Spooky Dinner........ #blogtpoberfest13 day 31

A special request from the kidlets for a spooky dinner. Sausage hat witch with carrot for a nose and peas for eyes. This Halloween treat has gone down a storm :-D I also had a crack at making pumpkin soup. It was a pretty simple recipe, just pumpkin and onion with a potato and a carrot simmered in stock and whizzed up in a blender. Tastes lush!

Happy Halloween, Jolene xx

Display and packaging solution... #Blogtoberfest13 day 27

I been accepted for a regular pitch at my local artisan craft market so you will now be able to come and brows my glassy goodies and see me demo lampwork bead making at The Duck Pond. My first fair will be a weekender Christmas Market and it is just a three weeks away so today I have been playing about with some display and packaging solutions.

Earring note cards

I've come up with a sweet little solution using some note cards and envelopes that I have been hoarding for some time. This will help keep everything looking clean and crisp if the weather takes a turn for the wet and windy!

Hopefully these will hit the mark with shoppers as lovely little stocking fillers :-D I've nearly got everything together for a portable demo set up and now the date is getting close I'm feeling quite excited!

Jolene xx

A splash of colour #blogtoberfest13 day 19

We planted sprinkled a random pack of seeds around in the garden this year, a flower mix designed to attract bees and butterflies. These were the surprise of the summer, just 3 of these gorgeous plants grew in among the Poppies and Marigolds. There was just one in each colour and after asking around I think now they may be Asters, whatever they are they were a wonderful splash of colour and I adore them.

Jolene xx

52 little things week 42 - #Blogtoberfest13 day 17

It's week 42! and there are only 68 day left until Christmas!! If you lampwork and are in the mood to make some cool Crimbo beads for the kiddies then check out this nifty free Santa tutorial by Laney Mead or Emma Green's sweet Plop the Penguin tute on the BCCA website :-D

www.bechildcanceraware.org/beads-of-courage/lampwork-tutorials/

If you have a tutorial that would be great for Beads of Courage booster beads on your website of blog and would like it to be featured on the Be Child Cancer Aware website then please do let me know xx


Here are a couple of links to some of our other fabulous Craft Pimp Year Long Challenge bloggers


Lynn of Nemeton
Heather of Heather Kelly Glass 
Sue of BlueBoxStudio
Linda of Earthshine Lampwork Bead and Jewellery Design

And here are some links for BCCA - Beads of Courage
http://www.bechildcanceraware.org/beads-of-courage
https://www.facebook.com/bechildcanceraware

Have a super day, Jolene xx

Bead embroidery heart pin - #Blogtoberfest day 16

I decided to be brave and take up the "Operation tackle that bead stash" facebook group October Stashbuster Challenge and make a bead embroidered heart for my daughter. The theme this month is sow's ear to silk purse - taking something useless and ugly and making that into something to treasure. At first I thought about making a hair barrette but the heart became quite weighty with so much embellishment and I went for a sturdy kilt pin to finish it instead. The whole thing took something like 16 hours from start to finish and it was an utterly absorbing project. Here is a little photo montage of how the stitching went...



This big brooch started out as a sample swatch of PVC tablecloth with a sweet pattern. As we could only use things to make our challenge piece that we already had I used fun foam to give the beadwork some support and backed it with scraps of self adhesive dolls house carpet....

This whole project was great fun from start to finish and my little girl loves her pin.
Why not set yourself a challenge to try something new today?

Jolene xx

Lucky and Chrissie Jewellery by Michelle Ross #Blogtoberfest13 day 13

My lovely pal Michelle Ross over at Flying Pineapple Designs recently sent me some pictures of her super clever interchangeable jewellery design which features one of my most recent beads. She has added toggles on either side of a Lucky Lobster coin bead so that it can be worn as either a bracelet or necklace. She has teamed up her Lucky and Chrissie beads with some of Diane Turton's hand dyed silk ribbons and the results speak for themselves, so wearable and pretty.

Jolene xx

Fab sea themed jewellery designs by Michelle

Some unexpected publicity #blogtoberfest13 day 2

So this is mad as a box of frogs right, my pal emails me this morning and says I saw you in the paper again today....the whole thing draws a blank with me because I have no reason to know of lately to make the Uxbridge Gazette! Turns out that my pic must have been pulled from stock photos and the article was about the top 5 things to do locally this week - No 3 (with a pic of me from the first beadathon last year...the one where I had not slept for nigh on 24 hours!) advertising the Uxbridge Bead fair this weekend.

I decided to take it as a good omen, put my big girl pants on and rang to book a table! It will be my first ever bead fair and I feel quite nervous about it. Wish me luck :-D

Jolene xx

Applying 3D flower murrini #blogtoberfest13 day 1

I'm starting #Blogtoberfest13 with a bang and this lovely tutorial for applying 3D flower murrini that I wrote back in January this year but until now it was just in pdf form rather than on my blog. I hope you like it xx













Step 1
• Spot heat your bead where you would like your murrini to go, pick up your murrini with long nose tweezers or murrini hemostats and plunge the point end in to your softened bead.

Step 2
• Cap your murrini with a small dot of clear to protect the surface of the murrini and stop the pattern from closing up when heated.









Step 3
• Heat your clear cap in a low flame and press it gently so that the end of your murrini starts to flare out. Repeat this step as many times as you like to help your petals to open more but remember to heat and press gently each time, opening the bloom is a gradual process.

Step 4
• Melt a larger dot of glass on the end of the clear rod and drop the glass on top of your clear cap and then flame cut the drop from the rod. Check your newly applied glass for any scum or unwanted bubbles and remove this with tweezers. Checking and removing any impurity at this early stage whilst your murrini is still cool is best. Trying to remove a blemish in the clear layer when your murrini is hot may distort your flower.

Step 5
• Heat and pat down your larger clear cap
gently. Do this several times, working
slowly to prevent smearing your murrini.
Your clear cap at this stage should be
much wider than your murrini.

Step 6
• Heat your clear cap and allow gravity to
pull the clear down over the sides of your
flower murrini. You can use a pick at this
stage to ease the clear cap down at the
sides until it meets your base bead.
You can go on to fully encase your base
bead around your murrini “bumps” or
continue to use gentle heat and gravity to
shape your clear lens over the top of your
flower murrini.

I hope you have enjoyed my flower murrini tutorial, Jolene x

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