Artists Spotlight - Laney Mead

Laney Mead is a class act and you can get an up close view of her literally wickedly sharp sense of humour right here on Etsy.


Laney's blog, Life with Izzybeads is a lovely place to visit. You'll quickly come to see that alongside her talent with glass Laney is also a natural wordsmith and story teller. I recommend that you settle yourself down with a nice cup of tea and let her cheer you right up with one of her warm and gently humerus anecdotal tales about life as a creative, an animal lover and Mother to teenagers!


Alongside her chorus of cute critters Laney also makes stunning sculptural floral beads and has recently had several images published in the Soda Lime Times, a fabulously cool monthly e-magazine for Lampworkers.

Laney exhibits regularly at well known craft events all over the country and will be right there in the thick of it at the Towcester Flame Off in April this year. She also keeps a well stocked shop on Ebay.

Jolene x

Open weekend (part one)........

It's been a good long while since I had an open house event here in my studio, about 3 years, and to be honest I was feeling a bit nervous and a tad shy. Well it turned out to be a terrific weekend, lots of laughs, glorious sunshine and a fair amount of glass melting fun interlaced with more cups of tea than you can shake a stick at and mountains of delicious cake and home baked treats!

Here are a few pictures of the weekend snapped by my lovely friend Michelle (as I forgot to take any!)

Left to right: Tish, Sue at the Mini CC, Sandy demoing how to make a tornado bead and me.

Sandy's tornado bead with a touch of green goldstone twistie that I did a demo for earlier in the day and some gorgeous silver glass.

Kat demoing how to make a bicarb bubble bead - I had my first try with this technique on Friday and picked up far too much bicarb and had air bubbles popping out of bead left right and centre - not a great success but very very fun.

A bubble bead in the flame, pretty!

me at the torch.........

A few of Friday's beads - these are all destined for Beads of Courage when they have been cleaned. I absolutely love Kat's goddess.

My pal Katie making her very first beads....and another glass melting fanatic was born!

Linda at the Mini CC and Katie on the Minor.

The Saturdays - left to right: Mich, Linda, Me, Jenny, Linda, Pat and Sue (hiding at the back)

Jo x

Mini Mo' January 2012 - Underwater World and Kiss Me Quick

I decided to work on an underwater theme for my first Mini Mo' for 2012 because one of my Mini Mo' ladies specially requested sea/water themed collection. Underwater World uses Effetre Coral, transparent light Grass Green and Petrol Green with CiM Hades and CiM Sherwood.

I have included a mix of “hollow” barnacles, silvered barnacle points and Tang tropical fish, murrini with Green Dreams silvered shards.

I've been itching for ages to try and make some little tropical fish murrini and so there are Tangs in amongst barnacles (these look like they are hollow when encased as the core is clear glass) and ivory and fine silver laced murrini that I have pulled in to points.

This chunky aquarium bead used the flat cane from Underwater World wrapped around a clear core and also as raised seaweed decoration on the surface. Here you can see the complex striped ribbon twistie cane and Tang murrini magnified under deep encasement.

This deep Green Ocean set shows what the barnacle murrini looks like pressed flat as surface decoration and my ""Green Dreams" shards both under and over encasement.

Kiss Me Quick is a cheeky little collection just right for Valentines beads. I used Effetre Dark Red 460, Baby Pink 260, White 204 and CiM Cranberry Pink and CiM Hades.

The murrini is a mix of red hearts and pink starbursts with shards made from a selection of pretty reds for Valentines Day.

Ahhhh, what a fabulous excuse to get out all of my pink glass for a play. I had forgotten all about this beautiful colour, Reichenbach Mystic Pink. Yum! I used the goldstone cored twistie from the Kiss Me Quick collection and Sweetheart murrini to make these sweet little beads.

A romantic set of florals useing swipes of flat cane to form the petals. I've teamed it up with some handmade goldstone stringer which adds a touch of glamour.

