FINALLY... Some New Beads!

After taking about a 6 month break from bead making for various reasons, I am back at my torch and working hard to make some pretty things! Much to my own surprise, I actually didn't lose much in the way of skills during my break. I expected to come back and have to relearn everything, but thankfully that hasn't been the case! I can't say I am trying NEW, complicated techniques, but I felt like I not only picked up where I left off, I think I am actually better for having taken a break. My head is clear, my thought process is stronger and I seem to be more confident in what I decided to tackle!

I am still in LOVE with making hearts and I make them all year long, not only when it's approaching Valentines Day. I think hearts are a wonderful shape no matter what the season, and I love the canvas this size and shape bead gives me to work on.

I have ventured into other shapes these days and I find myself favoring lager, focal sized beads, rather than making bead sets. I will still be making Pandora style beads, in sets as well as larger focal beads. I LOVE the bigger beads in the Pandora style. While they aren't really suitable for using on charm bracelets, they make great focal beads on a thicker chain and I use them a lot in my jewelry designs...You'll see more of that in the near future!

Please stop by my Etsy bead shop, Principessa Glass and see all the new listings I put up this weekend. I will have some new items in my jewelry shop, Principesa Jewels in the up coming weeks as well... There are ONLY so many hours in a day and I am trying to not run myself ragged.. I do have lots of new things planned for both shops, it'll just take a little time to get it all going. Thanks for stopping by!

More Flower Power!

Yep! Still paying with flowers... still loving it! I've been able to find several sources for hand dyed reproduction vintage Lucite and they are GORGEOUS! The shades they are creating are fantastic and the pieces with multiple color tones are to die for!

I'm still of course playing with my Czech glass flowers as well.. so many colors, sizes and finishes available in these, both vintage and vintage reproduction. I really like combining the Lucite and Czech glass together. The end results are beautiful and still very light weight to wear.

I have some more of the beautiful vintage jewel pendants in the Daisy settings coming. I am setting some myself these days in both the antiqued brass and a silver plated brass. I've found it to be quite labor intensive setting all those little navette jewels! And quite hard on my hands! It's also not easy to find the necessary size jewels needed for the settings. A lot of the price of each necklace is all in the pendant.. they aren't cheap little trinkets.. lots of jewels, which take quite a bit of time and some finesse to get in place.

Most days when outside taking pictures, I do have a very "helpful" photo assistant named Daisy. She's my ten year old, overweight Tabby cat, who loves to spend the warm Texas days out on the porch. I think she thinks, she is a big game cat, out in the wild, soaking up the heat. She alternates to the cool cement when needed and of course has plenty of fresh cool water at her personal "watering hole" (aka dish hiding under wicker love seat, so slobbering dogs don't defile it).

I did manage to get some beads made over the past couple of nights, but don't have photo's taken of them yet. They should be listed in my Etsy shop Principessa Glass early this next week. The jewelry shown here is (or will be) available in my other Etsy shop, Principessa Jewels. Thanks for stopping by!

My How Time Flies!

Apparently it has been almost a month since my last blog post! Shame! I was really trying to do so much better about being consistent with posting... ah.. such is life! The big news this week, is my kiln has decided to take a vacation.. I am waiting for a part, which I am told (fingers, toes and any other parts that will cross, crossed) will likely fix the problem and be easy to install. I am fairly handy, so hopefully this won't be beyond my capabilities! In the mean time... NO BEADS... Can I just go on record to say how much that sucks!

I have been working diligently on making more jewelry. I have a lot more listings in my Juniper Gems shop. I have lots more things to list with many more in the works!

On Monday my little girl will be turning 17! We are having a birthday party for her this weekend and I am currently praying that all 20 of the 16-17 year old's she invited DON'T come! I do like her friends..and yes, we did let her invite that many, but partly because in past years such a small number actually ended up coming to the party, that I figured  push the number a little higher and and hopefully she'll have a satisfying turn out...Nothing is worse than your kid sad that nobody is coming to their party!

Hopefully my kiln will be back operating by the beginning of next week. I have a feeling I am REALLY going to need an outlet after this weekend.. either that or a whole lot of wine! I have several new things on the bead front planned, but I am going to keep them a surprise for now...Not a big departure for me, but something new just the same!

There are still plenty of nice things in my bead shop.. hopefully I will have some new offerings sometime next week! Spring break comes early here in Texas.. the kids are out the week after next I think.....I guess I will have to find some entertaining things to do. At least it's warm now! Thanks for stopping by!

So Much New Stuff!

I have so many new things to share! It's been way too long since I last put up a post, but I have been busy working on quite a few projects, with a few more things I still have yet to accomplish! I have ventured into some new areas of jewelry design. One was inspired by my Daughters amazing ability to do collage art. I was sitting in her room and noticed the note books she was required to cover for school, sitting on her bed. She had done the most elaborate and interesting collages on them! It got me thinking about all the pendants I had seen becoming so popular using digital art in many different forms, but I ultimately settled on soldered glass pendants as the right thing to work on with Emily.

I have been blown away by her creativity and the way she can wield an exacto knife! She will sit and cut out the most intricate details with great precision for hours! I feel like I am learning a great deal from her doing this project, just watching her in her own creative process. I have a few of the pendants currently listed in my Juniper Gems Etsy shop, with many more to come.

I have also started playing around with making resin pendants in various forms. It started out as something to compliment the components I have been using in the long necklaces I have been making, but I found a lot of the bezels a bit larger than what I wanted, once I bought them, so I made them into altered art pendants with a resin glaze coating. I have both silver plated and antique brass versions available.

