Heart Link Tutorial

Ahh, love is in the air, and the month of all things red and romantic is upon us. I've put together a quick but useful tutorial on how to add a bit more heart to your jewellery.

**Caution** A quick word of warning, if you have a pair of goggles around, put them on! Love isn't the only thing in the air - there are bits of flying metal, too ;).



What you'll need:

• Wire - any gauge. I used 0.8mm for these.
• Round nosed pliers
• Wire cutters
• Optional: A file or bead reamer to smooth the ends of you wire

Step 1:
Cut as many lengths of wire as you require. The length is up to you, but the ones shown here are about 2cm.


Step 2:
If your wires have rough ends, now is the time to file them.
Take a length of cut wire, and bend it in the middle with your round nosed pliers into a V shape.


Step 3:
Take your V shape and with your pliers curl one end (like you would for a loop). Bend the wire until you've made a half circle (roughly!).



Step 4:
Repeat step three on the other end of your V, and you have a heart! You may need to tinker a bit with the shape to get it just right.




An added effect...
You can leave your links as in Step 4, or for an extra touch, you can hammer your links for texture. Sometimes hammering can be a bit tricky on silver plated wire, so I like to gently "smoosh" the wire with a flat area of my pliers for the hammered look.




Now your links are finished and ready to be made into chains, links, and charms. The possibilities are endless!

Polymer Penny Pinching

On a recent poll on our forum, I asked the community about tools of the trade - specifically price and polymer clay. 88% of us said that we're open minded about what tools we use in our clay crafts. Or, as one member said, we can see potential in anything.

As a polymer clayer, I whole heartily agree with her. Tools come in all shapes and sizes - from leaves and rocks to olive jars. Often enough, there's no need to part with money to achieve a beautiful clay piece.

Stamps
Molds and stamps are particularly expensive, and while they are sometimes irreplaceable, there are a number of every day objects and found items that can be used instead. The clay and crystal leaves below were stamped with leaves from the garden.



Using natural objects as molds or presses in your clay work can lend an organic feel to your pieces. The leaves above have subtle and soft details - something I might not have achieved with a manufactured stamp.

Below is another example of how clay artists can use readily available objects for texture and impressions. This pendant, made of black Fimo, was shaped and stamped with a natural stone. The porous surface of the stone created a beautiful and unique texture. The curvy impression was made with wire.




Other Tools
There's more to working with clay than the finishing touches. One of the most time consuming and exhausting parts of polymer clay is conditioning. For years I thought a pasta machine was vital to condition clay, and the price of one was off putting. Now, these and other tools have dropped in price and are not a huge investment for hobbyists.

There are still alternatives to things like pasta machines, like old fashioned elbow grease. Personally, I use a long glass jar, but you can easily use a sturdy roll of cling film. If you're a die-hard DIY fan, then you might consider buying your own acrylic tubing and having rolling pins in a variety of sizes.

Not Always about £
Unconventional tools allow for flexibility, subtlety, and can create beautiful clay art. They also allow you to practice before making larger investments into the hobby. Once you've found your niche in clay, you can always opt to pay for tools that make your work easier or faster. No matter how advanced we might become in the use of polymer clay, I think there will always be a place for the creativity and beauty that using natural and basic tools gives us.

Sterling Silver - just a few little tips for checking it's real

I'm sure many of you have probably found yourself in the same situation as me, but for those out there who are yet to experience the exasperation of sterling silver  - that turns out not to actually be sterling silver I'd like to share a few little tips. Whether you are given something by a family member or friend, or buy from a seller you are not 100% sure of it's always worth making a few quick and easy checks especially if you are planning on selling your items on.

1. Not all items described or even stamped as Sterling silver 925 are silver, and sometimes items will contain parts that are silver and parts that aren't! Sometimes this is a deliberate ploy to part you from more money, sometimes just a genuine mistake, but always annoying. I once found that only the tag on a necklace which  I had always believed was sterling actually was - all the other parts were very magnetic!

