It seems everyone has an opinion about raised bumps on beads. Do you like the feel of them, the fact that they add texture to your beads? Or do you prefer the smooth look and feel of the glass all by itself? Long ago, I was a 'no bumps please' bead maker. But now? Oh give me some texture! For glass whorl making, bobbles have a purpose beyond looks. They add a little weight to the whorl, which often seems like a good thing. And if they are placed all around the outside, they can also affect the speed and length of the spin. Oh, it's physics, and I am not so good with physics. But it does chang ..read more

 Good golly, I have not been blogging much! Just popping in now to say my torch is back up and running after being on hiatus for a couple of months. I've started out with some fancy silver-cored fish pendants and glass whorls for spinning yarn. New curved beads are on the to-do right now list! We'll see how that goes~ they are always a bit of a challenge ..read more

Support Spindle Bowls    Sometimes it's just time to blog about something new. But what to talk about? The blazing heat? Where I should live? Getting old? Nah~ let's talk pottery! Wonky or not, it's the latest craze around here. This is news to me too!  Yes, another crafty thing has caught my attention. I have been going to the Arkansas Innovation Hub for a few months now to work on their lathe. Then I saw that there was a hand built pottery workshop coming up. Little did I know how enchanting making pottery could be, and there is so much to learn and try! I feel lik ..read more

I have been asked off and on if I could make a little flat bit of glass with an indentation in it for- sort of like a worry stone. The short answer? I had tried and not been happy with the results. But now I've figured out a whole different way to do this. There are a few tricks that have been working well for me, so I thought I'd try a mini tut for the glass workers out there. This piece is not actually just a 'worry stone', but a very small glass bowl that can be used for support spindle spinning. First, ditch the mandrel! A large glob of glass will be built off the end of a metal chopstick ..read more

I've been telling myself (and a few other people) that I really need to figure out how to use a lathe and make my own spindle sticks for a while now. I am venturing down that road (with a bit of trepidation). Why bother, you ask? Well I have found precisely one person who can make the sticks I need for a sensible price. Well, for any price, really. And what if Hershey Fibers gets tired of it? Then I will have a pile of stick-less whorls lying about and no one will know what to do with them! So~ away we go! For starters, using a lathe is a little fun, a little hard on one's body and a little s ..read more

 I really expected that this would have a more interesting name than the 'wagon wheel' effect. Anyway~ see how it looks like the whorl is reversing directions while it's spinning around? Not true! It's an optical illusion created by quickly flashing lights and your brain's trying to make sense of what it's seeing! So cool. This was a special request whorl, which I did not think I would be making. But one day I thought, oh why not give it a try? And hey presto, a whorl with a face on it. And it spins pretty nicely too ..read more

 So... I'm sure many, if not all of y'all bead makers, have some frit mixes lying around. Back when I first started to make beads, I didn't use frit. And it was in the old 'dinosaur' days before Val Cox and her 'Frit Secrets' book came out, so frit mixes were not yet a big part of the glass bead world. Nowadays, a  nice mix of frit can decide the colors of a bead, making that part of the process easy. They are a useful crutch, especially for days when one is feeling a wee bit less than inspired. Just grab a mix and enjoy making the bead! Val's book has a lot of different ideas for ho ..read more

It's time to talk about whorls again! For the last several years I have been making handmade glass whorls that are used for Viking style spinning. Slowly but surely, things keep moving along. First there were single whorls, then pairs of whorls that spun together, and now I seem to be in a phase of making longer single whorls. My busy brain is always ready to pursue a new idea; then it seems I abandon old things and move on!  There are a few different design ideas affecting my whorl making these days. First and foremost are single conical whorls, which are a bit longer and thinner than p ..read more

So... Roc day (Distaff day, the day after epiphany) has come and gone. This is a special day for spinners, the time for the women to get back to work after the 12 days of Christmas have passed (the men get to wait until the Monday after epiphany. Hmm...). In celebration, I made a short (20 min.) video about how to make a felted woolen coaster inside a plastic zipper bag. An idea for a 'make & take project or a quickie workshop with kids or something like that. The video pretty well tells the whole story, but there may be a few things I can add here.  ~ I neglected to mention that th ..read more

Here's a little something I've never thought to do~ write up a wee bio for public consumption. So here's a bit of information I think folks might find interesting about me and my work. Work, you say? Well, that's what we call it around here! I began making lampwork glass beads in 1999 when I purchased a bead making kit for my daughter (ha,ha). She rushed off to college in short order, where she was not allowed to have a torch in her dorm room ~ who knows why? So I was left with a torch, a book, a bunch of glass and time on my hands. I made beads. And more beads. And I found that there was a l ..read more