Got My Ingredients!

Yesterday I was excited to receive my package of Bead Soup ingredients from my partner Jane Haag of MJane Designs!

When I opened the package, she presented me with 2 lovely gift boxes wrapped in raffia bows!  It was like having a surprise party!  I guess that's why it's called a Bead Soup Party....duh!

Inside each box were beads, spacers and of course a lovely handmade focal and clasp.  She gave me SO much to work with.  I think I have enough to make a necklace, a bracelet and probably a couple of earrings.  I kinda feel like I was stingy with the ingredients I sent her.  Is it fair to send more extra spices after the initial mailing date?

I don't know how much I can divulge about the contents but I'm sure it's OK to say that Jane has lovely taste!  Lori did a good job of pairing us up because I sent Jane mostly my lampwork beads.  Jane being a silversmith sent me some of her beautiful handmade pieces!  The focal she sent was of course her own work of art, as well as the clasp....I love them!  She sent me some beautiful hammered pieces in silver too.  Each set was labeled as her own, or where they came from....She sent an extra focal that came from Africa, but that wasn't necessary since her own handmade focal was the best thing in the whole package!

I think I've arranged and rearranged about 25 different combinations for a jewelry menu, but I'm sure I'll do about 50 more before deciding since Jane sent so many ingredients!  One thing I'm sure of, is that I will use  all of her handmade silver pieces with my lampwork beads to create my meal; plus use some of the extra beads she sent me as garnish. 

I plan to serve set of earrings as an appetizer.

 A bracelet will be served as the bread (Southern cooks always provide bread with the soup).

The main course will be the necklace because the combination of her silver with my beads will make for a hearty meal.

Don't know if the set will match, but variety is the "spice" of life!  Right?

Bon Appetit!

Just Mailed My Soup to Jane!

My Bead Soup Partner is Jane Haag.  She and I have been in touch, sharing addresses and websites. 


I selected some of my favorite beads with some sweet colors and I already know that she's going to make something absolutely gorgeous with them.


I am now anxiously waiting to see what she sends to me!  She is a silver-smith and she has some really lovely work on her website.  I already know the clasp she will send me will be amazing! 

Bead Soup!

I'm very excited to be a participant in Lori Andersons' Bead Soup Party!  It is my first time and I hope I'm able to put together something interesting for my partner.  

The thing is, I'm not much of a jewelry maker.  I am a lampwork artist and that's where I'd prefer to spend my time.  Now, that doesn't mean I don't have some findings and other necessary supplies to make jewelry, I have to make things with my beads to wear sometimes.  

This past winter, I spent some time with my friend Marie Weulfing who taught me some of her tips and tricks of the jewelry making trade.  She makes lovely pieces, and she's a very good customer!  I'm also one of her good customers since I often give her a handful of my favorite beads and ask her to make me something with them for me. So under her tutelage, I've learned some of the skills I'll need to know to put together something that looks professional.

So in the mean time, I'm on the look out for new ideas  for jewelry designs.  I like to hang out on Etsy and Artfire to look at all the beautiful work that designers put on the web.  There's no end to the inspiration I find there!

While I was in FL this winter, I made so many beads!  I've selected just a few focal beads to show off here.  I will have a hard time deciding which beads I'll send to my partner.  I know that she doesn't have to use all the beads I send to her, but I'm hoping she will.  I'm going to select beads that coordinate.  I'll probably go to Michaels and pick up some cute charms and complimentary elements that should make it easy for my partner to get inspired.  

The Need to Bead

It's been way too long since the last time I wrote.  I have no excuses, just haven't done it.  I usually do it when I'm inspired by other blogger friends.  I guess what I need to do is keep an open tab on my computer to remind me.

I have been in Florida for the last 6 months where I was able to spend a lot of time on the torch.  I had the opportunity to take a class while I was down there with Roscio Bearer.  I also spent some time with my friend Marie Weulfing who is also a bead maker.  I didn't get to spend much time with my friend Shirley Groser, which I regret, but we keep up on the phone and Facebook.  I was really hoping to get to do a little "big glass" work with Rick, but he wasn't doing any classes because he was busy with working on his own body of work.  Maybe next year.

 So, while in Florida I made tons of beads.  I have such a stash I've gotten way too far behind photographing and posting them on Etsy or Artfire.  That's another one of my shortcomings....photography and prepping the photos to be posted online.  Here's a few pics of some of my work.

So as I inserted these pictures, I got very frustrated!  Another reason I have a hard time getting off my butt to write in my blog is frustration!  I really wanted to arrange these photos differently, but they just wouldn't move where I wanted them to, so this is what I got.  

