A rainbow of twistie for Betsy

for Betsy too, originally uploaded by kitzbitz art glass by Jolene.

A quick blog and run from me via Flickr this morning - it shows a selection of twistie that I recently made for a customer on Etsy. I really like this picture even though it is just a quick snap that I sent for approval before posting as it makes me think of some kind of alternative rainbow.....now where did I put that pot of gold?

Frit N Chips

Etsy Listing Polishing Project....

This is something I am aiming to do for all of my Etsy listings over time but for now here is the very first example of my Etsy Etsercise Listing Polishing project.

The whole idea of this project is to create a top notch listing that will work as a template for future listings. What I am aiming for are good images that will draw a potential customer in and a few tricks that will tempt them to stay and browse longer in your shop.

Etsy Etsercise Listing Polishing Tips

Take the best photographs you can

Aviod portrait images opting instead for square or landscape images. Minimum image size of 1000 px is reccommeded but I find both 1000 px by 1000 px and 1000px by 800 px can work really well.

For your primary photo choose the one that looks most interesting as a thumbnail

Use all 5 spaces for images

• Do include a close up of interesting detail
• Do show your product in situ
• Do show your product in an image with other similar products
• If you are marketing your product as a gift show packaging
• You can even show yourself at work or a view of the equipment you use to make your products

Use all 14 tags

• Include specific colours such as sky blue or baby pink
• Include any/all of your team tags

Include tags that describe who the product is for
For instance:

• Mothers day present
• Bridal shower
• For him
• House warming gift

Include a URL that takes you to another related listing or to other relevant products

• If your necklace has matching earrings post the link to them
• If you have a range of products post a link to that shop category

What I haven't covered here is how to write an interesting shop description – I think this merits it own Etsy Etsercise project in the future.

Here are a couple of before and after pics for one of my listings. I hope this post is useful and easy to follow and will help others to create the most professional listings they can too.




Further Reasearch

Jolene x

Frit N Chips lampwork supplies and Kitzbitz Art Beads

Mini Mo' July 2011 - Lemongrass and Little Black Dress

The main colourway for my Little Black Dress Mini Mo’ glasswork this month is CiM Peace and CiM Unique Hades 511820-2 with “The Big Smoke” enameled shards.

I absolutely love the classic combination of black and white together - a little back dress teamed up with vivid colour accessories for a party or with elegant monochrome jewellery for that very important meeting - whichever way you choose to play it, it just works!

So, when I decided on the black and white them for one of my Mini Mo' glasswork themes I kept thinking back to the idea of a trim, elegant and finely detailed little black dress for inspiration. The Little Black Dress murrini follow this idea very well and I am thrilled with them.

The beads on the right show how the twistie behaves both under encasement and melted flat on to the surface of a bead. Unique Hades 511820-2 is an extremely dense black but has a different formula to regular Hades. It webs and spread beautifully on the surface of a bead but also picks up wisps of silver in and oxygen rich flame in much the same way as CiM Gunmetal. It is much stiffer to work with than Gunmetal however and looks a true black when pulled thin. In my opinion it displays the best properties of both of these two CiM blacks.

I have used various graduated shades of grey tone enamels over Peace to create these moody shards to compliment the Little Black Dress Mini Mo'. I've called them "The Big Smoke" because they look so industrial and cloud like when placed on the surface of the bead and twisted in to elegant trails with a stringer.

The main colourway for my Lemongrass Mini Mo’ glasswork is Effetre Petrol Green, Effetre Lemon Yellow Special, Effetre Uranium Yellow transparent and with “Meadow Sweet” enameled shards. The primary colour My Lemongrass Murrini is CiM Soylent, chosen for my club members who work with hot head torches because it is much less reactive to flame chemistry than Petrol Green.

My colour inspiration here comes from my tumbleweed garden at the moment, all long grass and dandelions - I chose the name Lemongrass for the collection though as the glasswork is so much prettier and more sophisticated than that!

My test beads on the left show a core of Petrol Green encased with clear cored twistie and Lemongrass Murrini which have been melted flat. A final layer of encasement gives an optical enlargement to the detail underneath.

I wanted to show how this murrini looks left raised on the surface of a bead too, and so finished this large tab focal bead with a single raised murrini.

More tinkering around with enamels for the "Meadow Sweet" shards - some were created with an additional layer of Effetre Clear 006 encasement and some were blown with enamel on the surface which allows for a pretty layered effect and some subtle organic effects with a reduction flame.

Jolene x

Frit N Chips lampwork supplies and Kitzbitz Art Beads

Style File no.2

Style file is my new Etsy treasury project and Style File no.2 is the second instalment. I'm planning on curating a Style File treasury each month which shows off the work of CPteam, Etsy shops that I heart and fun people that I have met on twitter. Click the pic to take a better look, hope you like.