I have been making more jewelry pieces using antique brass, and love every piece! I adore the vintage style that the antique brass evokes. It is such a wonderful metal form to work with and I find it to be very versatile. I have many more things planned with this style. I am really enjoying the vintage jewels I have been incorporating into my designs. They are beautifully sparkly and have a bit of history involved.... I always like that aspect. It feels like you are putting a little bit of a story into each piece.

This past weekend I took a class from Canadian Lampwork artist, Kerri Fuhr. I found her to be the most delightful person and a fantastic instructor! I am eager to get back on my torch and see how I can develop the concepts I learned into my own work. I am very inspired by her beautiful work. She brought many pieces with her and had a trunk show going on at the studio where the class was held. The pieces are even more beautiful in person than I had imagined. I would have loved to have treated myself to a piece of her jewelry, but since these classes don't come cheap, I had to settle for the opportunity to look at and touch them.

As I have mentioned here before, I post items on my Facebook, and I am now doing so prior to listing them on Etsy, to give my Facebook fans/customers a little advantage. If you aren't already a fan of my Facebook page, it's quite easy to become one, if you have a Facebook account. There is a link on the right hand side of the page here that has my Facebook on it, just click "Like".  I don't have set times that I list items, but I am doing so with greater frequency with the Holidays coming up.

I am trying to keep more stock in my Lampwork glass shop, but with so many things going on, it has been challenging. Plus things tend to get purchased quickly off Facebook, and often never even  make it the point of getting to Etsy. I need to post thing's here more often so my post don't drag on forever!  Thanks for stopping by!

New Beads!!

Yes...Finally some new bead sets are listed in my Etsy shop! I am working on getting a flow going, a certain rhythm to my making, photographing and listing.  If I had things MY way in a perfect world... I would just spend my day being creative making beads, maybe even spend time making jewelry again. I would have this lovely very accommodating assistant that would clean my beads, clean the mandrels, re-dip the mandrels, order glass and misc supplies, make up bead sets, take photos, edit them, and list them on the web site. Sadly... the creative... I make beads part of this life, is really not the majority of my day, unless I do silly things like stay up until 3-4am making beads. That has happened more than once this past week and it has produced some nice results. Obviously I can't keep this schedule forever, it just throws everything off for the next day, since I then sleep till noon, so my day gets started even later.. and the whole cycle gets more and more out of whack!

I am not sure what the real answer is to how this is done best, but I will keep trying to get things more balanced and have more time to do things at an enjoyable pace. If you haven't already done so, check out my Principessa Glass facebook fan page. I list my beads there when I get them put in my Etsy shop and I have a photo gallery of past and present work in there. It isn't a complete gallery, but does have most of the past couple of months worth. I will work on getting some of the past stuff in there when I find where I put all my free time... I'm sure it's around here some where, I must have just misplaced it.

My Juniper Gems shop is still open and still severely neglected! It is on my list of things to do...I was so excited to have my own beads to work with and now I don't have the time to do any thing but make the beads...Thanks for stopping by..Check out what is new in my Etsy shop!

You Get What You Pay For...

I have been seeing an increasing amount of cheap imported lampwork beads flooding the listings on Etsy lately and am becoming quite annoyed and concerned with this trend. I am used to seeing this on Ebay, but Etsy in the past has been fairly good about weeding out the stuff that isn't really handmade.

How do you tell the difference, price is usually a good starting point. A "handmade" lampwork bead being offered for $2.99 with a sterling silver core, isn't handmade by the person offering it, nor is it likely to have a sterling silver core. Some sellers have a habit of presenting core that is plated with silver as sterling, but this is only known as silver plate, and should not be stamped with the .925 that signifies true sterling silver. Not only are these beads not made by the seller as it is usually stated, but they usually are not annealed. Annealing is a cooling process that takes place in a kiln, which slowly reduces the temperature of the bead at a controlled rate, this can take up to 8 hours. With a very inexpensive bead this step is almost always skipped since it takes time and time is money! Non-annealed beads are unsafe for use in jewelry as they can break at anytime, it could be weeks, months or days after you receive them. These are glass, would you want that to break while being worn on your wrist?

The photos you see in listings are often stock photos, so the beads you get are probably not going to be the ones in the picture. If you are getting 3 beads for $ 2.99, run for your life. It is a good bet that if the seller originates in China or India, you may not be getting quality lampwork beads. You are getting cheap beads.

Most reputable lampwork artist selling on Etsy, Ebay or websites will have acquired a self representing artist designation, as well as a membership with the International Society of Glass Beadmakers. They will tell you in their listings what types of glass they use and how they anneal and clean their beads. I have run across an Ebay seller how had all the right verbiage on her listings, but did not have the self representing artist logo or number to back up her claim of possessing such a designation. When I looked at her listings, I could quickly recognize them as cheap Chinese imports. The best bet is to get to know your seller and ask questions, even ask other sellers you trust, most will be honest with you about whether or not this person is selling handmade beads. After awhile you learn to spot them, not to mention within the lampworking community word travels fairly quickly when someone is misrepresenting their work.

This is an age old art form and the people who do it, love it and take pride in their work. It is important to continue to educate people as to the differences in bead quality so they can at least make an informed decision about what they are buying. I certainly don't believe in price gouging, but if it seems too good to be true, price wise, it probably is...