Welcome to Inside the Studio!
Each week one of our contributors gives you a sneak peek into their studio, creative process or inspirations. We ask a related question of our readers and hope you’ll leave comments! As an incentive we offer a free prize each week to bribe you to use that keyboard. The following week we choose a random winner.
Congratulations Nan Smith!
You have won a pair of lampwork beads made by Ema of Ema K Designs.
Please email Ema with your contact information.
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But where did all the time go…? It seems no time at all since I last did an ITS post. Are you feeling the autumn yet? I’ve been in autumn mode for some time. Several weeks ago you could really feel it in the air over here, but then the tail-end of the summer rallied a bit in my part of the UK, so it’s felt a little as if autumn got postponed. Nonetheless, I have been busy with autumnal designs, both beads and jewellery. I’ve been working on these autumnal bead sets for a little while. Today I finally got all the elements of them together and strung them up.
There are only the five but I’m quite pleased with them. Those bell shaped things are actually kinda stylised seed pod things.
These are my first stoneware pieces. That marvellous being that they call Petra Carpreau gifted me some of these beautiful stoneware glazes. It took me a second attempt to get them to work. They don’t show up very clearly in the group shot above. You can see them better here.
Gooey, bubbly, jammy goodness. I’m thinking I might do a mini autumn-y shop update in the next few days, just so these pieces can go out whilst people are making their autumn designs. Saying that, they don’t have to go in autumnal designs… I have few more similar bits and bobs ready, which would to go with them nicely.
The tenmoku glaze on those earring pieces is so fabulous – really glittery (good glittery!)! I also love the soft celadon green on the discs at the top. It’s a glaze that my pottery instructor has and it’s not a colour I’d generally be drawn to but now I’ve ended up ordering a similar one for myself.
I have a heap more beads in the works. (Apologies for the blurry bits!)
Once they’re finished they’ll be joining these in one big update in early-ish October.
I was aiming for a bit of a faux-ostrich-egg-shell-bead effect with the crazed ones. I guess I might call the others humbugs… primitive humbugs, mebbe…
In other bead making news, look:
I know, it’s a shed. But it’s a shed that will be housing my kiln! Work to get it kiln-ready starts next week. I’m just a little bit excited, although I won’t believe it’s happening until I see the thing sat in there.
I usually have a selection of new art beads to share with you, but beady post-days have been a bit few and far between lately, with one thing and another.
Very modest compared to the glut in my last post. These are from Grubbi. I decided to have a bit of time away from the clay and made up a couple of bits using some of them. Here’s a simple, subtly coloured bracelet also incorporating a Jubilee cube and a button clasp from Amanda Davie.
And some earrings that kinda match…
And, of course there’s those autumnal designs I mentioned. I keep making these leafy jobs with Jo Lucksted‘s woodland critters because they keep selling – and I rather like them. (Watch this one sit in my shop for forever now…)
Super simple but neat and sweet. I decided to use one of my personal stash of my new beads in this next piece. The clasp was from Joanne Tinley. As you may know, she isn’t making components anymore so I feel a bit of a wrench using the ones I have left.
Finally, here’s a meeting of two of my recent preoccupations: autumn and asymmetrical earrings, with a beautiful C-Koop enamel leaf.
I haven’t listed any of these yet – hopefully I’ll be getting them in the shop in the next day or so. And, just in case you’re interested, I already have a number of autumnal jewellery pieces available on Etsy.
Which brings us to the giveaway. The prize this week is $20 of credit to spend in either my bead shop or my jewellery shop. The question I need answering is: what word(s) would you use to describe the shape of these beads? I’m looking for a name for them, basically. I don’t think I can get away with calling them ‘autumnal whatnots’ for much longer….
Bye for now, Claire