Flowers, flowers and more flower beads

This is the first set of pink flower lampwork beads I have ever offered for sale in my Etsy shop. There has been much experimentation and recording of what colours I put with what before they were perfect.

I have made green, orange and blue ones in the past

I'm delighted to announce that the range has been expanded, first with the pink ones I kicked off this posting with but purple, aqua and teal are also new.

I'm trying to push the colour range even further and am currently experimenting with red which is tricky to work with but I shall keep trying. Watch this space for news of my success (soon ... or later ... it may very well be later ... I am nothing if not persistent). 

I can imagine these flower beads being absolutely gorgeous as a pair of earrings with matching bracelet teamed with some silver, Czech glass and/or swarovski beads. I'm sure that lovely gardener, Carol Kline - whose earrings often feature flowers - would look fabulous in a pair if some enterprising jeweller sent her some!

Making jewellery out of recycled pagan wine bottle beads

This is a bottle of one of my most favourite red wines of all time. As well as being really great to drink (particularly with lamb dishes), the story on the bottle is really compelling to me:

My family has been tending our vineyards overlooked by the Saracosa hill since the early 1940s and legend has it that the hill was a sacred pagan site, where people gathered to worship the sun and the moon. Much of those original vineyards remain, producing low yields of high quality, concentrated grapes from which we selected to make this wine. 

I love the idea that I'm drinking wine produced from an ancient pagan site where rituals (so long as no animal sacrifice was involved) and magic were performed. Wow!

Anyway, here are some photographs of the jewellery set I've made from the beads which will be for sale tomorrow in Cambridge on my stall at All Saints Art & Craft market.

Hope to see you there! Whatever you're doing this Saturday, have a lovely weekend!

Calling all patriots

We have two events this year in Great Britain that I'm particularly happy to celebrate as they're great for bringing in tourists. As I do business in a city that welcomes many visitors from abroad, I think you'll understand why I am busily celebrating them.

The first is the Queen's diamond jubilee, followed shortly by the Olympics coming to London. In an unashamed and unapologetic effort to cash in, here is a sample of the jubilee jewellery (later to become Olympic jewellery) which will be for sale on my stall in Cambridge this Saturday

There is also a necklace, pendant and a double-stranded bracelet but they weren't finished before the light went for photography so you'll just have to pop along to Cambridge to see those. We have a terrific weekend forecast (THAT makes a change) so hope to see you there ... whatever you're up to, I hope all my readers have a great weekend.

Talisker whiskey jewellery

I've made another batch of recycled Talisker whiskey bottle beads. This time I've kept them to myself and turned them into a set of jewellery. Above is a close up of the bracelet which may (or may not!) make it onto the stall tomorrow. I really want to keep it myself!

Below is the complete set including a necklace and matching earrings. I've teamed the beads with some gorgeous Czech faceted glass beads, some Jasper rondelles and copper. The fantastic primitive and rustic stoneware bead was made by Beadfreaky in the US.

They'll all (maybe minus the bracelet!) be for sale on my stall at All Saints Art & Craft market opposite Trinity College in Cambridge tomorrow. The weather forecast is for some early rain but it's clearing up and the rest of the day should be dry, so I'll hopefully see you there!

Wedding jewellery

My heart confetti arrived through the post this morning and so I've been photographing the jewellery I made with the recycled Rosé bottle beads.

These have all been listed in my Etsy shop. The plan is to be back at my stall at Cambridge's Art & Craft market from next Saturday onwards (if the weather forecast is dodgy though, I probably won't be there until February) and so I'll have them with me there too.

I celebrated my first Etsy sale yesterday! I changed my shop over to dollars and also introduced free worldwide shipping, I'm not sure which of the two things tipped my luck but I'm glad whichever it was! A lovely jewellery designer in the USA purchased a set of etched Harveys Bristol Cream Sherry beads. We both think that these will look great with the seaglass that she mainly works with. This is a market I wouldn't have reached but for Etsy so I'm hap-hap-happy! I have missed the buzz of making sales on my stall and am also looking forward to being back out there amongst my customers.

