Beads by Laura

The Menthol One

2025-11-04T08:47:00.001+00:00

I finally got round to making that shimmy bracelet I mentioned. The bracelet has spacers made in CiM Sea Foam, Effetre Copper Green 219 and Effetre Light Turquoise 232. There are also a few faceted Czech glass beads in a pretty aquamarine colour.

All the findings are silver plated and nickel compliant. I'd love to be able to make these in sterling silver but have you seen the price of it lately? Also, I'd have to get them hallmarked because of the amount of silver they'd contain and can I be arsed with all that? No. So yes, consider these shimmy bracelets costume jewellery, not for everyday wear, and not to be worn while washing up, showering, wild swimming or doing thirty lengths in the local pool.

The bracelet makes a soft glassy rattle as it moves which is always nice.

If you fancy giving this 'Menthol' shimmy bracelet a home, it's available in my shop.

It's properly autumning out there now, isn't it? My favourite local cherry tree has got its full Autumn '25 look going on.

The neighbour's front garden tree is in full leaf drop mode and every now and again the wind gathers the leaves in a heap in front of our porch. I say porch because that's technically what it is but you can only fit one person in it at a time so it's a very tiny porch. Porchette? Sounds very Hyacinth Bucket, that. But yes, the leaves gather and when they do I take advantage of it and go and pick them up before the wind changes and blows them all over the show. This morning I was out there at 6:45 in my pyjamas, Harry Potter dressing gown (looks like Hogwarts house robes complete with large sleeves and pointy hood) and my garden Crocs (just terrible) picking up leaves with a flattened Amazon box and a Pizza Hut box (I couldn't be bothered to venture into the garage to find the actual leaf scraper things we own) and obviously, even though I'd chosen an early hour to do this task, three neighbours walked by and said good morning. None of them flinched at my get-up, though. Ah well.

Talking of Harry Potter, I've just spent my Audible credit on their new full cast recording of The Philosopher's Stone and so far it's really good. I'm looking forward to hearing Hugh Laurie's Dumbledore.

I'm away to give Nigel his thyroid medicine now. His most recent blood test came back yesterday and there's been no change and it's "perfectly controlled" so that's excellent news. His hyperthyroidism will get worse as he gets older but right now it's stable so I'm happy with that.

That little snaggletooth!

I was less happy about Nigel getting into yet another fight the other week because he's now getting over an abscess from a cat bite which happened in the altercation. This isn't our first abscess rodeo and they're never pleasant to deal with. The picture above shows him pre-abscess burst but the front of his neck is now totally shaved; the vet buzzed his fur away around the abscess site so we can clean it easily, and she also had to shave the other side to take his blood for his thyroid test. His mortal enemy, who I call Ann Widdecombe on account of the black markings on his white head that make him look like he's sporting a Widdecombe bob, was strutting around our back garden this morning so shortly before my leaf gathering in my wizard robes I was out there shooing him away while hissing "Piss off, Ann Widdecombe!" in an attempt to stop Nigel growling, hitting the back door with his paw and doing that 'no-no-no'-miaowing that cats do when they're angry, so yeah, I'm pretty sure the neighbours definitely think of me as 'The Mental One' or something similar.

Have a good day!

Giveaway winner

2025-11-02T20:59:00.002+00:00

I’ve just drawn the winner of the lilac and turquoise bead pair and that person is Charlotte Wilson.

Thanks to everyone who entered – I’ll do another draw soon.

New beads and a giveaway

2025-10-29T16:53:00.005+00:00

I had an urge to make rounder-than-usual beads yesterday. These not-quite-round rounds have cores of CiM Lilac and they're encased with CiM Yours Truly which is a lilac sort of colour. The spots and spacers are Effetre Light Turquoise 232.

I've got three lots of pairs for sale in my shop and I can tumble-etch them for you if you like.

I've also made some more spacers, this time in Effetre Ivory Lapis Medium 292.

Shiny

Tumble-etched

These are quite beachy, I think, and they look really great tumble-etched.

Spacers are available to buy on my website.

Giveaway

When I was 'warming up' ready for round beads yesterday I made a bead pair in the same colours as the ones at the top of this post, but with only a smattering of little spots. I tumble-etched these for a photo to show what the glass looks like etched and instead of listing them for sale I thought they'd make a good little giveaway.

The winner will receive the beads pictured above - one pair of lilac rounds and a pair of coordinating spacers. The lilac beads are about 12mm diameter and the turquoise spacers are about 8.5mm diameter and they've all been tumble-etched to a silky soft finish.

The giveaway is now closed and the winner has been announced and notified. Thank you to everyone who entered the draw.

Sea Foam and Banana Cream

2025-10-26T11:32:00.002+00:00

The long discontinued Creation is Messy Sea Foam is an opal glass in a fresh, minty green. The level of translucency (or opacity, depending on how you like to look at these things) depends on how long the beads spend in the kiln and whereabouts they are positioned in the kiln. This means you can end up with a batch of beads all made from the same glass but that are all a bit different from each other which is really nice. They're quite ethereal.

