Strawberrypalooza

Talk about falling behind with blogging. I've disgraced myself. I've not posted since last year. Awful behaviour.

Truth is, I've not made many beads so far this year. We had a new kitchen fitted a couple of months back. It was supposed to start at the end of February but at the last minute it got shifted back a week. The new installation was originally going to take two weeks but it eventually ended up taking over seven. We moved in almost sixteen years ago and have been threatening to do the kitchen since then but both Chris and I hate any kind of upheaval so we kept putting it off but it became so tatty and broken that we simply couldn't ignore it any longer. We were dreading it but everyone kept telling us it'd just be a couple of weeks of disruption and then it would all be done and shiny and new.

It was an absolute nightmare.

So many things went wrong and it became this never ending saga of bodges, fixes, delays, faults, mistakes, complaints, phone calls and emails. Out of those seven weeks we had a working sink for only one; the other six I was washing up in a bowl in the back garden. We got through prepper stockpile levels of bottled water. The kitchen is finally done, though. Almost. We've still not moved everything back in and there are some niggly little things that need putting right. I've also got to paint the woodwork. That wasn't in the plan and we did pay for the decorating to be done but the paintwork that was done was shocking so we told them to stop and we'd put it right and do the rest ourselves. We are pleased with the new kitchen and I'm sure that a couple of months down the line when it's all properly finished we'll love it but right now we're still a bit pissed off about it all, and every slightly wonky tile, crappy bit of grouting, badly-filled hole in the wall and not-quite-adjusted-right cupboard door makes us grimace. We can put some of these things right but we paid a lot of money to have them done right in the first place, you know? Still, we do not miss the 1990s red, orange and yellow hell kitchen of old, and I absolutely love the new sink and tap. Nigel very much likes his new dining area too, and he has his own motion sensor light above his bowls so he never has to eat in the dark again.

I went to visit my sister Emily in Northern Ireland at the end of March and it was nice to get away from all the kitchen drama for a few days. I do very much like it there. We did lots of walking and ate lovely things. If you ever find yourself in Kircubbin, do pop into Coan for one of their delicious cherry scones. My goodness, the Northern Irish buns and baked goods are out of this world.

So yeah, March and most of April was a write-off on the bead front. I got a few beads made here and there but nothing really worth blogging about.

However, after getting very excited at seeing the first British strawberries in Tesco (I'm a strawberry patriot and only buy British ones because they taste the best - you can shove your watery, flavourless out-of-season Spanish ones) I decided to make some glass ones. I'd not made strawberry beads for eons but I wanted to make these new ones as not beads. Instead I opted for working off the end of a mandrel so I could capture that classic strawberry shape that you can't quite achieve when the hole runs all the way through.

Strawberries on mandrels

Freshly cleaned strawberries

After cleaning the strawberries I made some stainless steel loops for them. That sounds like a simple task but flipping heck, my hands hurt afterwards. Stainless steel wire is hard to manipulate and I ended up with cuts from sharp wire ends and blisters from my pliers. I suffered for these strawberry buggers! When I had the loops made I epoxyed one into each strawberry. Again, a faff, but what do I do that isn't? I'm a professional grade faffer, me.

Curse those wire loops

The strawberries are now in my shop. They're available to order as individual strawberries, ready for you to attach a jump ring or whatever jewellery finding you fancy.

Little lampwork strawberry

They can also be purchased as earrings and pendants.

Strawberry earrings

The earrings have leverback earwires

Strawberry pendant

And if you'd like a ready-to-give gift, you can buy a strawberry pendant on a chain.

Strawberry necklace

Comes on an 18" sterling silver chain

I'll keep taking strawberry orders until I get bored of making them so if you fancy one, grab a strawberry while you can.

A couple of weeks ago I tidied up my website and I've simplified my shop and there are a few normal beads for sale in there. 

I have a load of Lonelies to clean and photograph. I'll try and get on that tomorrow so keep an eye on the shop for those in the next few days. I'll be splitting them into smaller strands as opposed to one or two big ones.

Right now the sun is shining here in Cambridge and I hope it's sunny wherever you are too. Fellow UK people, I wish you a happy May Day Bank Holiday. Will it rain, though? That's the question.

Stormy Seas

These beads are made with Effetre Avorio Lapis Dark 293 which as the name suggests is ivory and dark lapis blue together in one rod. When you melt the glass the two colours mix together and the resulting swirls remind me of weather satellite images and stormy seas.

