Zephyr, 006 and making florals...

Just recently I've been on a floral kick, I've always wanted to make beads that are like bottled gardens with layers and layers of prettiness to explore inside them. As you can imagine, with two preschool age children and my partner who works shifts, that my studio time is very limited. I could never quite justify to myself investing an hour or more on every bead which (at least in the early stages of the sharp learning curve) would very likely turn out to be for the fugly jar (or my daughters pocketses).

I found myself waxing lyrical to a bead making chum t'other day about my bead making daydreams and she told me just to do it! I suddenly realised that I have spent the first 4 years of my lampworking journey teaching myself how to make the beautiful preparatory elements I need for making the wistful cottage garden beads of my imagination and it was good time to get brave and start to put it all together. That evening I spent a fair bit of time playing about at the torch, making a series of beads that increased in complexity.

These are my favourites of the night

The orange blossom vessel bead is my favourite I've made to date and I accidentally stayed up torching til 2am without even realising the time!

Anyway, to the main point of this blog post, Zephyr and Effetre 006, Double Helix Glassworks just recently manufactured and release a super douper clear glass. It was said to be scum free, optically brilliant and completely compatible with all of the DH silverglass range. At nearly 6 times the price (in the UK) of standard Effetre 006 I did my best to resist temptation until the very first discussion thread started about Zephyr on Frit Happens Forum where Julie Fountain of Lush Lampwork shared her discovery that Zephyr doesn't etch.

It just sent my brain fizzing and popping with possibilities of selective acid etching and I just had to try it out with some floral bead sets I had been planning to make.

Unetched 006 floral cane beds over CiM Khaki and fine silver leaf

Etched beads, floral canes encased with Effetre 006 over Zephyr encased Effetre Dark Turquoise.

Etched beads, Zephyr encased canes over a base of beautiful CiM Commando.











I am so thrilled with the results, matt beads with glossy detail and glossy beads with soft powder toned petals, I am so glad I bit the bullet and bought some Zephyr in now. It's FAB.

Treasury round up in October

A selection of some of the beautiful treasuries that I have been lucky enough to be featured in this month

Many thanks to
Georgie of flamingbeadies
Helen of helengbeads
Roma of jurooma and the lovely
Aimee of aimeesrockworks


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Mini Mo Sept 2011 - Tealy Dan and Pierrot

The first colourway I wanted to make for September was a lush deep selection of teal and deep aquas. When the name Tealy Dan popped into my head as I was pulling twistie, I must admit, it did make me smile. The glass I have used in this collection are  CiM Great Bludini, CiM Mermaid and Effetre Opalino Grass Green. I absolutely love using Great Bludini in twistie making and for murrini, it's such a saturated colour. Many other aqua transparents look weak and insipid when diluted and pulled out into thin cane.

The beads to the left show elements of Tealy Dan under encasement. The base glass I've used is Great Bludini and Unique Celeadon 511402-2.

Here is a necklace that I have made by laying stripes of Tealy Dan twistie over a core of 511402-2 and then melting, shaping and encasing the entire bead. The beautiful silk ribbon is by Diane Turton of SowZere and the pretty hammered ring is by Diane Cook of Dilunah Designs.

I love making monochrome glasswork but wanted to shake it up a bit for my second colourway by putting the emphasis on white rather than having white as light accent on a heavy black background. Peace and Hades are my absolute twistie making faves when I am planning to make encased twistie cane. I recently tried making twistie for another project using Effetre white and is was just too runny for me!

I had an image in my head of the classic Pierrot mime make up and found just the red shade I had been looking for in CiM Unique Lipstick 511140-1.

My Three year old has a fixation about crabs, shells and the seaside at the moment and I have been making a few themed beads for her so it wasn't too much of a surprise when I started to play with Pierrot glasswork that Crabby Dan turned up again!

The Peace based shards in this pack have little touches of Hades and  Unique Lipstick in them. The Hades webs and the Unique Lipstick "blooms" like ink on blotting paper when the shards are melted in flat.

On the left is a mix n match collection of beads using all the elements of Pierrot in some form or another over CiM Tuxedo, twistie under encasement to enlarge the detail and shards and murrini on the surface.

Jolene x

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Beads of Courage UK - Every bead tells a story of strength, honor and hope.

BoC Beads 3, originally uploaded by kitzbitz art glass by Jolene.

I want to take a moment to give a shout out to the beads of Courage program in the UK. I sent my first parcel in last week and plan to organise regular collections for donations on Craft Pimp Forum. It's a superb charity and deserves all of the support and donations possible so please dig deep and raid your bead stash to see if you have any handmade beads to offer.

What is the Beads of Courage Program?

The Program is a resilience-based intervention designed to support and strengthen children and families coping with serious illness. Through the program children tell their story using colorful beads as meaningful symbols of courage that commemorate milestones they have achieved along their unique treatment path.