I've put aside some of these Sea Foam ones so I can make a shimmy bracelet with them. I was fully intending to do that this morning with my extra bonus clocks-gone-back hour but when I got all my findings out I was peeved to discover I've run out of some of the jump rings I need for the job so I've ordered those and they should be here on Tuesday.

I made a few spacers with another discontinued glass - Vetrofond Banana Cream. Not only is the glass long gone, but the company is too. A fellow lampworker, Palala Beads, kindly sent me some yellow glass a couple of years ago and two of the rods were Banana Cream so that's how I came to have some. The glass is a bright but at the same time slightly muted yellow. Remember foam banana sweets? That colour.

The Sea Foam and Banana Cream spacers are available in my shop.

I'm off to plant my spring bulbs now. I've gone for daffodils, some green tulips, purple crocuses and mixed muscari. Oh, and I got three of those big alliums just for novelty's sake. One of the nearby neighbours had a 'free spring bulbs, please take' table out on his lawn the other day so I snagged a bag of those too. I don't know what they will be so that's a mystery bulb bonus, isn't it? Cheers, kind neighbour man.

It's sunny here in Cambridge but also nicely chilly. Lovely. I hope the sun is shining wherever you are? Enjoy your Sunday!

Plain and simple loveliness

2025-10-23T13:00:00.004+01:00

You know the other day when I was wanging on about how lovely spacer beads can be? I took the photo above to kind of prove my point. These ones are Effetre Dark Ivory 276 and Effetre Ivory Lapis Dark 293 and although they're only little 8.5mm spacers beads, they're an excellent example of how glass is a very lovely thing in its own right.

This streaky ivory and lapis blue mix is so pretty. Every single bead is unique and they remind me of planets, oceans and the sky.

A customer who purchased some of the dark ivory spacers asked for half of them to be tumble-etched and again, I took a photo of them to show how nice plain and simple beads can be.

Spacer beads can be purchased in my shop.

In crochet news...

Thanks for all the lovely comments about Stig. He's such a bright and cheery fella, isn't he?

I'm currently working on a second Starlite blanket. I had quite a bit of yarn left over from the previous one so I took that as a sign to make another.

I may well put the blanket in my shop when it's done, if a friend or family member doesn't claim it in the meantime, that is.

Talking of crochet in my shop, I've reduced the price of all of my shawls.

Almost all of my shawls double up as scarves and although they're mostly cotton mixes and therefore not overly-cosy, they're just right for this time of year when there's a bit of a chill in the air but you don't want to be getting too hot. Do you know what I mean? You sort of go "It looks chilly out there - I'll put my coat on" but within five minutes of walking you're clammy in the armpits and undertits areas and regretting your wardrobe choice, wishing you'd just opted for a jumper and lightweight scarf instead. That's the level of warmth my shawls-that-double-as-scarves are good for.

That's all for now. I'm heading shedwards to make more spacers. See you soon!

Stig

2025-10-22T10:54:00.002+01:00

Remember those little crochet motifs I posted the other day? Well, here they all are made into a stegosaurus. I've named him Stig and he seems very at home next to one of my ferns.

This was such a fun little project. Stig is made from African flower motifs in merino sock yarn. I crocheted him with a 2mm hook because the motifs need to be quite dense and tight so that no stuffing can work its way through the holes. Stig measures about 40cm from nose to tail tip.

The stegosaurus is made up of triangles, squares, pentagons, hexagons, heptagons and one octagon so he's pleasingly geometric. The project was like creating all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and then having the fun of joining them all together. The only effing and jeffing that occurred was while I was sewing his plates on because I absolutely loathe sewing. Apart from that he was a joy to make.

The pattern is Puff the Magic Stegosaurus by heidibears and it is fabulous - so well-written with very clear instructions. This designer has many different African flower animal and creature patterns and I'm sure I'll make another one at some point. I quite fancy having a go at the dragon or sheep.

A space for spacers

2025-10-21T15:40:00.006+01:00

I have so much glass in my shed and I don't think I will ever use it all so I've decided to turn some of it into spacers. Some glass doesn't suit my style of beadmaking, or maybe it's the other way round, but it makes very pretty plain, undecorated beads.

The other reason for making spacers is that some days, and it's more often than not, I just cannot seem to make fancier beads that I am happy with. One factor at play here is obviously my over-critical fussiness about my own work, but the main issue is my eyesight. I just can't seem to find the right spectacles/prescription for the job. I've tried explaining to various optometrists what I do and they tell me to wear my reading glasses for beadmaking but this doesn't quite work. I've tried my varifocals but they wind me up because I have to constantly and consciously move my focus about which feels awkward and unnatural and I end up making mistakes all the time because I can't properly and clearly see what I'm doing. I honestly work better without any glasses (except for my safety didys, obviously) but the optometrist is adamant that I wear specs at all times. My usual and favourite fiddly and precise polka dots, scrolls and linework are now exceedingly tricky to execute and it's very disheartening. Maybe I need a magnifier or have I read somewhere that they can cause problems with your eyes? I don't know. Perhaps I should go back to the opticians again and try and get through to them what I need my glasses to do? Or should I simply accept that my eyesight is not what it once was and evolve accordingly beadwise?

