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!

Spring things and bead things

I keep seeing people posting photos of springtime flowers emerging - lovely crocuses, daffodils and grape hyacinths and the like. Every year I mean to plant bulbs and corms like that but I never do.

I've got naff all in my back garden except for daisies. That's okay, though, because I flipping adore daisies. They're just little flowers of sheer perfection.

This morning I noticed that a couple of little daffodil things have sprouted out in the front garden, though. 

A few years back I bought one of those cheapo cardboard tubs of little daffodils that they sell in Tesco Express. When the flowers went over I planted the bulbs out the front thinking "Well, you've got two options; you can live or die" and every year since a couple of little yellow flowers have emerged. I always forget that they're there so when they pop their heads up I'm always "Oh yeah! I remember you!" at them.

In bead news, I made a couple more orange and purple big hole ones yesterday. I'm not sure about one of them (the one in the bottom right) but it might just be me being super-critical of my own work. I'll give it a couple of days and see what I think. Sometimes I think a bead has dot placement issues and when I go back to it a day or so later I can't actually see the problem that I was initially concerned about.

I'm really pleased with the one in the centre of that strand, though. This one:

He's about 20mm diameter x 9mm and he has many many dots. Lots of breath-holding and careful melting-in required during its making.

I made more dotty big hole beads today, this time in lavender bush kind of colours.

The bead in the photo is still hot so those aren't its true colours. I'm looking forward to seeing what the bead looks like when it's cool.

Don't forget to enter my prize draw. Right now there are only seven entries so the odds of winning the heart necklace are pretty good! I knew this would happen. People are so over blogs. Social media has made it effortless for people to interact by whacking a like on this or posting an emoji on that, and it's made us lazy. I didn't want to do a giveaway on Instagram because it's too easy. "Like this post to enter!" or "Like and tag a friend to enter!" giveaways are far too simple. People end up entering things just because they're there. Doing a blog giveaway takes a couple more clicks and some actual typing, so this way I know that people are entering my prize draw because they really want to. If you've joined in, thank you!

The one with all the photos

Oh knickers! That's a big gap to have left betwixt blog posts. I shan't try and fill you in on everything that's happened between then and now as that would be highly boring for both of us, so I'll just skip through some highlights using the medium of photo-plus-caption. Ready? Here we go...

Chris had a birthday that made his age start with a '4'

Chris' family came down to visit and we took a trip to the Cambridge University Botanic Garden where we saw this beautiful pinkus flowerus. (I didn't catch its actual name so I just made that one up but I can totally imagine Monty Don saying it on Gardeners' World.)

It was a very warm day and the greenhouses were mighty hot. See how this tendril dangles and curls.

This crazy-beautiful Jade Vine looks like something out of Avatar

Jade Vine close-up. Definitely a match for Effetre Light Turquoise 232.

I finished up the last of the Bumblebead orders. Are they whooping for joy, whistling, or horrified at the bead cleaning process they'd just endured? You decide.

Finishing bee beads meant I could faff about so I made Whirly-Go-Rounds with a finer 'whirl' than usual

And then I entered my bead happy place and pulled a load of white stringer and made 'Rococo' beads that I'd not made for eight years

I offered the option of tumble-etching on the 'Rococo' beads and everyone opted for it. Behold their satin silkiness.

When I made this set I 'designed' them to be etched, layering two transparent shades to achieve a pretty 'glow'

After the 'Rococo' beads were done I had a desk full of stringer scraps, so I used it for spots on little lentils made in one of my favourite glasses - CiM Sepia Unique 2

I still had a load of stringer bits left so I made more spotty lentils, this time in glorious transparent red

And that, dear patient person reading this, brings you up to date with my goings-on.

The Cambridge University Botanic Garden really is great and I'll definitely be going back there soon. It's so relaxing and it makes you feel like you're a million miles away from the bustle of the town centre. (I sound like Judith Chalmers.) (I've just Googled Judith Chalmers to find out if she's still alive. She is and she's eighty, you know. Go Judith!)

If you'd like to see more of the flower photos I took at the Botanic Garden, you can see them on my personal Instagram feed.

Stuff is also happening in my own garden. Things are growing, especially daisies and dandelions, but I don't mind them. I hate that weeds have a bad name. They're lovely little things and the bees seem to like them, especially the dandelions.

Dandelion clock, taken with my iPhone 6s and Olloclip macro lens

I've got some strawberry plants that have appeared too. I'm assuming a bird 'planted' them via the act of plappage (yes, I mean poo) as they are down by the fence and I definitely didn't plant them. Cheers, bird! I'm growing chillies, munchkin pumpkins, micro sunflowers and catnip in a little plastic greenhouse and they're all coming along nicely. Maybe I'll do a garden-based blog post. That won't be at all boring for you, will it?

I'm off to make beads now, I've still got a bazillion scraps of white stringer to use up. Will I use them or will I bin them? We shall see... 

If you like the spotty red lentils, I have four pairs of them left in my shop. They're £4.00 a pair and if satin-finish glass is your bag I can etch them for you at no extra cost. I've also reduced the price of all remaining jewellery so you might be able to grab yourself a wearable glass bargain.

For full details of all glasses used for the beads in this post, please have a look at my Tumblr.

Have a super duper Saturday!

New Video : Pulling Stringer

Chris and I have spent a stupid amount of time today making this four minute movie.  It was supposed to be so quick and simple but it turned into a small-mammoth-sized project.

Anyway, the video is about pulling stringer and it's up on the old YouTube as I type.