My first set of lentils in ever so long, each of these beads has a central clear window with elements of Kiss Me Quick cane visible underneath.

Jolene x

Frit N Chips lampwork supplies and Kitzbitz Art Beads

Mini Mo' December 2011 - Big Top and Bejeweled

I wanted to play about a little with bold opaque primary colours for my first December collection, a circus themed glasswork pack called Big Top. I chose Effetre Dark Red 436, Light Lapis 240, CiM Pumpkin and combined the three in one gather to make “Circus Circus” patchwork shards.

This zany focal is very different from anything that I've ever made before with big bold flower petals swiped on with flat Big Top flat cane and a wrap of ribbon twistie along the base and a googly eyed ladybird!

The colours are so bright, bold and fun that I couldn't resist letting the colours do all the talking with this collection of funky beads, wacky shapes and rounds, showing the cane and twistie as surface decoration and under encasement too.

This *every so slightly* more grown up set shows all the different Big Top canes under clear encasement over a base of pastel baby blue with a few Big Top murrini on the surface of a couple of the beads.

My second colourway this month is based around the idea of gem toned glass, transparent secondary colours, including Effetre Light Topaz 012, Transparent Dark Purple 044, CiM Great Bluedini and Vetrofond Transparent Light Brown 084. I have completed this collection by making reactive "Tribal" shards using Ask Tribal Turquoise.

I stumbled across a thread on Lampwork Ect by Jacqueline Parkes advertising her new shard making tutorial and couldn't resist getting it to try. Tribal shards are my own glass recipe but have been created in the way that Jacqueline describes in her wonderful tutorial. I tested itsy-bitsy bits of the Tribal shards out on several base glasses.  There isn't much rhyme or reason to my choice of base colours here - just labelled shorts that I had close at hand at the time.

Here is a chintzy floral focal with an encased core of gem toned ribbon twistie and asymmetric sculptural floral decoration on the surface using flat cane.

Bejeweled canes over a base of CiM Mojito, encased with Effetre 006. These beads show how Bejeweled Murrini looks as surface decoration.

Jolene x

Frit N Chips lampwork supplies and Kitzbitz Art Beads

Floral lampwork bead gallery

As I'm very much on a floral kick at the moment, I thought I'd pop up a quick and dirty gallery page showing a few of my latest floral beads.

Jolene x

Frit N Chips lampwork supplies and Kitzbitz Art Beads

The anatomy of a Lampwork Mojo Box and a little about Mini Mo's too

When my daughter was born in September 2008 there was, as you can imagine, very little time for making beads. I kept my glass melting addiction fed by making twistie cane and occasionally blowing some shards. By the end of that year I had graduated on to making my very first simple starburst murrini too and it occurred to me that these elements should all belong together in pretty little colour coordinated collections to dip into from time to time for lampworking inspiration.

In Jan 2009 I put together my first collections, Southern Belle, Wisteria Gem, Summer and Red All Over. I don't bring out Lampwork Mojo Boxes often, as I tend to work on a collection over a long period, adding to each when I discover new and beautiful elements. I usually make just two boxes in any colourway which makes each collection very special.

The Mini Mo' Colour Club was a wonderful idea given to me by the talented Kaz Baildon of Cheeky Cherub Designs. She suggested offering Mini Lampwork Mojo collection of glasswork on  a monthly subscription basis and so Mini Mo's were born. I absolutely adored making these collections from the start, working hard each month to make beautiful glasswork even better than the collection before. When I started blogging at the end of 2009 I began to post about them here too.

I fell with my son at the beginning of 2010 and had a difficult pregnancy second time around which led me to make the tough decision to take some time out from lampwork. With two preschoolers on my hands it has taken me much longer to get back in the saddle than I had anticipated. After just over a full year out from making lampwork beads, Mojo Boxes and Mini Mo's I got back to the torch full time in April this year and must confess that I'm loving being a self employed glass artist. In addition to the 12 regular places in the Mini Mo' Club I offer short term subscriptions to the Mini Mo' Colour Club in my Etsy glassy supplies shop, Frit N Chips and also lampwork beads at Kitzbitz Art Beads.