I still very much want to make beads but on days when my eyes are titting about I shall just have to settle for less precise designs (spotty beads, anyone?) and plain beads. Plain beads don't have to be boring; encased spacers are lovely, whitehearts are good and a smattering of mica is always a bit magical. Spacers are useful for adding to designs featuring more decorative beads, but they're beautiful in their own right too. I love bracelets made with plain spacer beads as they're unfussy and really comfy to wear.

I've made a space for spacers in my shop and I'll be filling this new section with spacers as and when I make them. I'm selling plain single colour spacers as strands of twelve with optional tumble-etching and I'll also be selling spacer mixes.

I've got absolutely loads of spacers knocking about in various bowls, jars and yoghurt pots so I shall sort them out and add some assortments over the next few days. Right now there are some dark ivory ones and a mixed strand of reds, pinks and purples, but do keep an eye on the spacer beads page because I'll add to it often.

Very autumnal

2025-10-18T13:52:00.008+01:00

The customer who purchased these spotty 'Festive Glow' beads asked me to make them into a bracelet for her.

These beads have been waiting for a home for a year (I sound like a cat rehoming centre) so it was nice to make them into jewellery and finally send them out into the world.

I made some matching spacers to go betwixt the spotty beads and the result is a very autumnal one. Job's a good'un!

I need to make some more beads to restock my virtual shelves so I'll be in the shed for a chunk of this weekend.

In crochet news...

I've been making a load of tiny motifs out of sock yarn.

I'm currently working on joining them all together, but what are they going to be? Hopefully I'll be able to show you in the next (or maybe one after) gripping episode of this blog. Stay tuned etc.

Have a nice weekend!

Languishing no more

2025-10-14T10:01:00.002+01:00

I start to feel sorry for beads in my 'For Sale' box that have been sat there for ages waiting for a new home. It's like they're not getting to fulfil their potential and after months of them languishing in a dark box I take out the beads and turn them into jewellery.

'Rainy Day' bracelet

'Rainy Day' earrings

I've had some polka dotty 'Rainy Day' beads and some spotty 'Iceberg' ones sat doing nothing for far too long so last week I made them into bracelets and earrings.

'Iceberg' bracelet

'Iceberg' earrings

These pieces are currently available in my shop.

Blanket of stars

2025-10-13T17:07:00.003+01:00

When I started this blanket I had no particular recipient in mind - I simply wanted to crochet it. When I saw Em in Southampton last month I showed her a photo of the pattern and she loved it so it became her blanket and now it's living with her in Northern Ireland.

I had to stand on the sofa to take this photo

It's a hexagonal blanket made of hexagons (127 of them) and that means that there were a bazillion ends to sew in. I always sew in my ends as I complete each motif but the joining of them all made a load more ends and it took me a whole day and a half to weave them all away.

The finished product was well worth all the ends-sewing-in-ness, though. The pattern is a truly beautiful one - it's the Starlite Blanket by Alice Tarry of The Burrow UK. I made it with Yarnsmiths Create DK and Wool Warehouse do a yarn pack with all the colours required for the blanket.

Donaghadee done

2025-10-13T16:42:00.002+01:00

My trip to Donaghadee was lovely. The picture above is of the beach at Donaghadee. It is so pretty and I would love to have this on my doorstep.

The plane was a bit delayed flying out on Friday evening due to Storm Amy and the landing was quite hairy. The pilot attempted to land but decided it was too dangerous to do so safely so we did a twenty minute loop and then he had a second go.

Taken before the second landing attempt

It was extremely rollercoastery and the cabin crew had a stack of sick bags at the ready. One woman across the aisle from me was crying and literally clutching her rosary beads. Just as I was starting to feel pretty groggy myself we landed and oh, the relief to be back on the ground!

Goliath, one of the Harland & Wolff cranes

Em and I visited Titanic Belfast on the Saturday which was great. The museum is really good and its final couple of sections made Em and I quite teary. The story of Titanic is such an enduring one and I think it's nigh-on impossible to not be moved by it.

Outside you can go and stand on the slipway where Titanic was built. There's something special about standing on that spot and imagining the men building her all those years ago.

The plaque in the above photo reads 'This plaque was unveiled on 31st March 2009 by John M Andrews, great nephew of Thomas Andrews, chief naval architect, Harland & Wolff, to commemorate the centenary of the keel laying of RMS Titanic, built on this slipway between 1909 & 1911'.

On the Sunday we went to Streamvale Open Farm to say hello to all the animals. If there's a goat or sheep available for a fussing and a feeding, I'm there.