2. Check the items as soon as possible - I just checked some items that I've had in my stash for over 5 years only to find out they weren't SS and I had paid around £8 for something that was worth no more than a couple of pounds at best. If back then I had carried out a simple test I would have been able to ask for a refund. Now I'll just have to put them to a different use.

3. Get out a strong magnet - sterling silver is not magnetic - if your items leap to the magnet like mine did they aren't SS. Not all base metals are magnetic, so while the magnet test will tell you items they definitely aren't SS, you may still want to check further if you are still suspicious.

3b.  Be careful if you try to use a magnet to check clasps! The springs in lobster and bolt ring clasps can't be made from sterling silver as it is a soft metal, and a strong magnet will often attract sterling silver clasps. When carefully trying it against the loop parts of these claps I have seen that they aren't magnetic, but on such small findings, it's not a good testing method!

4. Still not sure, not got a magnet handy? Take the sniff test! Wash your hands with a mild soap, so they are nice and clean and dry them thoroughly. Hold the silver items between your palms till your hands have thoroughly warmed the metal up, then sniff your palms. If they smell distinctly like copper coins it is very likely that your items are actually silver plated on a copper base.

5. Silver testing kits. If you are buying a larger item, or likely to be buying a lot of SS you may want to consider investing in a silver testing kit, however people have differing success reading the results and you have to be careful not to damage the items you are testing. Some jewellers may also offer this service, but generally for jewellery findings and beads this isn't a very practical solution.

I'm sure there are there are other good tips out there to help in identifying items that aren't actually sterling silver (that don't involve damaging the item to check), so if you have a tip to share, please do post a comment to let us all know.

Happy beading

Spring cleaning your creativity

This spring several things have prompted me to consider the fact that I've been feeling somewhat underwhelmed and disenchanted when it comes to beading. That's not to say that I've lost my love of beads and beading, but I realised that there are things that I have been allowing to hold me back and drain my creativity.

I've come to realise that there is a point where in place of the enjoyment of making or collecting things you love you feel bogged down by an over sized collection of items you've hoarded.

It feels hard to let go of the past but there are beads, techniques and styles I'm no longer interested in. Pieces that I can now see no longer live up to the quality I expect to achieve in my work. Looking at my bead collection it sometimes felt like I "couldn't see the wood for the trees" and was drowning in a sea of beads.

Taking the time to completely go through my bead stash and remove the items I know I won't miss at all (and some that I'll only miss a little) has been truly liberating. Reorganizing all those half finished (or only just started) projects into a system where they can be seen, and not forgotten, invites me to work on them.

But I'm now facing the same trial with my jewellery. I fear this is going to be a lot harder. Knowing that I must dismantle, sell cheaply or give away those pieces that are not my best, feels like erasing history. Though I will have photos and memories to keep it is still hard to recognise and accept that my beading has moved on and so must I. Continuing to keep or offer for sale items that don't show me at my best is guaranteed to destroy both my creativity and sense of worth.

The past should be a platform to launch ourselves from not an anchor to keep us in place and stop us from exploring new directions.

I know that I am the only one holding myself back and that to free my own creativity I need to allow myself a fresh start.

So here's to spring cleaning your creativity! I hope that you to will take a moment to ponder on the wonders of springtime, and let your creativity grow like a flower in the sun.

 

British Bead Awards 2010

Are you entering the British Bead Awards this year? Last year's competition was the first of it's kind and a great step forward in recognizing the amazing talent that we have here in the UK! Three members of the UK Beaders forum took home awards; Kerrie Slade came joint 2nd in the Seed Bead category with her beautiful Maid Marian's Quiver, Julie Fountain came 1st in the Other Finished Beadwork category with her Dazzle Silver Core Pendant, while Lynn Davy won an impressive three times including 1st place in the Crystals catergory with Fading Beauty.

There's still time to enter your masterpiece into the British Bead Awards 2010, the deadline is Friday July 2nd and you can download the entry form here as well as view the competition rules and a complete list of last year's winners. And for everyone that's entering, best of luck!

