For the past several months, my sister Janine and I have been going to Beadfx to use their lampworking studio. We started out by taking a four hour introduction to lampworking course last fall, which was taught by Amy Waldman Smith (http://www.amywaldmansmith.com/, who makes these incredible angel beads as just one of her many claims to fame. We decided that we liked making glass beads and we wanted to make more, so we signed up for the 8 week beginner lampworking class which started in February of this year, taught by Dwyn Tomlinson, who is renowned for her dragon beads (check them out on her website: http://www.dragonjools.com/).
There were 5 of us in the beginner class and at the end of 8 weeks, we all decided we didn't want to stop making beads so Dwyn and Beadfx created an intermediate lampworking course and we went for another 8 weeks. At the end of that session, 3 of us still wanted to keep coming, so we just kept going to the studio they have set up in the store on Thursday nights and Dwyn very kindly kept coming in every week as well, to make her own beads and provide guidance when we needed it, and that's been going on all summer and into this fall. But as of next week, the next beginner lampworking session starts on Thursday nights so we have to give up our seats to paying customers and find another time slot, but that's okay - we've caught the bug now and we're getting better at making beads - who knew just making something consistently round would be so hard??? - and I figure, with a little bit more practice, by about 2036, I might be ready to sign up for Amy's class on how to make those sculptural angels!!
So for the next few weeks, lampworking will have to go on the back burner. In the meantime, I have this picture of a little turtle bead Dwyn taught us to make - I call him Yurtle. Isn't he cute?
There were 5 of us in the beginner class and at the end of 8 weeks, we all decided we didn't want to stop making beads so Dwyn and Beadfx created an intermediate lampworking course and we went for another 8 weeks. At the end of that session, 3 of us still wanted to keep coming, so we just kept going to the studio they have set up in the store on Thursday nights and Dwyn very kindly kept coming in every week as well, to make her own beads and provide guidance when we needed it, and that's been going on all summer and into this fall. But as of next week, the next beginner lampworking session starts on Thursday nights so we have to give up our seats to paying customers and find another time slot, but that's okay - we've caught the bug now and we're getting better at making beads - who knew just making something consistently round would be so hard??? - and I figure, with a little bit more practice, by about 2036, I might be ready to sign up for Amy's class on how to make those sculptural angels!!
So for the next few weeks, lampworking will have to go on the back burner. In the meantime, I have this picture of a little turtle bead Dwyn taught us to make - I call him Yurtle. Isn't he cute?
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