I hope you find it useful.

EDIT : Chris has edited together some of the outtakes from my stringer video.  I warn you, the following video contains swearing so please don't watch it if you are easily offended by such things but if you do want to see me behaving like a complete idiot please click here.

'Scrolls'

The beautiful rich brown in these beads is CiM Mink and the scrolls and spacers are done in CiM Smurfy. I reckon these two colours look fab together and I really like the slightly wiggly reaction line that runs through the centre of the stringerwork.

Mini Tutorial : Wiggledot Bead

This mini tutorial shows you how I make one of my Wiggledot beads. This is quite an easy bead to make but it does offer you a host of design possibilities because you can alter the dot placement, the number of dots, the colours and so on.

Step 1

Make a donut-shaped bead. Remember to start off quite a bit smaller than you want the finished bead to be as you'll be adding quite a lot of glass to your base bead.


Step 2

Apply a band of stringer around the middle of the bead. Different stringer sizes will produce different effects. Don't go too fine with the stringer though or you'll hardly see it.


Step 3

Melt the stringer band in so it is flush with the surface of the bead and then add four dots, evenly spaced, around the left hand side of the bead. These dots need to be quite large and most importantly they need to be the same colour as your base bead. Don't let the dots touch the stringer band.


Step 4

Add another four dots to the right hand side of the bead so that they're offset from the first four.


Step 5

Melt all of the dots in slowly and gradually so that they don't distort. Bring your bead out of the flame and let the glow subside from time to time if needs be.


Step 6

You should now have a plain bead with a pretty wiggly line around its centre. This was caused by the dots pushing the stringer out of shape as they melted into the surface.


Step 7

Using a different colour add another eight dots, just as you did in steps three and four. You might want to make them smaller than last time. Then melt them in slowly and gradually.


Step 8

Repeat step seven using a different colour. I'm using Efftere transparent dark teal.


Step 9

If you like you can add more dots on top of the last ones .....


Step 10

..... and even a few more if the mood takes you! Remember that the more dots you add the more your wiggly line will wiggle and the bigger your bead will be.


Step 11

The finished bead.


Hints & Tips

~ You can use either a transparent or opaque base for this style of bead.
~ Try using Goldstone (Aventurine) stringer for the wiggly line.
~ More than eight initial dots will create more of a wiggly line.
~ Plunge and case your dots for that groovy trapped bubble effect.
~ Leave some of your dots raised for texture.


If you make any Wiggledot beads with the aid of this tutorial please email me some photos of them - I'd love to see!

'Batik'

The base beads in this set are made with a translucent white glass. When I added the violet stringerwork it looked pretty normal but as I heated the stringer in flush with the surface of the bead it started to do this slightly wiggly, feathery thing. Sometimes glasses react with one another to produce such effects. You can use those reactions to your advantage but sometimes the effect that happens isn't quite what you had in mind. Normally I would have sworn at the bead, killed it in the water jug and made a mental note not to mix those two particular glasses again but I actually liked the effect. I think it's got a Batik kind of feel to it.

'Filigree'

I definitely had to pull waaay more stringer than I thought I would need for these. All those swirly scrolls seemed to eat the stuff!

These pretty beads have a pale ivory-coloured core which I've cased in clear and the scrolls are a soft periwinkle blue. Such delicate colours.

They will be for sale on my website tonight at 8.30pm (UK time).

Random Poetry Moment

I came up with this rhyming couplet while I was teaching on Tuesday and now I can't get the thing out of my head .....

"Always pull more stringer than you think you'll need,
For there's nothing worse than running out mid-bead."

Bead Movie : Stringer Demonstration

This afternoon Chris filmed me making a stringer bead. I should point out that this movie isn't a tutorial as such. It's more of a demonstration thing so you can see how I apply stringer. Of course, you get a load of my waffle which you may find useful. Maybe. Chris played around with various camera angles but we went with this one as you get an almost Laura's Eye View of the beadmaking action. It's important that you see not just the bead but the positioning of it in the flame and also where my hands are. At the start you also get some Laura-swinging-around-and-fidgeting-on-her-chair action too! Sorry about that. We hope you like the movie. There is no step-by-step version of this one as there really are no steps to stringer application. It'd go something like "Step 1 - Make bead. Step 2 - Apply stringer." See? Doesn't really work. So I may well write some hints and tips for stringer application instead.

'Claire'

When Claire was choosing colours for her beads during her lesson on Tuesday, she made a dotty bead in this gorgeous combination of pale blue and soft violet. I loved it so much that I told Claire I was going to nab her idea and in return I would name the resulting set of beads after her.

These are proper old school Laurabeads - fine stringerwork in a multitude of designs.

Old Favourites

My favourite kind of beads to make - lots of stringer, many dots and a whole load of precision! I was on a bit of a roll with these 'Serenity' beads. I'm really pleased with the colour combination. I love purple and teal together and I think that the glacier blue works nicely with them. Very relaxing colours.

My glass order finally arrived and I've been playing with seeded glass which is packed full of tiny microbubbles. It gives a wonderful fizzy effect. These 'Pink Froth' beads are pink seeded glass cased in clear.

I've got clear, pale blue and pale amber seeded glass too so I'll be experimenting with that next time I'm in the shed. Plus I've got a new stash of pink and pale green glass and you all know how much I love those two together! Glass orders are great - my head gets full of beady ideas as soon as I open that box, dive into the polystyrene packing chips and break open that bubblewrap. I'm easily pleased, me!