Work in progress

This bracelet has been sulking in my work-in-progress heap for an age. I finally put it together with copper beads and clasp and grey pearlised beads...couldn't find a copper wire guardian, so made do with silver, realised that just wouldn't do -  and flung it into a dark corner.

I got it out to reassess yesterday and thought that if I aged it with liver of sulphur, the silver would darken enough not to show up so blatantly. Then I noticed how badly the 'pearls' had fared (see yellow arrow) while the bracelet was feral. The coating had worn badly near the beadholes. So it's out with the snippers and on with a complete re-thread, minus pearly beads, plus antiquing. I'll show the results soon...soonish, anyway.

PS I've now got a 'follow' button up there in the margin. Little things make me smile.

Birthday sunrise

Hello all. It's a snowy Saturday night and rather than paint the town red, I've just spent an hour or more playing around with blogger settings. There is now a pretty row of beady pictures in the margin, which should change each time you visit. If you click on them you will be taken to Flickriver, which is a nice smooth way of looking through my Flickr pictures. (If you prefer to see album pages, just click on Maigret Lampwork when you get there.)

There are also preview pictures of my Etsy shop items now and I've managed to wrestle some HTML code to make clicky links to various sites. Feeling rather proud...

This is a picture of the sunrise over my studio a few days ago on my birthday. There is a tiny crescent moon among the branches - you can't see it but I remember it, and it was magical!

First beads of the year

I ignored the ironing and got the camera out at last to put this eclectic bead set into my etsy shop.   I usually get too bored to make exactly matching sets, but I selected these from my bead mountain to complement each other nicely (in my opinion). I hope someone has fun making a necklace with these - they are quite chunky with plenty of yummy purple frit and glass. Now to tackle the ironing mountain before an avalanche (I'll probably fold most of it - shh...)

Glass, clay and cake...

Okay, how does this work then...? It seems the right and proper time to start my first blog - and it will mainly be filled with my lampwork, fusing, jewellery-making and clay adventures. The handsome chappy up there is not glass or clay however, but delicious marzipan...

Please excuse any chocolate crumbs in my photos - and happy New Year to anyone who is reading!