A lot of the weekend was spent with Em's dogs. Sadly, Em's dear little dog Pu-Ki died in July. Trigger has been missing him terribly and Em and Adam felt it was time to find him a companion.

Trigger

They saw that a Pomeranian puppy needed a new home (he'd been rescued from a puppy farm) and now Macho is settling in with them.

Macho and his ball

I'd never been around a puppy before and blimey, what a lot of work! Macho is very sweet, though, and really intelligent.

He reminds me of Noel Edmonds

Trigger's still not sure about Macho but they're making progress and I'm sure they'll be the best of friends soon.

I flew back home on the Monday, no dodgy landing and half an hour ahead of schedule. I've never been much of a holidaymaker or traveller and I've barely been anywhere compared to a lot of people, so a 90 minute plane trip is a big deal to me but now I've done the Northern Ireland trip solo I know it'll be fine in the future.

Postage changes for UK customers

2025-10-07T14:46:00.004+01:00

"Flipping Royal Mail. What can you do?" said Pat

Royal Mail have changed the compensation level for its Tracked 24 and 48 services. Before Monday 6th October, packages sent via these services were insured for up to £150.00 and now they have halved that to £75.00. The next compensation level is £750.00 via Special Delivery but this is a heck of a price jump postage-wise.

My new UK (not including Northern Ireland) P&P rates are:

Order value up to £20.00 = £2.00 P&P via RM Second Class
Order value £20.01 to £75.00 = £3.50 P&P via RM Tracked 48
Order value over £75.00 = £9.00 P&P via RM Special Delivery

All I can suggest is if your order is multiple items with a combined value of over £75.00, maybe place two separate orders? Example: a £20.00 necklace and a £60.00 bracelet totalling £80.00 would be £9.00 P&P as one order but as two orders it would be one at £2.00 and one at £3.50 totalling £5.50 meaning a saving of £3.50.

I know this is annoying - blame Royal Mail and their pricing and trying to compete with Evri and the like - and I do apologise for any extra faffing or inconvenience but I refuse to send anything uninsured because I don't want you or I to be out of pocket if anything gets lost, damaged or stolen in transit.

October means acorns

2025-10-02T11:00:00.012+01:00

September came and went in the blink of an eye, and I never blogged once.

At the start of September I went down to Southampton to celebrate my niece Robyn's 21st birthday (21!) and I was I picked up from the railway station by my nephew Dylan who is now driving and about four inches taller than me. Honestly, every time I see them I feel more and more like an aged old aunt.

We had a lovely weekend with pub shenanigans, a barbecue, cake and lots of laughter.

Obligatory sisters photo of me, Sal and Em

Robyn lifting Em

Smudgy lens photo of Dylan and me

Enca, Sally's beautiful pussycat

It was also my birthday in September which passed without fanfare or much ado. I struggle a bit with birthdays as I get closer to the age my mum was when she died. I woke up on my 48th birthday thinking "When Mum was 48 she didn't know she had just five years left" which I realise is a very morose and morbid thought but I am an eternal pessimist so it's pretty standard thinking material for me. I keep telling myself that when I make it to 53 years and ten days I'll have conquered this ridiculous mental barrier I've erected for myself which I know is no way to think about life but I just can't seem to help it. From what I can gather this is a pretty common thing in people who have lost parents or older siblings so if anyone else out there can relate – solidarity.

In glassy news...

I've been making acorns and oak leaves. I've made these on and off over the years, iterating and tweaking the design as I go and I think I reached peak faff with them this time. They are a true labour of love.

The glass components are shaped by hand, by which I mean I don't use a press or mould for them. Each oak leaf shape is painstakingly sculpted by building up the leaf one blob of molten glass at a time and shifting everything into place with a graphite paddle, a brass shaping knife, a razor blade and gravity.

In the past I've made my acorns and oak leaf headpins straight onto copper wire. For ages I've wanted to be able to make sterling silver ones but the amount of heat and reheating required to make the glass components means that sterling silver wire would melt in the flame, so for these ones I made the acorns and leaves on the end of a very thin mandrel which results in a glass channel in each piece. This is thoroughly cleaned and dried and then I use a very high-quality epoxy glue to firmly fix the sterling silver wires in place. Once everything is cured, cleaned up and polished, I assemble the necklaces.

Each necklace has a brown acorn and a transparent oak leaf the colour of caramelised sugar. These glass components are affixed to a soldered ring which is threaded onto an 18 inch (45cm) sterling silver belcher chain. All metal is sterling silver apart from the acorn cup bead cap which is high-quality .999 fine silver plated lead-free brass.

The acorn and oak leaf necklaces can be purchased in my shop.

