Branching out in Bead Design

A couple of weeks ago I went to the beautiful state of Tasmania to attend a workshop with the german lampwork artist Anastasia. I have been a fan of Anastasia's work since I discovered lampwork back in 2006. Some of the lessons we were taught involved the use of enamels and fine stringer, such as with her tree beads. The following are some of my beads made in the class, the first has the addition of a tiny owl (awwwwww).





This floral one featues some honeycomb murrini for the stamens of the flowers, pretty cool stuff, though it takes a long time to make the murrini so we were given some of the demonstration version that Anastasia made.


Since I have returned I have been creating more trees using Helios glass, which reduces to a golden lustre, on a plain base, but adding fine frit to emulate leaves or dots for the occasional fruit blob. It is a very relaxing process but I have some ideas that will require pushing the boundaries a bit. Here is the forest so far:

Ring a Ring a Rosy

I have been making quite a variety of beads, but enjoying the ring thing a lot! Here's a couple of fingerfuls.



I particularly like the eye and flower design, decorative and interesting. The middle finger ring is made from Double Helix 'Helios' a beautiful lustering gold colour.

Below are a few more for good measure. I think if you are going to wear a glass ring, it had better be a showcase for the glass and therefore cannot be tiny and boring. It should catch the eye, well, that's what I think, and all the three year olds that have played with them would agree with me!