If you would like to see some of my Mini Mo' blog posts please click here.

Jolene x

Frit N Chips lampwork supplies and Kitzbitz Art Beads

Mini Mo' November 2011 - Point Break and Secret Garden

My glasswork collections for November are named after films but inspired by thoughts of the ocean and of country gardens. Firstly an apology, this post is going to be much longer and picture heavy than previous Mini Mo' posts for a couple of reasons, one is that I've managed to get more time at the torch than usual through October and the other is that I've used many of the elements in Novembers Mini Mo's separately rather than in combination.

The glass I have used in Piont Break is CiM French Blue, CiM Hades, Effetre Cobalt Lapis, Reichenbach Multicolor and a medley of blues in the ribbon cane.

I've used some of the ribbon cane from Piont Break to make these raised etched floral beads (you can read a bit more about them here).

This set shows Point Break shards over CiM Commando and Effetre Transparent Dark Teal. These shards are infused with fine silver leaf and have some beautiful organic patterns as a result.

This is what Point Break murrini look like when they have been applied, poked whilst still partially raised, capped with clear to trap a small bubble and then encased.

I was very lucky recently and received a bundle of the newest CiM Ltd run colours to play about with - one of the glasses was called Submarine and so I just couldn't resist the temptation to have a crack at making a yellow submarine murrini with it. Although these submurrini are the result of my just mucking around for fun, they sort of whispered in my ear as I was packaging my Point Blank glasswork and they jumped in the murrini pots too as little fun extras.

These are Multi and Hades twistie over CiM Electric Avenue. The colours in these beads are so pretty but much much subtler than my original twistie test bead over Effetre Ivory (note to self get out test bead and take pic). I am planning to pop these back in the kiln at the start of my next garaging session and see if I can kiln strike out some stronger colour definition from the Multi.

My second colorway, Secret Garden, uses CiM Sherwood, Reichenbach Multicolor, Effetre Dark Silver Plum and a medley of pinks and purples in the ribbon cane.

Dark Silver Plum shards over CiM Blush and Mojito. These shards react strongly to flame chemistry in both a propane or oxygen rich flame. I favour the oxy rich flame to get this pretty silvering effect as turning the propane low to get a smaller flame means that the shards shimmer up as they are being applied.

This set is made with DSP shards and Secret Garden Murrini. I have melted the shards and murrini flat and shaped each one with graphite to bring out colour in the the Multi. I then distorted the murrini by spot heating and twisting the glass about with a DSP stringer.The base glass here is CiM Eggplant which is a deep opal purple. There ia an interesting effect on these beads as the silver sheen appears only as a halo outline on the shards.

A set of CiM Mojito raised florals using a single 6" strip of Secret Garden ribbon cane. The central focal shows the cane used under encasement too.

The core of this vessel shaped bead has been wrapped with CiM Sherwood and Milticolor twistie which has been melted flat and then encased with Effetre 006 to magnify.

This bead used the same twistie cane as rasied vine detail, the effect is subtle and shimmery, much more noticeable in real life than I have been able to capture in this picture.

Lastly a little collection of beads that shows a variety of effects using the ribbon cane, twistie and murrini, both on the surface and under clear encasement.

Jolene x

Frit N Chips lampwork supplies and Kitzbitz Art Beads

Lampwork bead giveaway

CP-giveaway-beads, originally uploaded by kitzbitz art glass by Jolene.

These pretty little blue beads have little yellow submarines in them! They are looking for a new home, pop by Craft Pimp Forum and pop your name down if you would like them to be yours. I'll draw the winners name out of the hat on Saturday 6th of November.

Ta, Jo x