And there's good news for my American customers - I can post things to you again. Hurrah! All you have to do is place your order as usual and the checkout will add the 10% import tax to your order. There is also a £1.20 handling fee per US order which is also added at checkout. In effect, you are paying the tax to me, which I then forward to the Royal Mail when I pay them for the postage for your order, and then Royal Mail will pass that on to Donny Trump's Postage Tax People further down the line. In effect, that should be it and you should have nothing else to pay and your parcel will hopefully reach you in a timely and smooth fashion. I have asked the two US customers I've posted to since the taxes came in to report back to me to let me know how the process went but alas, I've heard nothing back from them, so I'm hoping no news is good news.

In knitting news...

Fat chunky big knitting! Robyn asked me if I could knit her a blanket (aged old aunt skills) in really big chenille yarn.

It's like knitting with broom handles

The needles are 25mm (ten times the size of sock knitting needles) and the yarn is like dressing gown cord and knitting with them makes me feel like a Borrower. It's coming on very quickly, though. I don't quite know how I'm going to deliver it to Robyn when it's done. I might have to pack it in one of those sucky-out-the-air vacuum bags? I'll worry about that later.

I think that's it for now. I'm flying to Belfast tomorrow to visit Emily for the weekend. I'm saying that like I'm really cool and blasé with travel but inside I'm nervous as heck. I'm getting the train to Gatwick (never been there before) and then I'm flying on my own (not done that for nineteen years) so I keep getting a flurry of butterflies every time I think about it but it'll be fine, won't it? I don't actually hate flying - it's all the getting there and the security and the waiting and all that guff that I stress about. It'll be fine. It will.

Have a good weekend and I shall see you soon.

Ever decreasing bead market

2025-08-25T09:01:00.002+01:00

Alright?

Bead-wise, I've been quiet. We had Covid a couple of weeks back and then more heatwave happened which made the shed far too warm for work but I was back in there this week and I got a few beads made. I think the summer is slowly fading now, much like my pot marigolds, so give it a couple of months and I'll be wanging on about how cold my shed is instead.

The beads I made were these black and white 'Dapple' ones:

These are Effetre white 204, black 064 and light red 428. Encasing is Effetre super clear 006, as always.

The customer who purchased them asked me to turn them into a bracelet and earrings for her.

I also got my Whirly-Go-Round on and made these teal and blue ones:

They're Effetre white 204, light teal 026, dark periwinkle 222 and super clear 006.

At the time of blogging, the Whirly-Go-Rounds are in my shop and a bracelet upgrade is available.

A note to my American customers:

I'm sure you're probably aware by now that the de minimis exemption will be no more as of the end of this month. This rule allowed you to receive parcels under the value of $800.00 without having to pay any tariffs or suchlike.

Because of this, and because it's happened much sooner than people were expecting, I am unable to post beads to you for the foreseeable future. This is because there will be inevitable customs delays and potentially very high import charges that the buyer is responsible for. It seems nobody quite knows or understands exactly what the outcome will be but apparently things will be uncertain for the next few months, and platforms like Etsy are advising people not to send orders via Royal Mail. To say this is a bit of a bummer is an understatement. You Americans make up about 70% of my customer base. At the start of the year I lost all my EU customers due to their new postage and import rules, and now I've lost you too. A few years ago I could post packages to pretty much anywhere in the world and now I'm down to England, Scotland, Wales and Canada.

I've seen so much talk of Etsy shops shutting and people giving up their little craft businesses because of this and I totally understand why. I've not yet ruled out doing so myself but I'm going to hang on until I find out if this de minimis thing can be fixed in a way that works for me and my customers.

I think I just wanted to say "thank you" to my American customers for all your past orders and support and also that I'm sorry I can't send my makings to you right now. And I'm sorry too for anyone who is going to have to give up their businesses because of all this.

Who knows what my bead future will bring? Maybe I'll end up with so much bead stock I'll do an actual craft fair (URGH! and ARGH!) or something? Perhaps the US will sort its mind out with regards to import duties and tariffs? Or could it be that my time as a beadmaker is coming to an end? Who can say? What will be will be. In the meantime I shall just plod on.

Enjoy your day and if you're Bank Holiday Mondaying, I hope you have a nice one. Personally, I'm heading shedwards.

See you soon!

Giveaway winner

2025-08-01T19:02:00.003+01:00

I've drawn the winner of the 'Hydrangea' Spotties pair giveaway and that person is Vicky W. Nice one, Vicky! I’ve sent you an email.

Thank you to everyone who entered the draw - I'll do another giveaway soon. Whenever I say that, 'soon' normally ends up being months and months but I'll try and sort a draw for September.

Beads, bracelet and a little giveaway

2025-07-30T13:05:00.003+01:00

I can't quite capture the real-life sunshiny vibrancy of this orangey-yellow glass in a photo. It's a very summery colour and I've paired it with lavender-blue here. There's no encasing which always makes me feel a bit weird because the thing I love most about glass beads is the way the light shines through it but sometimes it's good to keep things really simple. Also, a lot of yellow glasses do not tolerate encasing and they can crack. I'm unsure if this particular yellow is a fussy bugger one and obviously an easy way to find out would be to actually make an encased bead with it, but it's been too hot in the shed to squander limited torch time on making 'risky' beads that might crack - that's a cooler weather task.