A new beginning and purpose for the UK Beaders Blog!

Hello everyone.

As you can see it's been rather a long time since I lasted posted to this blog! Indeed our forum is now celebrating it's 4th anniversary and we are expecting our 2,500th member to join up any day now - will it be you?

With so much going on in the UK Beaders community these days, and so many wonderful blogs that our members (and other great creative people) are writing, I realised it was time that we revived our long abandoned blog and brought it back to life as as the UK Beaders community blog. A place where our community members can post together to bring you a wide range or posts on all sorts of things about and of interest to us beaders and jewellery makers.

So if you are a member of our forum you may have already seen that we are inviting any interested members to join in writing this blog, and share their beady thought with us here too.

It’s been a great week

Well some great new, this week our forum registered it’s 100th member!!! Considering the forum has been online for less than 7 weeks this is wonderful news and just backs up what we already knew: beading in the UK is growing in popularity and beaders are looking for recognition, and a place to network and chat with their fellow beaders.

I’ve given a bit of an update to the UK Beaders main site by reorganising the UK supplier’s pages. With well over 200 suppliers in the UK listed it is now easier to browse through smaller pages.

Entries for our first group challenges are trickling in and I have created a page on the main site to showcase the winning members work.

Hope you are enjoying the very un-British weather and remembering to use lots of sun tan lotion.

Busy, busy, busy!

Phew, I just finished adding 17 wonderful website to UK Beaders and have updated the shops map with 5 more stores for you to visit!

Earlier today (OK as it's now the small hours it was technically yesterday) I posted details of our first group challenges, with a couple of wonderful UK themes.

The first was inspired by the queens 80th birthday celebration - The children's party in the palace. I watched the whole thing on TV and thought it was great fun. This theme allows lots of scope with many different creative avenues to be explored.

The other challenge is a bit more specific and involves using the colour red. Why red? Because of all the amazing British icons that are red including Routemaster buses, telephone boxes and royal mail post boxes!

Site updated - problem fixed!

Just a quick update to let you all know that I recently upgraded the site so now you will notice there are no adverts spoiling the site and getting in the way.

When you click on a link to any of the sites listed the site's address will show up in your address bar so you no longer have any problems in book marking any great sites you come across when using the UK Beaders site.

We now have a Fantastic Forum!!!

I'm so happy to bring you the latest resource to UK Beaders... our brand spanking new forum!

I must say this wouldn't have been possible without the help of my wonderful fiance!

This does mean that over the next few weeks I will be fazing out use of the msn group in favour of the forum as it has so many better features for our members. Rest assured I will email all our members and keep everyone abreast of developments.

So here's to the forum! - See you there.

New feature for the UK Beaders Shops map.

In response to recent requests I have started adding the details of studios and teachers offering classes/lessons/tuition to the map!

In future I may also be adding beading groups too, but at the moment it is proving difficult to gather the details of any established beading groups around the UK.

If you have any other suggestions for ways to utilise the maps facilities just let me know.

Known problem with site.

I recently noticed (as you may have done) that if you access the site from our lovely new domain name, most of the links when clicked on, will still display the UK Beaders site address in the address bar.

Rest assured I am working on this issue and it will be resolved as soon as I have the funding to do so.

If you want to bookmark/add to favourites any of the sites that are affected I would suggest you open a new window, and copy and paste the website address in.

Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

All about beading wire and crimping - article

Hello again,

In response to repeated requests for info about what wire to choose for stringing projects and how to crimp it I have produced this article for you all.

Click here to view the article

I hope you find it useful.

UK Beaders site now has it's own URL!

Just a quick update.

Just in case you missed my announcement On Friday 5th (sorry I was too busy to post here on Friday) I finally got the site it's own URL you can now visit directly at www.uk-beaders.co.uk

Dont worry if you have the old address stored in your favourites it will still work. You can also now email directly too!

Lampworking lesson with Mike Poole by Caroline Hannon

I have always been fascinated by handmade lampwork beads since I found my first set. I was searching for a teacher for a while when I found out that Mike was starting to teach lessons and these were the nearest I could find.

