Inside (and Outside) the Studio with Claire Lockwood of Something To Do With Your Hands

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 prize each week to bribe you to use that keyboard and tell us what you think. The following week a winner is chosen at random from all eligible entries.

Congratulations to Erin S!

You have won a Mystery Bundle of Beads hand-selected by Erin at the Bead and Button Show!

Send Erin a message to claim your prize. 

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I wasn't expecting to be doing this post this weekend and I'm afraid to say I'm a little short on studio-based gossip. At the moment, things in the studio are going along like this:

It doesn't look so overwhelming in this shot, which doesn't seem fair! Anyway, I am slowing going through them, adding underglaze, adding oxides, adding glazes. One day soon it will be done... 

However, every so often, it happens that I leave the studio and that's just what I did last weekend.  I know many of you will be heading off to Bead and Button this weekend; you may already be there, you lucky things!  Here in the UK we have large bead shows but nothing on the scale of Bead and Button, and we certainly don't have shows with the same numbers of art bead stands.  But last weekend I went to a more intimate bead 'event', the Smitten Beads Open House. My first encounters with the online bead world were through Smitten Beads. Claire Braunbarth, who runs Smitten Beads, set up a Facebook group so that her customers could interact and share their designs.  That was - I'm guessing - about three years ago, and while the group has grown considerably, it has remained relatively close-knit. I first met Claire when I went to one of her Open Houses a few years back and the group was started shortly afterwards.  Now it is a larger affair which runs over two days and along with all the beautiful supplies that Claire stocks on her website, you can also shop at a small number of handmade bead stalls: there were ceramics by Bo Hulley (Bo Hulley Beads), polymer beads by Pippa Chandler (Pips), lampwork beads from Linda Newnham (Earthshine Beads) and handmade findings and beaded beads from our own Rebecca (The Curious Bead Shop).

Bo Hulley Beads

Pips

Earthshine Beads

The Curious Bead Shop

(Thank you to Dawn Gatehouse and Kate Floate for the use of these images)

Needless to say, some came home with me. 

(!apologies for the blur!)

I was quite restrained, hey? I had just loaded up on lots of other supplies from Claire's stock room, so I felt I needed to go easy on the art beads.  There was another Bo Hulley bead - this polka-dot connector - that I used in a custom order, the one piece of jewellery made in my studio this week.

(ceramic leaf and drop - Scorched Earth)

But aside from the opportunity to shop for beads, it was a great occasion for catching up with people who, over the last few years, I've come to regard as friends, despite rarely - if ever - meeting them in person. It was fun to talk glazes with Bo, and discuss the relative merits of polymer and ceramic clay with Pippa, and to talk just-all-beads-in-general with Rebecca. I'm sure many readers also find their enthusiasm for beads is not shared by their nearest and dearest, so it's always nice to meet like-minded folk. And when the shopping was over we headed out for food followed by cocktails.  A merry time was had. Here are your UK ABS editors....

It may not be immediately obvious, but a certain amount of drink had been taken by this time.  And although my memory of why we we're posing like this is a little hazy, I do remember having a thoroughly good night!

So, time for the giveaway! The prize this week is a set of my porcelain rose beads.

The question is: Do you have a favourite bead show, or a particularly memorable bead show experience? Or is there a bead show you'd love to go to one day? Please comment below to be in with a chance to win. 

Bye for now, Claire

www.somethingtodowithyourhands.etsy.com

www.somethingtodo.etsy.com

www.somethingtodobeads.etsy.com

Tutorial Tuesday: Wee Bud Earrings

Long story short, I recently went to a beady event where there were a number of art bead makers selling their work.  Obviously I had to get a wee (or, in some cases, no so wee) something from every stall, and from Pippa Chandler I picked up some of these dinky little flower buds.

I'm loving the whole orange and teal thing at the moment, so these really appealed to me.  I knew I wanted to use two in a pair of earrings, but that left me wondering how to use them so that the colours could be seen inside and out.  Here's the solution I came up with.

By hanging the flowers so that they partly rest inside the oval links, they are lifted up, showing the orange centre.  Moreover, the flowers are kept in place because the 'back' of the flowers is cradled in the oval.  Here's a quick step-by-step to show how I made them.  Start by taking about 10cm of 22 gauge / 0.6mm wire and thread a third of it through a large czech glass leaf.

Fold the ends of the wire up to the top of the leaf and bend the longer length upright at the centre top of the leaf.  Wrap the shorter length around the upright wire, then trim and tuck in the end.  Add a couple of lampwork spacers to the remaining wire. (The orange spacer I've used here is from Puffafish Lampwork; I can't remember who made the mini turquoise one...)

Next, take an oval link - I've used some links from a large chain, each being approximately 17 x 11mm.  Attach your beaded leaf drop below the oval hoop with a wrapped loop.  Put your polymer flower on a headpin and attach to the top of your oval with a wrapped loop.

Take another 6cm of wire and make a wrapped loop at one end, attaching it to the hoop at the top of your flower.  Thread on a mini czech glass melon bead then close with a wrapped loop. Finish by attaching an ear wire.

Now all you have to do is make your second earring.

There are lots of bud and pod beads about at the moment.  You could use this technique to hang them - whether on earrings or a necklace - so you can see inside them.

(Clockwise from top left: more Pips; Beads by Earth Tones; Happy Fallout; Genea; Grey Bird Studio; Karen Elmquist)

All you need to do is find a suitable 'link' shaped base on which to rest your bud or pod.  It might take a big bone hoop, a large metal connector, or a chunky vintage lucite ring.  Whether you want to make a pair of wee bud earrings or have been looking for a way to hang a pod shaped focal, I hope you've found something helpful here.

Bye for now, Claire

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