These are Effetre pastel yellow 418 and lavender blue/pastel ink blue 247. The beads are currently available in my shop and I can etch them and/or make them into a bracelet for you if you like. All details can be found here.

I made another batch of 'Hydrangea' spotties:

One of my customers opted for a bracelet upgrade for these which is great because now I have some photographs to show you exactly what these beads look like made wearable.

If you fancy your own 'Hydrangea' spotties bracelet you can order one here. The beads can also be purchased loose so you can do your own thing with them

I had a couple of leftover lavender ones from this batch and I thought I'd offer them as a giveaway here on my blog. I've not done a giveaway for donkey's yonks!

To have a shot at winning this pair of beads with coordinating spacers you need to do the following:

Entries for the giveaway are now closed. The winner has been announced here.

I will put all the names in a hat and draw a winner on the evening of Friday 1st August. I won't be using your email address or details for anything else and your message will be deleted once the draw is over and done with.

Good luck!

Where there are scrolls there are spots

2025-07-24T10:49:00.003+01:00

Crafting beads with scrolls on involves pulling a fair amount of stringer and the application of it produces many stray ends that aren't long enough to do anything useful with. Instead of throwing all these stringer oddments away I use some of them for applying spots to beads.

Making spotty beads is always a nice 'effort break' from scrolly ones, not that both don't take effort, but scrolls are way more intensive and go-wrongable than random spots.

'Summer Blues' Scrolls

These 'Summer Blues' scrolly beads are Effetre dark periwinkle 222 encased with Effetre pale aquamarine 038 with scrolls in Effetre light turquoise 232 and spacers in CiM Peacock Feather.

I then used some of the light turquoise stringer for spots on these 'Hydrangea' spotties.

'Hydrangea' Spotties

These are Effetre white 204 encased with Effetre dark lavender 081, and Effetre light turquoise 232 encased with Effetre pale aquamarine 038 with spots in Effetre lavender blue 247.

'Steel Grey' Scrolls

These 'Steel Grey' scroll beads are Effetre white 204 encased with Effetre dark steel grey 088 with scrolls in Effetre white 204.

'Serene' Spotties

I used leftover white stringer on these 'Serene' spotties which have Effetre white 204 cores encased with Effetre pale aquamarine 038 and pale emerald green 031.

Whew! That was a lot of glass numbers but I know some of you like to know exactly what I use for my beads. It's always a handy reminder for myself too.

At the time of typing, the 'Steel Grey' scrolls and the 'Hydrangea' spotties are in my shop with tumble-etching and/or bracelet upgrades available for both.

It's raining here today which means it's quite cool so hopefully I'll get a few hours of shed time in.

Have a good Thursday and I'll see you soon!

Iced Tea

2025-07-18T06:56:00.003+01:00

This is CiM Burnt Sugar which is a transparent brown that has a warm rosy tint to it. It catches the light in such a pretty way. I've used it over CiM Foam here (I'm almost out of this and I will really miss it when it's gone) and the scrolls are Effetre White 204.

I can tumble-etch these 'Iced Tea' beads, although I think they look best left shiny. There's also the option of a bracelet upgrade if you'd like me to make them wearable for you. All the details can be found here.

Talking of bracelet upgrades, one of my customers asked if I could turn a set of the Bubblebumps beads into a bracelet for her.

I made some pink spacers and strung the beads with turquoise seed beads and sterling silver.

The result was a very juicy-fruity and utterly summery bracelet. I hope my customer likes it and enjoys wearing it.

In knitting news...

I have got some pairs that aren't striped in the Pile-o-Socks but yeah, here are some more striped ones.

These are Yarnsmiths Merino Sock in 2K172 Duckling and 2K045 Off White.

I was going for a custard cream thing and now custard creams are all I think of whenever I look at them.

Apparently it's going to be another warm day today so I'd better go and water the garden plants before I head off to the foodbank for a hot and sweaty morning hefting crates of food about in the warehouse.

Have a good Friday and enjoy your weekend!

Seaweed, Socks & Knots

2025-07-14T17:12:00.006+01:00

This green is CiM Peat Moss and it's one of my favourite greens. It reminds me of so many things - moss, olives, ferns - but today it's reminding me of seaweed so that's what I've called these beads.

A classic Laurabeads quintet with spacers. These would look great tumble-etched. The strand is currently available in my shop.

In knitting news...

Another pair from the sock pile, this time stripes.

Cuff down, five row stripes, slip stitch heel, job's a good'un.

These were knitted in Yarnsmiths Merino Sock in shades 2K060 Parchment and 2K201 Moss Green

And in other news...

