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!

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.