Handmade Lampwork Artisan Glass Organic Focal Bead Twin RiversThe Fire Divas are hosting an Introductory Jewelry Challenge! This challenge will be for jewelry designers who use artisan lampwork in their pieces. The winner of the Challenge will receive a beautiful group of Fire Divas' work. This is a wonderful chance for jewelry designers to show off their talents and get exposure!
Please click on the link below to get all the details & to enter: We love to see how designers use our creations, though for this 1st challenge, ANY artisan lampwwork beads will do as long as they're handmade.
http://firedivas.blogspot.com/2009/11/calling-all-desingers-introductory.html
will sit and work and watch tv and still be able to spend time with him lol! Its huge, its heavy and I love it lol! I spent three months going through and organizing my bead stash. Its finally almost all done. I don't know how many containers I have but its a lot lol!
I have been practicing! Some I am happy with some not so much lol! But I will post them anyway so that I have a good record of my progress. These beads are at the the 5 to 10 hours at the torch mark. The almost clear ones are called cirrus. And the white ones have sangria brown as the dots. The yellow ones are some tries at encasing with clear and the yellow barrel shaped one and the funky shaped one are a s
hot at raking and encasing. Not too bad since it was first attempt. The blue bead is black encased in the palest of blue. I REALLY
like this one! (of course I haven't been able to duplicate this but I will keep trying). Then some others using the same colors but the black is much more predominant. I like them, just not as much as the first one lol! And I think I am doing okay over all, mostly I am working on round, and dot placement with a tiny bit of lines and other stuff thrown in.
the canister of map gas $7.95 at Home Depot) I already have proper venting for my metal work so I was good to go. My teacher was generous enough to se
nd me home with a couple of rods of glass and a couple of mandrels etc to get started so I was playing with glass for the last couple of days. I was also lucky enough to discover that Franz Art Glass is having a sale (60% off!) until the 21st of August. (go check it out I got way more glass than I thought I was going to be able to). So I am eagerly anticipating the arrival of my stuff! I am going to post pictures of my first beads that I made at home so try to hold your laughter. I am still working on getting them round and symmetrical. Some are close, some not so much lol. Also just playing with dots and lines, the basics so to speak.
is give away posted on Plurk and just had to pass it on. Oh my what a huge amount of beads she is giving away. I really want to win this but I am going to go ahead and post it anyway so everyone has a fair chance lol! If you enter and win please let me know! Go HERE to enter.
reasons that I make so much jewelry lol! I have a never ending fascination with beads and findings. Wether it's glass beads, silver beads, copper, gold, polymer clay and even some of the vintage
lucite (plastic) beads, I love them all. And then there are the precious and semi-precious beads in all their multitude of shapes, sizes, cut and sparkle! Top drilled, side drilled, cabs half drilled I can find a use for them all. Then there are toggle clasps, chain, spacer beads in a variety of finishes and shapes. If I bought everything I liked 
we would be homeless lol! Any way I though I would share one of my favorite supply shops withyou and encourage you to take a look and to 
give her beads a try. She has excellent quality at really reasonable prices. Go check her out! But don't blame me if you end up addicted lol! Her shop is BeadAllAboutIt.
Challenge/Contest. We have broadened our horizons and opened the challenge to the international community also. DesignedbyLucinda provided the beads for this contest (Thanks Cindy!) and they look challenging! Here is the list of people participating this time around. And remember that SantiamDesign provided the beads the last time so she is making an entry this time.
prize and the reason we started this was in response to the massive amount of threads on Etsy about people copying other people's designs. We wanted to see what would happen if 12 people recieved the same exact beads and how similar or different the earrings would be. You can see the results in my previous post.
are going out by Monday from SantiamDesigns
started a debate on people coming up with the same design independently. Which happens all over the world all the time no matter what category of product you are hand producing. I am not saying that people don't copy, plenty of them do. I am also not saying that no one ever has
an original idea because they do. However there are really only so many ways to make a circle out of metal, put bead on a string and make a tote. It's all in what you do with it as far as color, materials and that little something that is you and no one else. So I ran into a friend of mine on Etsy who happened to be chatting in the same thread (http://DesignedByLucinda.etsy.com) and I after some friendly banter I said something like "wouldn't it be neat if a group of us got together and using the same beads each came up with a design so that we could see how similar or different each persons design would be?!" Cindy said yes that would be so cool and then Kira (http://SantiamDesigns.etsy.com) 
said "Hey I would be willing to provide the beads and ship them to everyone". (Like anyone is going to turn down free beads to play with haha!). A couple of other people chimed in and said that they would be interested in joining us so the three of us decided that we would go ahead and give it a try. Not only would it be an interesting and fun thing to do but it would also be a good way to promote our shops. (We are really hoping for a storque article out of this). So Kira is providing the beads, Cindy is organizing and in touch with Rob from Etsy on the appropriate way to do this, and I am going to be updating our progress as we go. I will also post pictures of the finished products. I believe we will have a couple of judges although there is no prize in this challenge other than the satisfaction of seeing the outcome. (And free beads to play with). If this is successful we may decide to do it two or three times a year with a different person contributing the beads each time. So we will be posting our challenge in the Business and Marketing portion of the forums with Rob's permission and I will keep you updated on what happens next.
with her bead work. I also thing that she is seriously underpricing so if you want to get in on a good deal I would head over to her shop soon as I am sure she will eventually raise her prices to what the work is worth. I don't have 
the patience to do detailed bead work like this and I admire anyone who can follow a pattern that turns out so beautifully. Her monarch butterfly looks soo real that you just expect it to fly right off the page. Can you believe that this is made out of beads. Just blows me away. I usually only post two pictures
but I really couldn't resist putting one more dragonfly up as they are some of my favorite bugs. They are beautiful in nature and I think that this artist has captured that beauty in her wonderful beaded creations. Enjoy!
so when I do decide to post a jewelry designer it will be someone I truly admire.) She has some really beautiful designs and quite reasonable prices. She stands out in the forums as well, always 
willing to help out the new people with good advice and is generally always patient and kind. 
that her husband is awesome! That alone gets kudos my book lol. Her bags are fabulous and very well made. They come in a wide variety of colors and styles so there really is no excuse not to buy something from this lovely shop. Vibrant colors and patterns that quite frankly make me drool. 
quite a few thought provoking questions on our etsy forums, always geared at having people take a good look at how to improve their shops to get the most out of what they are selling. I always look forward to hearing what she has to say, I usually learn something that is to my benefit. 
This is one 
I know her best thru her glittercritter shop (see below) but I am totally blown away by the the creativity and the amount of time it must have taken to perfect this kind of technique. I do a little bit of wire wrapping myself but am just a beginner. Examples like this inspire me to work harder an keep practicing so that some day I too will have work that is this awesome.
Also, she has always been very willing to help out all of the newbies on site with their questions for which I, for one, am grateful. Her prices are great on her supplies and I am hoping to snag the one in the picture when my self imposed "you can't buy any more supplies til you use some of what you have" is done.
Beautiful photographs and prints. She also has some outstanding 
Ed makes the most beautiful cabachons from raw rock. This is something that I am also learning to do so I know how many hours of sawing and shaping and grinding and polishing this really takes! Each stone is unique and whether it is a subtle pattern or a bold explosion of color, it always amazes me that something as common as a rock can be turned into something so beautiful.
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