The bead that got away

Out of the many experiments I did last week, this week I chose two colours of my new plasma doughnut nugget beads to make jewellery with. Here are earrings and a bracelet in an orange/red combination.



When I made the orange/red plasma doughnut beads, there was one that just wouldn't come off the mandrel. The irritating thing from my point of view is that the bead moved about an inch but then wouldn't come off the end; I've never had this before. Very occasionally, beads will get stuck but generally, they stay stuck to the part of the mandrel they were made and it's usually a failure of the bead release during bead construction. You can see gouge marks made by my pliers as I tried to grip the mandrel whilst pulling with all my might but I have had to admit defeat.

I took this photograph of some emerald plasna doughnut nugget beads yesterday. I have made a bracelet and two pairs of earrings out of them but the light had gone by the time I finished making them so no photographs of those; the beads look lovely combined with citrine and green aventurine.

All the jewellery is available to be viewed and purchased at my stall on All Saints Art & Craft Market in Cambridge tomorrow. :-)

Looking forward to Saturday

Got lots of new jewellery to show off on my stall tomorrow at All Saints Art & Craft Market in Cambridge. Here is the bracelet that I made with the multi-coloured plasma doughnuts that I featured here on Wednesday. The beads were just screaming amethyst at me and I really like the colour combination. There are a couple of pairs of earrings to match.

This cluster pendant won't be for sale but I'll probably be wearing it; this is made with the diamond anniversary champagne beads and is a special edition exclusive to female members of my family only (previous blog entries explain the background to this range). Again I've made a couple of pairs of earrings to match as well.

I've not made any new silver earrings for a while, these have got handmade earwires, I've also made a pair of studs with the same puffy hammered triangle shape. The silver has been slightly domed in order to catch the maximum amount of light. I usually use a small ball pein hammer for my hammer effect but I've bought a new texturing hammer which has a stripe profile and makes larger elongated impressions on the silver. I think I'll be making more jewellery using it as I like the effect so much.

Come along tomorrow, have a day out in Cambridge and see the new jewellery in person! Having missed last week, I can't wait to get back into it; have a lovely weekend everyone!

Recycled champagne bottle and silver seed pod

I am planning on spending half a day tomorrow making some recycled glass beads out of the champagne bottles that were purchased for mum and dad's 60th wedding anniversary back in March by Uncle Arthur. I have been meaning to do this for absolutely ages but with it being such a busy time for my business, I haven't had chance. As I didn't go to the craft market on Saturday due to illness (I am completely recovered now, thanks for all your good wishes) and I have restocked my stall last week, I have some time to play around with new stuff til Saturday.

My Uncle Arthur had a stroke recently and is recovering, we don't think he's likely to be able to live completely independently again. His motor functions aren't great, he does get a little confused which is understandable but fortunately, he's still all there and knows who everyone is. I know he'd love to see the beads made up into some jewellery. I want to make jewellery for myself, my sister, Sandy, my mum, Auntie Mary who was so instumental in planning the party and something for Uncle Arthur to give to his grand daughter. For my other sister, Sharon, she makes her own jewellery and so I will give her a few beads so she can make something for herself. Hmmmm, thinking about it, I may need to spend more than half a day making the beads - from that little list, I'm going to need quite a few! I go a little insane if I spend more than three hours on melting recycled glass into beads - it gets a teeny bit tedious! I'll spread it out over 2-3 days I think.

The colour of glass isn't that great (broken shards of the bottles are shown on the right of the photograph above) but I think the new beads on the left that I made at the back end of last week will provide a nice colourful counterpoint. I'm calling the new irregularly shaped beads Plasma Doughnut Nuggets, these ones are made with a brown and gingery frit blend. For the Diamond Anniversary jewellery, I have some smokey quartz, rutilated quartz and opal gemstone chips and I think any of those will also combine well. See how it goes when I have everything on the table in front of me.

For all the people interested in the PMC seed pod bead that I made, here it is all polished up and combined with black waxed cotton macrame.

Jewellery for the weekend

I have gone into production with some purple/bluey ribbon beads, here is a bracelet made with them. I have 4 different pairs of matching earrings as well but - give me a break - I haven't done too much photography today - it's too blimmin' hot!