I recently bought a tiny little silver inch plant; I fell in love with his glittery silvery green and purple leaves and I just had to take him home. He's grown so fast and started trailing and I wanted to get a macramé pot hanger for him. When I looked them up online I was like "I'm not paying that plus delivery when I'm pretty sure I can buy some cord and make my own!" so that's exactly what I did.

The only macramé I've done before is friendship bracelets when I was a kid, and basic square knot bead bracelets over the last few years. I got a roll of 3mm cord, watched a few YouTube videos and got to knotty work and a couple of hours later I had a pot hanger.

I'm so chuffed with it. I'm going to make another, larger one for one of my golden pothos plants and I might knot in a few beads too. I've just got to decide what colour beads to make for it now.

It's hot. Obvs.

2025-07-13T07:46:00.005+01:00

Obviously it's hot. Because it's summer. But hot weather means very limited beadmaking time because on a very warm day the shed reaches 34°C by lunchtime and my brain stops working at about 30°C and I start making stupid mistakes and crap beads, so on the days where anything above temperatures of 27°C are forecast I don't even attempt making beads.

As such, I've been working sporadically – a couple of hours here, a couple there – and I only have a few beads to show you. June was a bit of a write-off, really, not just because of the heat but because I had a couple of doctor and hospital appointments and a wodge of worry and stress alongside them but it's OK because it all turned out fine in the end. It was just my woman hormones making my boobs go mental, is all. Fun.

But yep, beads. There are the very jolly Bubblebumps ones which are un-encased orange beads decorated with turquoise scrolls, little slightly raised blue dots, and pink 'bubblebumps' which are raised bumps with a bubble trapped inside each one. Innovative naming.

I don't know what the orange is. It's definitely Effetre and it's not their standard orange – it's some kind of special – but the label has long fallen off the bundle of rods so I can't be sure exactly. It's a glorious colour, though. The pink is Double Helix Rhea Light which seems to vary in its hot pinkness from batch to batch.

I also have these double encased spotties:

A couple of weeks back I got a bit obsessed with double encasing. I wanted to make beads with an opaque cylindrical core encased with a coloured transparent and then encased again with clear but so that you could clearly see the demarcation between the coloured transparent and the clear. I managed it eventually and I worked out how to do it so that the opaque core doesn’t bleed onto the encasing layer whilst also making sure that the encasing doesn’t overshoot the core, all while keeping the opaque core cylindrical.

The effect is one of those things that easily goes unnoticed, after all, it’s just a little bead, right? I mean most people wouldn’t look twice at one of these and consider all the things that I just told you about. It’s not a fancy floral, it hasn’t got any inclusions, it’s got no silver glass – it’s a basic fat donut-shaped bead. So why bother? I think I just enjoy setting myself a bead challenge and completing it, really. Normally those challenges involve making the most simple-looking beads but simple-looking isn’t always simple to achieve and getting it right is where I get my glassy kicks.

I made a couple of other beads in the same colours (Effetre Light Violet 041 and Light Turquoise 034) and then it got too hot to carry on that day so I ended up with just a trio.

The spacers here are Bullseye Light Aqua 1408 which is a bit greener than Effetre's Aqua. Lovely colour.

All of the beads pictured above are currently available to purchase in my shop.

In knitting news...

I've finally taken some sock photos because there is nothing like contorting your legs into photographable positions while wearing wool socks in peak summer, is there? I had to do it as the finished pairs pile was going a bit Tower of Pisa.

Today I'm showing you these ones. The pattern is Soma by Summer Lee from her book The Sock Project.

They're knitted with Yarnsmiths Merino Sock in shade 2K367 Magenta.

And in other news...

I went to London last week to spend a couple of days there with my friend Jen. It was hot and Londony and we walked and talked and we went to Hackney City Farm to pet goats and sheep, and I barely took any photos because I just don't tend to when I'm doing stuff, plus in London there's a constant fear that someone will snatch your phone as they ride past on an electric scooter or bike. Do not even get me started on those things. Living in Cambridge was already a bike nightmare but now electric bikes and scooters are here being a pedestrian is more perilous than ever. But anyway, yes, I shall leave you with the one photo I took of the adorable and very vocal sheep and goats of Hackney City Farm.

Thanks for stopping by. Enjoy the rest of your weekend, don't overheat and make sure you've put a bowl of water out for the birds and other garden wildlife. Bye!

A quiet April

2025-05-08T12:25:00.005+01:00

Longer than a month since I last posted? Disgraceful.

Truth is, I've not done a lot bead-wise. I made some more Petalplosions in a pale plum colour (the ones pictured above) but then I ran out of propane just before the long Easter weekend and FloGas didn't deliver a new canister until last week. I do miss their local dealer service where you could get next day delivery; now it all goes through a central call centre system and everything takes ages.

So I've been knitting socks. Loads of them. So many socks I've lost count. I have a stack of them on the table next to me, all washed and blocked, waiting for their photos to be taken.

I made a pair of coral-coloured socks for my littlest sister's birthday last month.

