My Beads - Your Jewellery

I always love to see what the talented jewelery designers out there can do with my beads. Patricia de Winter has been kind enough, once again, to show me these beautiful bracelets which she made with some of my Organic Lentil Beads.

Patricia is based in London and works with a range of quality materials including Sterling Silver, Gemstones, and of course, Lampwork. She sells her work online and these pretty bracelets can be found here on Pinkdoodle.

Sourcing for Nature

Next weekends Working With Nature Metal Clay class gave me the perfect excuse this weekend to get out and about! Luckily enough we had beautiful weather here in Edinburgh and it made my job great fun!

Saturday was spent wondering around the beautiful Royal Botanical Gardens. When we wandered into the stunning Glasshouses I felt like I was in one of the Harry Potter Movies about to take a class in Herbology! Its not possible to pick leaves here but I did find some nice bits of bark!



I also popped out to South Queensferry to have a look for any interesting shells. This is the view from the little beach of the Road and Rail Bridges. Finally I made a little visit to Mr Woods Fossils in Edinburgh. I felt like a kid in a candy store surrounded by fossils millions and millions of years old! I bought a few have a bit of a soft spot for the ancient Trilobite. Here is a photo below of a few of the things I have collected this weekend - I'm looking forward to playing with these!

Metal Clay World Conference 2009

Today I just love the postman! I got confirmation of my place on this awesome class at the Metal Clay World Conference in Chicago!!! Its a Pre-Conference Class with Cindy Pankopf called Caged Glass Beads. This class will be bliss for me- two full days of working with my two obsessions - metal clay and glass!

After the Pre-Conference hands on classes the conference itself starts which offers lots of seminars with the experts on Metal Clay, Polymer Clay, Ceramics & Metalworking to name just a few! I'm so excited!! How many sleeps until July??

Art Bead Scene Blog

The more time I spend reading others Blogs the more inspirational Blogs I find. This one is well worth a mention! In fact its worth making a cuppa and taking time out to read. Its packed full of interviews with Artists, Featured Designers, Monthly Themed Challenges, Free Project and loads and loads of eye candy! Click on the Art Bead Scene Logo above to take a look!!

New Beads

I've been working on some new beads after buying a Tutorial from Anne Ricketts. They don't much look like they do in the Tutorial but I still think they are quite sweet! The Weather here is pretty gloomy- and these cheer me up! I imagine I'll be making more of these in the weeks to come, but I think I may make these into jewellery!

Talking of making beads you can catch me in my studio at my torch tomorrow if you are in Edinburgh - thats Tuesday the 7th October. Any time between 2 - 4. EB x

New Classes

We have some exciting new classes coming up and here is a first glimpse of whats on offer!

Tricky to photograph but so easy to make you'll want one of these chains in every colour! Using nothing but your fingers you will weave this chain which can either be worn around your wrist or your neck. These are great for anyone with sensitive skin as there are no metal findings, and of course the choice of beads is up to you!

For those of you who enjoy our wire working classes we are excited to offer a class teaching you how to make this pretty little bracelet. The only dilemma will be what colour of beads to choose.



And finally- have you been wondering about a simple way to add colour to your Metal Clay pieces? This class will introduce you to the easiest way to colour your pieces - Resin. This class is best suited to those with some experience with Metal Clay.


Full details for all of these classes will be going up on our main web site very soon!

Experimental Mood

I have been experimenting this week with Metal Clay Caps on my beads. These have also got pure silver cores - the silver clay was added to the beads before it was fired and then I put them all in the kiln and fired the silver. The brown beads started life as Ivory glass but the silver has changed their colour. I'll be trying more of these in the coming weeks but I'd love to know what you think! EB x