick to cook but seemed to use every cooking utensil, pot and pan we own, so washing up wasn't exactly fun-time central, but hey, it was worth it.

I think that's it. Not an awfully productive week beadwise, but sometimes my bead batteries go flat. I think they're recharging, though.

I was going to work today but it's a Bank Holiday and the sun is shining and the garden is a mess so I'm going to tidy it up. I've got some seeds to plant and some weeds to un-plant, so I reckon that's what I'll do with my day.

Have a Good Friday! (See what I did there?)

Beads By Laura at MangoBeads

I'm very excited and super happy to announce that I'll be teaching a two day beadmaking course at MangoBeads in Devon on July 9th-10th.

Manda at Mangobeads was one of my first ever customers and I can still remember the first set of my beads that she bought. They were green with different coloured spots. It's lovely that all these years later she's invited me to come and teach at her beautiful studio.

The course will be 'general' beadmaking. I'll show the attending beadfolk how I make several of my bead designs, including my layered ‘Plume’ and ‘Scales’ beads, my ‘Whirly-Go-Round’ encased gravity swirl beads, my ‘Anemone’ implosion beads, and pretty much anything else they fancy learning from me. I promise that there'll be much glassy fun, lots of beads and many laughs.

So if you're in or around Devon, or if you fancy taking a bead-based trip there in July, head on over to the MangoBeads website and book your place.