Jolene x

Gaffer Frit Colour Chart

This is the start of a long term project that I have in mind for Craft Pimp Forum. It is the beginnings of a colour chart showing Gaffer frit in use in lampwork bead making.

Gaffer frit is manufactured in New Zealand by John Croucher and John Leggott and has a coefficient of Expansion (CoE) of 96 but can be used in small quantities very effectively with CoE 104 glass such as Effetre (Moretti), Reichenbach 104, Lauscha, Vetrofond, CiM and other sodalime and soft glass.

There are somewhere up close to 200 shades of frit available in the Gaffer colour range and not all are readily available in the U.K. This little chart is  just the tip of the iceberg really so far.

If anyone has images and notes that they would like to add to the chart I would be very grateful. There will be full credits and links given to everyone who makes a contribution.

I think that this project is going to be a labour of love.

Jolene x

Frit N Chips lampwork supplies and Kitzbitz Art Beads

Messy testing - Great Bluedini

Great Bludini

Then you need to get a little Great Bludini in your life! The colour of this stuff is utterly beautiful no matter which way I melt it. It makes me think of the taste of Blue Raspberry Slush Puppies (remember those?).

This selection of twistie has all been made using pulled over a base of Peace, using either224 Light Sky Blue or Reichenbach 104 3206 Iris Dense Blue for opaque contrast.

These beads show how the various patterns of Great Bludini twistie looks when melted flat over a core of 224 Light Sky Blue and encased with beautiful Laucsha Clear Glass.

I think that Great Bludini is such a beautiful saturated colour that it lends itself to twistie making beautifully, coming out a delicate aqua tone when heavily diluted with white and pale blues.

Jolene x
Frit N Chips lampwork supplies and Kitzbitz Art Beads

Abstract UK landscape

Abstract UK landscape by cards by Jane

this is a superbly clever treasury by Cards by Jane and I'm thrilled that my green lampy stringers make up part of this wonderful abstract landscape.

Jane makes a fab selection of handcrafted delights including beautiful decoupage style cards but my favourite has got to be this cute Elephant card, he's absolutely charming. Jane sells her cards in order to raise funds for the charity AYME which stands for Association of Young People with M.E. Which is a very worthy cause.

Jolene x

Kitzbitz Art Glass & Frit N chips lampwork supplies

Artists Spotlight - Claire of Clasibags

Today I'd like to introduce you to Claire of Clasibags. She is an extremely talented textile artist and accessory designer who works with felt (that she also makes herself!) and with yarn and wool. This little tactile black and white number is my current most favourite of all Claire's bags so far but heck she is always surprising me and filling me full of uncharacteristically girly accessory lust with each new creation she makes.




I adore the way that Claire adorns her bags with her own special coordinating knitted and felted flowers. She also offers these in her sophisticated a range of stylish brooches.

You can find out more about Claire's gorgeous designs including this unashamedly funky hot pink number by following Clasicat Designs on Facebook. You acn also get the latest gossip from Claire on Twitter and follow her lovely blog.

Jolene x

Mini Mo' Club June 2011 - Sea Heather

After taking a full year off from melting glass during pregnancy and after my son Ethan was born, I am very excited to be back to work and creating lovely little Mini Mo' packages again. This selection of glasswork for June is the very first collection for the the Mini Mo' Club this year.

The main colourway for Sea Heather Mini Mo is CiM Lapis and Effetre Dark Turquoise, two of my absolute favourite glass colours. I have teamed up elements of Sea Heather with CiM Crocus in my first test bead set and really put the murrini through its paces. On the left you can see Sea Heather murrini both encased and as a surface embellishment. The murrini in the round bead at the fore of this picture has been melted flat, spot heated and the twisted to form a delicate swirl.

I have encased the murrini in the focal bead for this set. First I made a small tube bead core from CiM Crocus and attached two murrini, one on each side. Next I heated the murrini gently until it domed and then used a brass pokey tool to indent the center of each murrini. I heated a gather of Lauscha soft clear glass and spot encased over the murrini fully to trap and air bubble and protect the murrini from smearing. Neat I put down some twistie in between the murrini for interest and then spot encased and melted te encasing layer smooth and marvered in to shape.

The three murrini visible inside my Sea Heather focal Bicone have each been treated differently, One was attached and immediately encased, one was melted partially flat and then encased. The third was melted completely flat and then encased.



Pictured above is one of my test bead sets for the Sea Heather shards. I've used CiM Gunmetal with is pewter patina as a contrast to the glossy aqua colour of these pretty enamelled shards.

In this large organic focal I have used a fairly substantial piece of shard and covered big section of surface area of the bead, dusting with some white enamel to add interest and texture just before garaging.

Here are all of the Mini Mo's for June together in their pretty packaging.