I turned this lot into a long necklace. The beads are strung with plain sterling silver rounds and the necklaces fastens with a lobster clasp.

The beads range from 7.5mm to 10.5mm diameter and the necklace measures about 70cm (27 1/2 inches) long when unfastened.

The Stormy Seas necklace is available in my shop.

In the shop you'll also find a small strand of the Black & White + Turquoise & Red beads that I made a few months back.

I held on to these intending to make them into a bracelet but I've never got round to it so I'm selling them as they are. 

And if you're one of the four people who read my blog, thank you. To show my appreciation for your interest in my work and ramblings I'd like to give you a discount code. Enter the code DEC10 at checkout to get 10% off your order. This will work for any item in my shop. The code is valid until midnight (UK time) on Sunday 15th December.

New jewellery

Remember the grey beads from my previous post? They're now a necklace.

This grey glass is so pretty. Swirls of transparent and opaque grey with a subtle pearly, shampoo-like gleam. I've strung the beads with plain round sterling silver beads.

The necklace measures about 22 inches long and it fastens with a lobster clasp.

I've also made a wintry bracelet.

The lampwork beads have cores of CiM Foam which I encased with Effetre Pale Aquamarine 038 and then coated in silver foil which I then burnt off, leaving behind tiny fine silver microspeckles. As a final step I etched the beads to a frosty finish. I used Dip 'n Etch as tumble-etching wouldn't have worked in this case.

The twinkly, frosty beads are strung with white opal Preciosa crystal beads and Japansee silver-lined clear seed beads. All findings are sterling silver.

The 'Mystic Grey' necklace and 'Twinklefrost' bracelet are currently for sale in my shop.

Why have one shop when you can have two?

I'm not a huge fan of Etsy. Its fees are too high and I have issues with some of their policies and biases. However, I'm at a point where I'm selling very little and I need to get my work seen. Instagram algorithms don't help with this unless you're willing to become a videographer who spends seventeen hours a day creating Instagram content and I refuse to do that. Also, PayPal seems to be playing silly buggers with my website checkout for some of my customers, and Etsy has many alternative payment options, so I've reluctantly reopened my Etsy shop. However, I'm keeping it to just UK sales at the moment. I'm keeping my website shop open too so right now I'm Laura Twoshops.

I'll add new items to both platforms for the foreseeable and I shall just see how it goes for the next few months.

Newly added items include this 'Sweetness' bracelet:

I made some matching earrings for it. I have two pairs of these.

There's also this very groovy 'Retro' tassel necklace.

All of these can be found in my web shop and my Etsy shop.

In crochet news...

In the previous post I mentioned that I was crocheting a shawl as a pattern test for another crocheter. The shawl is all done and is currently blocking.  I'll post a photo of the finished item when the pattern is released, which I think will be towards the end of the month. In the meantime, here's an in-progress shot of the shawl.

The yarn is Scheepjes Stone Washed in the shade Coral. The yarn reminds me of when I stir salad cream into Heinz spaghetti hoops. (Yes, I do actually do that and I've done it since I was a child and yes it sounds vile but no, in actual fact it's a taste sensation.)

I'm currently working on the border of another blanket which is made up of fifty-four of these mosaic crochet squares.

The pattern is the Terrazzo Afghan by Tinna Thórudóttir Thorvaldsdóttir. I bloody love Tinna's work. She's an absolute genius.

I'll post a photo of the blanket when it's done.

See you later!

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.

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.

Beachy wearables and new Strike excitement

There's a definite change in the light. I noticed it on Saturday; the morning sun had a mellow glow to it, rather than the bright peak-of-summer glare. I do so love the end of the summer and that gradual slide into autumn in late September.

I made a batch of beachy beads on Sunday and yesterday I spent a few hours turning them into jewellery.

The resulting 'Seaside' bracelet is very similar to the 'Seashore' one that's in my shop but this time I've used antique copper baeds and findings instead of sterling silver.

I also made a long necklace with some of the beads.

I used pearly ivory-coloured seed beads and oval sterling silver spacers for this 'Beach' necklace.

It measures thirty-three inches long and could also double up as a wrap bracelet.

Both the necklace and bracelet can be found in my shop.

I'm off down to the shed now where and I will lose myself in beads and the new Strike book.

The first thing I did this morning was download the audiobook of The Ink Black Heart and devour chapter one. I was like a child on Christmas morning! It's so good to have a new Cormoran and Robin story.