A Community of Hearts

Ever since I started making glass beads way back in 1995, I have met some of the nicest people and made some very good friends who share my interest in lampwork and jewelry.

Something about the people I've met, and some I only know via the Internet, are special in a unique way.  Most of the folks are bead makers who I have admired and aspired to be as skilled as they are.  Some of the people I've come across are jewelry artists who buy my beads to create their special works of art.  I've never met a soul who hasn't given me pleasure to know and share with.

Around 2000 I started teaching lampworking on a HotHead torch at "Stone and Paper Art Studio" in Mandeville, LA.  Mary Elaine Bernard was my boss and she has become one the dearest friends I have.  I made tons of friends who were interested in learning this new medium, and we had a ball doing it.  A couple of my students went on to become very accomplished bead makers!  The point is, having the experience to work with Mary Elaine and all the students I taught was a blessing.  By the way, Mary Elaines son Eddie Bernard is a well known glass blower in New Orleans!  I admired his work for years and through his mother he has also befriended me....but that's another story!

I sort of fell out of the habit of making beads during a troubling time in my life, but when I picked it back up in 2005, I sought out people of like minds to learn from.  Of course that brought me more new friends!  

I started searching out beadmkers in my area.  I found Shirley Groser in Jensen Beach, FL and she and I have become buddies ever since.  She showed me how she does boro and let me give it a try...I found that I was just going to stick to soft glass!  She and I attended out first Gathering together in Louisville, KY.  There I made even more friends, people I've run across on eBay, Etsy, and Artfire.  The Gathering has turned out to be a turning point for me in "gathering" more friends ever since.  I've decided to volunteer to work with the ISGB on one of their committees and I'm going to volunteer 8 hours at the next Gathering in Seattle.  I can't wait!  I'm going with another great friend, Marie Woelfing who I mentioned in my previous blog.

Another big venue I've found for making friends is Beads and More classifieds on Yahoo where I've sold lots of my beads and have found outstanding bargains on jewelry findings, books, tutorials and more.  Today I got a message there that Lori Anderson of "Bead Soup" is giving away some wonderful DVD's! Check out her blog here.......http://lorianderson-beadsoupblogparty.blogspot.com/. I plan on participating in her next Bead Soup project.  BaM classifies has been a great place to find friends who share my joy of creation!

All in all, I love to collect friends!  They are better than beads, aren't expensive, and don't break!

Wheaton Arts Festival

I have long heard of the Wheaton Glass Arts Village and wished to go there to learn more about the history of American glass.

"History of WheatonArts The important American glass industry began in southern New Jersey because of the availability of natural resources such as wood, sand, soda ash and silica. The nation’s earliest successful glass factory was founded in 1789 by Caspar Wistar in nearby Salem County in Millville. Many of the nation’s foremost glass factories operate in South Jersey."  (from wheatonarts.org)

My friend Marie Woelfing called me about a month prior to tell me she had the great honor of demonstrating the art of making glass beads for the Annual Wheaton Arts Fall Festival!  I was so excited for her and it gave me a great excuse to go.  I had never done anymore than pass through the states of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey and Delaware and this gave me the opportunity to see a little more.

So we traveled to Millville, NJ on a great adventure!  The first thing I did was look for Marie.  Here she is making beads and showing her audience how she makes a glass bead.  That's her husband Otto in the background, he is a lapidary artist and makes some gorgeous cabs from what look like ordinary rocks.  


Marie is also a very talented and skilled jewelry designer using her own beads (mine too! she's one of my best customers) crystals and sterling silver to make bracelets, necklaces, earrings, and key chains.  She and Otto spend lots of time on the road going to craft fairs selling their wares.  They seem to do very well at all their venues otherwise I can't imagine doing it.  Marie and Otto enjoy it, the travel, and their common interests including dancing!  They are quite the little couple!

After my husband and I had scoped out some of the other booths we came back and I reported to Marie some of the different booths she should go and see.  She let me spell her for a while and I got to do some demonstrations while she was away.  Can't say that anything I made was special.  It was kinda like trying to cook in someone else's kitchen, trying to find tools and stringers to do what I wanted to do.  It was great fun to take part in Wheaton Arts Festival even though I wasn't the featured artist.