I also have an amber colourway in the ribbon beads, I ran out of time today to make jewellery from them; I did take a photo of the beads on their own but the colour doesn't look right and I'm getting cross with trying to make it look right in Photoshop so have given up (blame the heat again!)

Ah, this is a bit better, a photograph of the long awaited necklace to go with the earrings I photographed earlier in the week. Very pleased with this one, all the hammering did me good in getting rid of some of the crossness with how hot it is!

I thought I lived in a temperate country ... do you know that ancient prophesy foretold of (speaks in a hushed voice) drops of water falling from the sky ... my lawn could so do with some of that at the moment!
I digress, here are a couple of pairs of earrings using some of my own cool black and white triangle beads. There is a matching bracelet but (you guessed it), I have limited the number of photographs I took today because IT IS HOT (did I mention that before?!)

Here is the latest photograph of the seed pods after coating with 10 coats of PMC paste but before firing. I'm not sure I like them any more, I wasn't sure how to finish the tops off; the silver loops are too big and I think overall they look a bit like carrots now! Oh well, I'll get them fired and see what they look like polished with a bit of patina on them. :-)

All the jewellery (except the carrots) will be on sale this Saturday on my stall at the All Saints Art & Craft Market in Trinity Street, Cambridge. I am looking forward to a visit from my sister, Sandy, and some of her work friends. They are having a day out in Cambridge and are planning on going punting (I hope they have plenty of sun screen!)

Sneak peak

I've made lots of new pieces of jewellery for my stall over the last couple of days. I have taken photographs of most of them but no time to process them this evening.

As a sample of the new things that will be on my stall tomorrow, here's a necklace I made with my red fossil triangle beads. I am naming this range red jagged edges.

The piece is a tad under 18 inches long and the black saucers and rounds are onyx.

I need a new name

The new name is not for me, I know who I am (well, most of the time I do!) It's for these:
This morning I have been taking photographs and updating the Lampwork jewellery page of my website with new jewellery. There are a couple of new crocodile bead earrings and a super double length crocodile bead necklace on that page but the stars of this week's updating is this new jewellery range using beads made from recycled Cava bottles and turquoise. Indeed, I have only just realised that I need a new page in my Recycled section for recycled Cava beads; I don't seem to have ever photographed them before and I usually have a few pairs for sale most weeks. Until I get round to making the new page, I'm just putting them on my Lampwork jewellery page.

All I am calling them at the moment is Cava Turquoise which seems very boring so ... I am having a second competition in two days. To enter, please just post a name for this new jewellery range as a message in the comments section or E-mail me using the contact page on my website. I will choose the new name from my favourites but everyone's name who enters will go into a hat and I will draw out a winner whose prize will be a pair of earrings of their choice from the new range.

If you want to see them in person, do stop by my stall at the Art & Craft Market in Cambridge tomorrow, I'm looking forward to showing them off!

This afternoon I have been to see Jonathan Hobbs, the osteopath who has done such sterling work to unfreeze my neck and cure that persistent headache which plagued me for much of January. It's steadily been getting better day by day and I've only had one dose of painkillers in the last three days; I still get the odd twinge but I feel so much better now and I'm able to think. He's suggested that I don't go back for 4-6 weeks when he'll check me out again to make sure I'm not tightening up. In the meantime, I've got some upper back exercises to do which should help.

Now I'm feeling back to normal, I'm finding that suddenly I've got lots of ideas for updating the display area of my stall which was one of my top priority jobs for this month but I just couldn't seem to get "switched on". Now that I'm feeling myself again, I am looking forward to putting it all into practice. I had hoped to have that done by now but watch this space for more news soon!

Back to the jewellery

I have photographed the jewellery that I made with the crocodile and marine walzer beads which I featured in the blog a few days ago. Nice to see some sunshine which enables me to get better photographs but brrrr - it's so cold again!This is just one of six new product pictures added to the Lampwork page of my website.

I didn't set up my stall yesterday at the craft market. We travelled to Cambridge but it was so icy, the roads in the town centre were treacherous, no salting at all and you could actually see the shine where the small sprinkling of snow had been compressed by tyres and feet.