On the day I arrived at the old mill where Mike’s studio is located in the town of Todmodon, Lancashire. I was greeted by Mike, who after a brew when through a run down of what we would be doing as well as giving me a folder with the course outline in it. He told me about the health and safety aspects, and although this might not be fun, it is very essential.

He then moved onto the equipment, Mike uses a minor torch with an oxycon unit. Most newbie’s to lampwork start on a hot head and then move up to a minor torch. He went through everything from dipping the mandrels in bead realise to kilns and cleaning out the bead release once the bead had been annealed.

Then the real fun begins, Mike starts off showing how to melt the glass rods and building a basic beads. He is happy to tailor the course to suit the type of beads you want to make. After he had shown me a few beads and how to add decoration like dots it was my turn. As soon as I built my first bead, no matter how bad it was I was hooked.

At lunch time Mikes wife Su arrived with a yummy lunch, and I got to browse through a few lampworking book to get ideas, or to ask about how certain beads were made. After Lunch Mike showed me how to make lentil beads, something which I requested, then I got to make more.

He then challenged me to make a set of beads; I got to pick colours from his vast selection. Every now or then Mike or Su would get me to try two colours together to see their reactions.

Once I finished my set I sat down with Su, who showed me her collection of lampwork beads, both from British and American Lampwork Artists. Some of the work is amazing and it really inspires you to improve.

I was on a high all the way home, and 3 days later my beads arrived in the post having been annealed. If anyone wants to try lampworking I would defiantly recommend Mike as a teacher. I can’t wait to get my equipment….

Thanks Mike for starting another bead addiction

Hello, Hope you are all enjoying the Bank Holiday weekend.

Well I thought I'd give you all a bit of Background about how the UK Beaders site came to be. I started it up in December 2004 but the ball (or should that be bead) really got rolling in April 2005, which is when I also started the MSN group.

When the site started out it had just 1 small page of UK suppliers, 1 of international suppliers and 1 for ebay sellers. It had other resources and a calender (which was sadly short lived as it was very hard to keep up to date).

Over the months the site developed to the point where we need 2 pages to list all the UK suppliers.

I introduced a top 10 tutorials page, but haven't had as many recommendations for this page as I expected.

As there are so many fantastic lampworkers selling their beads I have set up a page for them - which I must work on filling up this weekend!

The UK Shops map has been a fantastic success and has so far only been running for just over a week (wow I thought it was longer)!

The msn group is also growing weekly, we already have over 100 members with lots of great discussions going on.

Anyway that's enough background for now. But I'll keep you up to date with all the great things I have in the pipeline.

Phew, well as I said before this really isn't my thing, but I just managed to work out how to add in links to our main site and to the msn group - hooray!

Not a lot's been happening today, I have a custom bracelet I should be working on instead of posting here, but as we beaders know there's never enough hours in the day.

I've been talking to a few of the UK Beaders group recently about this and that, and I have a few ideas in the pipeline for even more developments so keep your ear to the ground.

Welcome to the UK Beaders blog!

First off Hi, glad you're reading this, and I apologize as I am so appallingly bad at writing this kind of thing!

I expect you'll have come here via http://groups.msn.com/UKBeaders or www.freewebs.com/ukbeaders if not I'd love to know how you found us!

I'm starting this blog as I hope it will evolve into another great resource of the UK beaders site and group. I'm aiming for it to be an easy to access blog of what's upcoming and worth a look in the UK beading scene. I'm hoping we can have interviews and articles from group members, projects and places worth trying out and much much more.

For those of you who don't already know me I'm Kitsch Kitty of Kitsch Kitty's Unique Boutique, and I'm the founder of the UK Beaders site and group. I love making jewellery and hated the lack of accessible information on the web for us UK beaders and jewellery makers. The few sites I did come across were either totally out of date, impersonal or seemed to have some kind of ulterior motive behind them.

Anyway that's about it for now, hopefully you'll be getting to see some really great content soon!