Kesha Koy  www.keshakoy.com

While out and about looking at what the other glass artists were doing I met Keysha Koy who creates wonderful pendants with borocilicate glass.  As we chatted we discovered we had a friend in common and that was pretty cool!  But her pendants were so unique.  I wish I had a close up pic of them.  They were flatter than the regular boro pendants you see out there everywhere, yet they still had that dimensional quality.  Then to top that off she added outside raised elements on one side, the other, or on the outside edges. She had just sold one of the prettiest pendants and was getting ready to put something new up.  Below you can see more of the pendants that I described.   I've listed her website below, but you can see her work better on Etsy.  Just do a search for her in "sellers."

SO!  I'm not through yet, that was just the first day!  The next day we came back so that we could see the "Big Glass" workers.   

The first ones we visited were the traveling glassblowers of Wheaton Arts.  These guys carry a furnace, bench, annealer and all the tools needed to blow glass on the road to perform demonstrations everywhere from schools to other festivals.   While the gaffer created a vase out of purple glass, his partner would describe everything he was doing.  Here you see the gaffer being rather flamboyant by blowing holding the pipe up high...most do it more casually.  After they finished the demo I went over to the tent where they were selling things that they had made the day before and we had an interesting conversation.  Glass people are always interesting to talk to.  I bought a purple vase before I left and it was signed on the bottom!


We then went to the museum where we saw more glass than we thought was possible.  By the time we got out of there it had been 2 hours and we hardly noticed the time go by with so much to see.  I learned that the King of England didn't want the Colonists to make glass in America so he wouldn't allow English blowers to go over.  But the Colonists finagled German glassblowers to come over and that was where it started!  I also learned that a lot of the glass out there that may look like junk may not be, though I wish I could tell the difference.

This is the original stack, circa 1790.

Our last stop was to see the original glass furnace of Wheaton and watch the gaffers make glass pumpkins.  It was neat to go to the original place where some of the first glass vessels were produced in America.  The artists that work here are big names in the glass world and come to places like Wheaton to hone their skills and make new creations.  Wish I could tell you this fellows name but I forgot it :(   In the picture below the gaffer is standing right in front of the bottom of that stack you see from the outside (on the left).   We did end up purchasing a glass pumpkin!

 And that is the end of this long tale about my adventure to see the Wheaton Glass Arts Village.  Hope I didn't bore you, but there was so much to tell, and believe me I kept it short!  It was all so exciting to me and will always be a great memory.

To Blog or Not to Blog? That Is the Question!

As an artist who really wants to just sit at the torch all day 

creating little works of art, I see from what my peers are doing, I must do more than that.  I need to focus on putting the sets of beads that I've created together and take pictures of them to post on the web for sale!  I must focus on being more savy about promotion and sales of my work.  I've got work on Etsy http://www.etsy.com/shop/GracefulGlassDesigns ArtFire http://www.artfire.com/ext/shop/studio/gracedorsey, and occasionally I post some on eBay, but it's not getting the kind of attention I'd like to see.  

     After looking at some of my peers websites and stores I noticed that most of them have a blog.  They are usually entertaining, some write on things directly associated with the beads they are presently creating, then some go a little off topic and that's kind of interesting.  I do like to expound upon my beads and other topics, so why not create a blog?  Especially if it helps give me exposure, after all my goal is to garner more people to see and buy my work to be incorporated into beautiful jewelry!  

 My forte is really just making beads and not making jewelry with them.  I'm very critical of my own craftsmanship.  Occasionally after spending several hours stringing, re-stringing, twisting, untwisting, wasting materials and blowing my top, I come up with a piece of jewelry that pleases me.  So you will rarely see me making jewelry.  However, I've recently made a necklace that I think is worthy of putting out there for the public to buy and feel confident that it will stay together and have no flaws....that I know of.

 So to get out of jewelry making I found some bottle openers at Michaels that I could put my beads on.  They looked pretty nice, so I gave one away as a gift.  My friend was so thrilled with it she told me that I MUST start selling them.  So I made more. 

Another great find I happened upon at the recent "Gathering" (besides new friends) was a cool mandrel that I could make cabochons with!  When I saw it I had all kinds of ideas for what I could do with it!  The first thing I thought of was purse, or handbag hangers.  I'd seen them used by some of my friends and they were all commercially made, probably in China.  Well mine would be one of a kind!  So I found a supplier and bought a bunch of them and now I've got them on the web and in stores.  Some of the cabochons I made didn't quite fit the purse hangers so I put them up for grabs on "Beads and More" classified.  I've sold a few of those but I wish I'd sold all of them.

So now I've completed my first blog!  I hope I'll find some followers!  

Take care all and if you have any ideas for me, I'm more than open to them.  You can contact me at gracedorsey@att.net.