How it works

Upon enrollment each child is given the Beads of Courage bead color guide with a detachable membership card. Their Beads of Courage journey begins when each child is first given a length of string and beads that spell out their first name. Then, colorful beads, each representing a different treatment milestone are given to the child by their professional health care provider to add to their Beads of Courage collection throughout their treatment.

Act of Courage Beads. These are the artist-made glass beads that are given to acknowledge the milestones in their treatment journey. This year, we expect that we will need approximately 100,000 of these handmade beads donated so that children can continue to receive one-of-a-kind beads for significant treatment milestones.

You can find out more about the program and how you can help here on the Bead of Courage Website http://www.beadsofcourage.org

The UK coordinator is Sarah Drummond, please print and fill in the form here http://www.beadsofcourage.org/pages/beadartists.htm and send your bead donations in to her at


Beads of Courage, Inc.
c/o Sarah Drummond
2, Park Close
Wickford, Essex SS12 9EH.

Thank you, Jo x

Mini Mo' Aug 2011 - Sedona Park and Parma Violets

This colourway is my favourite so far. Lashings of Effetre Ivory, silver leaf and beautiful striking shards made from lovely Coral/Orange Phoenix. The colour takes me back to a holiday, many moons ago, to Arizona and it brings to mind fond memories of an afternoon tooling about in Sedona National Park in a Pink Jeep!


This pressed vertebrae bead has been finished with a Sedona park silvered murrini on each side. I have left them a little raised to show how they look when used this way. I have a thing for making murrini with asymmetric starburst "spokes" at the minute and these take that idea about as far as I could push it to give them a softer and more organic appearance without them looking unstructured.

This pretty little bead set has been made on a base of Effetre mid Topaz and uses little pieces of Sedona Park twistie encased with 006 to magnify the detail. Several of the beads have Sedona Park murrini which have been melted in flush to the beads surface.

My second colourway this month puts me in mind of those little rolls of perfumed sweets that I used to love when I was little. It is called Parma Violet (or more truthfully and being queen of typo's Palma Violets). It's a lovely (slightly reactive in an oxygen rich flame) lavender, lilac and pale violet selection. The glass I have used here includes Lauscha Violet, ASK petal Pink and CiM Thai Orchid.

To the left is a vertebrae bead with a twist, the ribs have been made with a rod of pale lilac filligreano which has left a floating ribbon of colour wrapped around my bead. I have finished each side with raised Parma Violet murrini - these again have asymmetric "spokes" to give them an organic feel.

to the right are a set of beads created using long lengths of Parma Violets Twistie cane. I wrapped these in a low flame over a tube shaped base of CiM Thai Orchid or ASK Petal Pink and encased with a thick layer of Effetre 006.



This final bead set uses Midnight Whisper shards which are made with a new colour - CiM Midnight ltd run. You can read more about my Midnight  Messy Testing here.

Jolene x

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Midnight Chameloen..........

Midnight ltd run shards with pure silver

Midnight is a new addition to CiM's limited run selection and it's a bit of an enigma. In rod form it looks almost navy but when I held it up to the light it looked much more purpleish to me. I immediately wanted to play with this new glass as silvered shards. I tried some shards using midnight alone but found them to be too pale, generally I make transparent shards over a tiny base of a pale opaque to give them more depth, unless the glass is super dense like CiM Slytherin. For Midnight I wanted to emphasis the purple tones and so chose Heffalump to make a small core on the end of my blowpipe, layered on lashings of Midnight and then burnished fine silver leaf over the top. As you can see from the picture of my shards on the right, Midnight hasn't reacted with the silver leaf at all which is sitting in the surface of my shards in pretty little droplets.

I chose a number of different base glasses to pop my Midnight shards on top of. Starting at the top and looking clockwise - over the top of Zachary, Fremen, Blush and Gelly's Sty, these shards do indeed show purple tones. Over Desert Pink, Larkspur and Cranberry Pink, Midnight shards tend to look much more like a deep dark blue.

Midnight Whisper Beads

The amber colors that you can see coming through in Zachery, Fremen and Desert pink tell me that these base glasses have reacted to the fine silver droplets on my Midnight shards and that playing about with these and some silver rich glass would yield some interesting results.

Some cold worked and acid etched Midnight shard beads. These show that Midnight etches beautifully.

Jolene x

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Wonderweb - Unique Hades 511820-2

Unique Hades 511820-2 is an extremely dense black but has a different formula to regular Hades. It webs and spreads beautifully on the surface of a bead but also picks up wisps of silver in an 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 as Hades does. In my opinion it displays the best properties of both of these two CiM blacks.

The silver/black webbing in this bead came from applying a stringer that was about 0.8mm across over my encasing layer of Effetre 006 clear and then simply melting it down flat in a fairly hot, slightly oxy rich flame.

Jolene x

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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

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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

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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

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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
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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

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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