2004-01-04T20:38:00.000-08:00

Well, it is Jan. 4, 2004 and I am making my first official Bead Blog posting for my web site. How exciting! I have been a very busy person these days because I went off and did a class on the Hawaiian island of Maui. That was a blast! I had 8 great students and we rocked for 3 days making dichroic beads. It was the first time for most of my students to be working with dichroic glass and they did very well. When I was teaching them to make goldstone stringers for detail work on the dichroic beads, I got burned a lot by over excited students.

When I am talking about goldstone stringers, I'm refering to making special, super bright goldstone stringers that can stand up to the brightness of dichroic colors. These are made from huge chunks of goldstone that we import from Italy and the average size of the chunk is 1 1/2" X 1/2" and that is a big puppy to handle in an open flame! To make a long story short, I showed the students a couple of ways to make fancy stringers and we had a blast.

I am working my butt off these days making stock for the Tucson Gem & Mineral show that I well be attending
the first week of Feb. & if you have never gone to the Tucson show, you should treat yourself to it someday. It is the biggest gem and jewelry market on earth and people come from all over the world to sell and buy at the 30 plus shows that go on in the town of Tucson during the month of Feb. My booth will be at the Best Bead Show No. 22 in the main hall. Come and see me!

One of the purposes for this Bead Blog, is for folks out there who look at my web site and have question about the process of making beads or making dichroic beads can ask me and I will do my best to supply answers. The field of flame working glass is so exciting that I find that I never run out of new things to try. My latest thing to do is make hollow forms out of soft glass in the torch. This is very exciting and opens up a huge new area to explore. One of these days I will get good enough to start offering these hollow forms ( hollow beads, perfume bottles & goblets ) on my web site and you will see what I mean.

I think this is the end of my first web Bead Blog. May your new year be full of amazing and wonderful experiences!

The Bead Blog