Postage revision

As Royal Mail staff have suspended their industrial action until after Christmas, I am pleased to let you know that postage rates on my shopping cart have been revised downwards to their usual levels: a package to the UK is £1.50 for up to £24.99 and £3.00 for anything over £25.00.

International posting will also be resumed immediately.

Encasing

I've been practising a new way of encasing. Encasing beads is really tricky to learn. Beginners find it maddeningly difficult. I've only been making beads in earnest for about two years and I remember well how long it took me to learn and how many beads ended up a horrible mess. The only method I could get to work was as described in Kimberley Adams book which starts with a lollipop of clear glass. Actually, it could be any colour of glass but usually clear or a light transparent colour works best. I've tended to stick to that method as it works for me, although I do sometimes get a small number of tiny bubbles trapped in the encasing.

My favourite beadmaker, Laura Sparling, has been making some wonderful tuturials in PDF format and she's even had a got a moving and talking version of one of them so I thought I'd go back in time and have a go at learning a different encasing method - you never know, it might be better! I couldn't make this work from the descriptions in the books I had at the time - if only these had been available then!

Here's what I have come up with, no trapped bubbles! These orange beads are quite simple, just clear glass some transparent frit and then encased in Effetre pink (which I always think looks more like a pale beige than pink ...) and the result is that the frit is magnified and looks like it's just floating around inside the bead. I have them on my table teamed up with some other lovely things which just look great with them. These are going to be made into a very special bracelet tomorrow!

These are Vetrofond black with raku frit rolled, heated and cooled a few times to bring out the colour and then heavily encased with Vetrofond clear. The photography conditions haven't been too great, it was grey and overcast and so the glass looks grey too, but hopefully you get the idea. These beads are already a pair of earrings which you'll be able to buy from my stall in Cambridge on Saturday!

This man needs a shave!

One of my sisters, Sandy, and her long time partner, Chris recently told me about one of their friends and his son who are doing a bike ride across Vietnam in aid of Stoke Mandeville Spinal Unit children’s ward. Sandy and Chris's friend's son had an accident when he was 15, the specialists thought he might not walk again but the unit got him walking again and this is their thank you.

Sandy's partner, Chris, has said that if his Twitter and on-line contacts' contributions amount to £500, then he will shave his beard off ... we are all extremely keen for this to happen so if anyone wants to help it on its way off and donate to a great cause as well, all the details are here.

By the way, Chris is the one on the left in the picture ...! ;-)

Some new beads

At last, here is a blue version of my dimpled nugget beads. I have tried loads of blue combinations, as blue is my favourite colour, it had to be just perfect so I took my time. It's a mixture of Effetre Ocean and Reichenbach's Mystic blue. I'm very pleased with them but I'm not sure any of the jewellery made with the current batch is going to make it as far as the stall - I'm pretty sure I'll be keeping it myself! I have plans for a purple and aqua version but none of the prototypes are quite right yet.

I've also been making beads for a regular customer. She wanted a pink version of the akamai beads which have so far been made in the following colourways:

• turquoise/violet
• orange/brown
• blue/green

I'm sure a pink one would be as well received as the others so this is what I've come up with for her.

The other akamai beads had blobs of sis (silvered ivory stringer)* swirled inbetween the colours but that didn't work with pink so I've used a combination of opaque pink, EDF and an intensely pink frit blend. I showed this bead to my customer on Saturday and I think she liked it but I showed her the new pink dimpled nuggets at the same time and she preferred those! All the same, I think I'll make a batch of these cos I like 'em!

*For non-beadmakers, sis is a rod of ivory coloured glass with silver foil burnished into the surface, the rod and foil is then melted into a blob and when it's still in it's melted state pulled out using tweezers into a thinner rod. The thinner rod is then applied sparingly to beads in the case of the akamai beads.

Fender bender

DH has been dropping me off at the Art & Craft Market and unloading my numerous boxes, battery for my lights and assorted paraphernalia for the best part of six years. There are numerous high kerbs in Cambridge which are all angling to scratch your alloy wheels, there are bollards strategically placed below eye level to trap you into scratching your paintwork. Cylists - without proper lights or high visibility clothing - appear from all over the place out of the gloom to dent your bonnet. So far DH has avoided all of the hazards Cambridge has placed in his path.

Not so my sister, Sharon, who also has a jewellery stall at the Art & Craft Market. Her car(s) have had one or two encounters with the bollards and of course, it wasn't her fault ... ever ... Additionally, when a battery falls off her trolley, it wasn't the hazardous placing of the battery near the edge of the trolley, it was the pedestrian who stepped in front of her making her have to come to a halt faster than the battery could cope with.

So used to hearing tales of why the latest dent or scrape on her car wasn't her fault, I think that he must have caught someone-else's-faultitis from her because when this happened to his car ...... then, of course, it was the fault of another stallholder's inconsiderate parking.

The cost of putting this right will probably wipe out any profit I made on Saturday and so I might just as well have stayed at home and watched Merlin! (Instead of having to wait for the repeat the following Friday).