As an extra special treat I also made a second murrini pull, Atlantic, to send with the June Mini Mo's as thank you to my Mini Mo' Club members.You can see it both as surface decoration and also under deep encasement in my Pink Atlantic bead set shown here.



Jolene x

Frit N Chips lampwork supplies and Kitzbitz Art Beads

Artists Spotlight - Mel Harding

I have been looking forward to writing this spotlight since the start of the Craft Pimp artist spotlight project. All week various things have happened including the blogger upgrade blip and a whole evening down at A&E with my eldest (don't worry folks, it turned out to be nothing serious after all).

It's almost the end of the week and I can finally sit down with a mug of coffee and surf about the net looking at Mel's beautiful creations. Mel and I have a fetish in common for winged things. This intricate enamelled six piece topper is my current favourite piece in Mel's brand new Etsy store called >Inkydoodlecrafts

These seaside scenes are rather gorgeous too and would look lovely in tiny driftwood frames. You can also find pretty toppers from Mel at >Inkydoodlecrafts on Ebay.

Mel is moving in the exciting direction of using her own original designs exclusively throughout her product range and I have been lucky enough to see her first original topper up close, you can read more about the birth of a dragonfly on Mel's own blog. When I think about Mel and her work and creative spark I can imagine such bright things in the future, demoing to packed crowds at the NEC or pitching products and original artwork to the buyers for Ideal World. I have this lovely feeling that I will get to say one day that I knew her before she was famous.

Jolene x

A Perfect Circle

A Perfect Circle by Anna McDade

I am sure you will agree that Anna has created an stylish treasury jam packed with some extremely beautiful hand crafted treasures.

I'm thrilled that Anna has chose one of my new scarab tattoo bead pendant bead sets to be featured in her beautifully curated collection.

I am finding it just too hard to select just one piece from Anna's stunning Etsy inventory to showcase and so I wont.....I'll show you three!




Watch this space for a more in depth feature on Anna in the near future and she and I are fellow CPteam  members on Etsy.

Jolene x
Kitzbitz Art Glass

Flutterby Butterflies

Flutterby Butterflies by minipretties

A big thank you to Christina of mini pretties for featuring a piece of my lampwork in her beautiful butterfly treasury. My featured beads are is called "the one with the Moth"











Christina makes and sells a broad range of fabric and crochet items including lip balm holders, hair clips and brooches and textiles for dolls houses. I really like her newborn baby clothing best and love these little slippers!

Denim and Blue Plaid Soft Sole Crib Shoes

Jolene x
Kitzbitz Art Beads

Artists Spotlight - Ruthies Ramblings

Today I have the pleasure of blogging about an amazing beader, Ruth Duck.

Ruth had her first experience of beading when she was little and told me that she had been taught by her mother to make a daisy stitch chain with picots when she was four. After a long break Ruth rediscovered her early fascination for beading about three years ago when she went through an arch she hadn't been been through before at her local craft centre and found her local bead shop. It was like walking into Aladdin's cave and Ruth left there that day with an armful of beading materials and beads and treasure.

I really like this cuff bracelet and amazingly Ruth had only tried bead embroidery for the first time about three weeks before making it. It was her entry for a Making Jewellery magazine bracelet competition and it took second place. When I asked Ruth about the inspiration behind the design she explained - The coin came about because I was skint at the time and didn't want to fork out for a cabochon.


Ruth designed the pattern for this delicious peyote cuff one day when she was bored at the day job. She describes this Celtic cuff as a cow to work out but even worse to stitch. Since then Ruth has moved on to using computer software to design new patterns for her peyote work but her designs will always start out on paper first.


 This necklace is a real work of art. I asked about the inspiration behind it's creation and Ruth said - I’ve always like Egypt (used to have a bright yellow bathroom with Egyptian stencils all over and full of cheap and nasty nick knacks although the camel was rather cool) and I got a book out of the library about jewellery design through the ages, just to get an idea of the thought process behind designing a piece and there were some lovely Egyptian pieces. I had an idea to create a beaded Egyptian style piece and Google some images for inspiration and spotted the piece I made out of gold and enamels. bead embroidered pendent based on ancient Egyptian jewellery design. The polymer clay scarab was created by the very talented Caroline Harvey. In total this beautiful embroidered bead necklace took about 9 months from idea to completion.

Visit Ruthies blog and flickr to find out more about Ruth.

Jolene x

Colors of Sunrise

Colors of Sunrise is a stunningly curated treasurey by of gipsy spirit with the most gentle and serene colour soft pastel colour pallete.

I was thrilled to see my Palma Violets bead set featured among so many other lovely hand crafted goodies. I'm particularly drawn to those very pretty edible butterfies (and how could I resist!) by Lisa G of Sugar Robot

Gypsy Sprit has an indisputable amount of good taste an style. Check out a few more of her collections (images clickable) above and you will see just what I mean. Thank you ever so much for the feature,

Jolene xx
Kitzbitz