It was a cocktail of things that made me decided not to stay and set up, we got diverted around some roadworks which made us late, a van nearly slid right into us at the end of Jesus Lane which although it was slow motion, that was kind of scarey, my neck was hurting and I'd forgotten to bring any more painkillers with me. It was really difficult to get out of the car, I had my big hiking boots on, they have tread on them that comes up to my armpits but it still took ages to get any traction so I could haul myself out of the passenger seat!

We saw numerous people falling over, bicycles seemed particularly vulnerable to going over (fortunately, they all got up and seemed none the worse for wear), Sharon, my sister who has the Arcturus Jewellery stall stayed and said she also saw two cars having minor accidents. It just didn't feel right and I wasn't in the frame of mind to be my usual charming and pleasant self. Half of me knows that it was the wrong decision because Sharon sold lots of jewellery and had a really great afternoon! Having said that, I'm certain she was jealous when I texted her from my other sister's home where I was warm, dry, eating bacon bagels and petting her two lovely cats, Georgie and Darcy! :-)

Website products updated

Here is a small selection of the new jewellery items I've been making since I last updated the website. In all I have added 13 new ones, the majority are on the Lampwork > Lampwork Jewellery page, but there is also one new Red Mist bracelet being sold with the half the proceeds (when it is sold) to be donated to the Orangutan Foundation on the Lampwork > Red Mist charity page.

I have made more jewellery than that shown on the website but some of the photographs were taken in particularly poor conditions and will need redoing. As always, the way to see absolutely everything I have for sale is to come to my stall on the Art & Craft Market in Cambridge (but I'm not there today).

Have received text messages from my sister of Arcturus Jewellery, who has gone to the market today - she says it is raining there now as well as being very windy - I am so glad I am here instead ... eating shortbread and drinking tea!! (Sorry Sharon!)

Less hazardous selling conditions this week

The weather on Saturday for the craft market was much calmer ... a truly lovely early autumn day. The week before we had wind that was so gusty, we considered putting up a sign saying "Beware - low flying earrings!"

I'm pleased to report that I sold two pairs of earrings and a bracelet from the pink camouflage range and that means a donation of £30.50 to go to Cancer Research UK.

Pink camouflage jewellery

I've named the jewellery that I'll be selling for Cancer Research UK as pink camouflage - this is the name of the latest design for their ribbon. I've made all the beads up into jewellery, photographed them and made a new Cancer Research charity page on my website. Here is a selection of a few of the items on offer:

I've also been making black and white stripes beads very similar to last week's red stripes. I sold all but one of the items made with red striped beads last week so am hoping for a similar result with the black and white ones! The full range of black and white striped jewellery can be viewed on my Lampwork > Lampwork Jewellery page.

I hope everyone has a great weekend, don't forget to visit me on the Art & Craft Market in Cambridge if you're about on Saturday!

Red stripes jewellery

Here are some photographs of the red stripes jewellery I promised. You will undoubtedly have noticed that I haven't used the red carnelian beads yet. They're quite big beads actually and whilst I think they will work for a future pair of earrings for ladies who like big earrings, I decided they were definitely wrong for a bracelet. The black round beads I have used instead are onyx with a lovely smooth shine to them.

I think the carnelian beads will be great for a bold, large beaded necklace - there's a particular bead cap that I want for what I have in mind. I'm going to have to order some in so it might be a week or two before you get to see it. I will make the earrings to match at the same time, in the meantime, there are three matching pairs of earrings to go with the bracelet. You can see them all, and in a larger photograph, on the Lampwork > Lampwork jewellery page of the Sooz Jewels website.

I did some experiments with different colours of these beads yesterday - the black and white one works well, as does a purple one but this is my favourite - the glass colour is a mixture of transparent aquamarine and dark teal over white. I shall definitely be making some of these next week.

There are a few other new things on the website too so don't forget to have a click about for them - or better still, come to my stall on the Art & Craft Market on Trinity Street in Cambridge and see them "in person" tomorrow - have a great weekend everyone!