The pattern is Harriet by Summer Lee from her superb book The Sock Project and the yarn is Cascade Heritage in 5750 Living Coral. I knitted a pair the same but in a linen beige colour for my other sister but I forgot to photograph those ones.

I got a bit obsessed knitting striped socks for a bit. I've only photographed one pair of those - the others are on the aforementioned sock stack.

These ones are no particular pattern, just a generic cuff down sock in five row stripes.

Nigel helping with photography

These were knitted with Yarnsmiths Merino Sock in 098 Crimson and 223 Spearmint. I'm really impressed with this yarn. It's very soft and comes in a wide range of colours. I like it a lot!

What else have I been doing? I went to London last month to watch my niece, brother-in-law and my niece's cousin run the London Landmarks half marathon. My niece Robyn (long-term readers will be shocked to realise that she's now twenty years old) only started running at the start of the year so she did really well to run a half in just over three hours, bless her. I'm so proud of her! I hadn't been for a run since February but after seeing Robyn do so brilliantly I was inspired to get back to it and now I'm out there three times a week plodding along like a sweaty, beetroot-faced wombat but I'm loving it.

I'm still working my way through The X Files and Chris is finding it hilarious that I'm thirty years late to it. It's so good!

I think that's about all for now. I've just added 'photograph sock stack socks' to my to-do list so I'll be back soon with some of those and hopefully some beads too now that my torch has fuel again.

More Petalplosions

2025-04-04T15:29:00.003+01:00

I've received really great feedback about the Petalplosions (thank you!) so I've made another batch of them. They can be purchased as pairs of beads and also as earrings.

French earwires

Leverback earwires

The earrings come with French earwires as standard but a leverback upgrade is available.

Please click here to visit my shop.

Spring zing

2025-04-01T13:00:00.002+01:00

I've been making more petal beads. The photographs don't show off their depth very well so these are definite better-in-real-life beads.

I thought I'd try combining the petals with an implosion and ta-da! Petalplosions!

I love these. Yellow implosion centres, white layered petals and a touch of bright green for a bit of springtime zing.

All of the beads pictured are currently available as pairs over in my shop.

In non-bead news, I think I'm just about used to my varifocals now. I went and had a little frame adjustment which made a big difference so hurrah for that. I had to have a chipped and cracked tooth fixed with a composite filling on Thursday and now I'm getting used to a slightly new bite. I'm also getting over some kind of lurgy that I caught from Chris. It's most odd - just a really bad cough and a slightly sore throat with a general feeling of headachy worn-out-ness. Not really a cold, possibly mild Covid? Whatever, the cough is no longer making me sound like a honking goose so that's a bonus. Honestly, eyes, teeth, cough lurg... I'm falling apart here.

Anyway, I finished my green socks:

These are Summer Lee's August Colorwork Cuff Club pattern. They're knitted in Drops Nord in shades 10 and 01.

It's such a beautiful day here. It's fresh and a little chilly but the sun is shining, the bumble bees are bumbling about and the birds are chirping. Leaves are unfurling everywhere and the cherry trees are blossoming all over the place.

This is my favourite local tree. If you stand underneath it all you can hear are umpteen bees and pollinators buzzing amongst its flowers. It's so nice to just take a moment and listen to them going about their business.

I hope the sun is shining wherever you are. Have a lovely day and I'll speak to you soon.

A good bead day

2025-03-20T12:40:00.004+00:00

You know I said in my last post I was going through my bead archives? The photo above is from May 2014 and I looked at these petal beads for ages, trying to remember how I made them. They're not like my 'scales' beads which are just layers of stacked dots; these have more depth to them.

Yesterday I decided to try and let my hands remember how they were made, as opposed to my brain. Honestly, muscle memory never fails to amaze me. How can you make a few beads eleven years ago and think you've forgotten the method you used for them, yet your hands have remembered? As soon as the tiny little thing I thought I'd forgotten clicked into place, I was away.

Petals V2.0

I added an extra layer of small petals to make them a bit different and although these reminder beads are made in just three colours - clear, periwinkle blue and light violet - I can picture these in multiple colours within one bead. What is beyond me is why I opted for bands of seven petals. When it comes to placing dots on beads, four is easy, five is tricky but okay, six is typical, eight is pretty simple, but why did I choose seven for these? It's the same with my polka dots; those have bands of nine dots. When it comes to drawing geometric shapes with a compass and ruler (which I have done lots of) heptagons and nonagons are the bit-more-complex ones to execute. I seem to have an in-built need to make life complicated for myself.

But yes, what is important is that I'm making progress on the bead front. I really enjoyed my shed time yesterday. I hit play on my massive Weezer playlist and got totally lost in glass and music and I haven't felt that way for a long while. Here's hoping I'm starting to crawl out of my beady misery hole.

In sock news...

In the evenings I have a spare hour or so before getting the dinner ready in which I knit and watch telly. Last month I was doing the trawling-through-streaming-services thing, looking for a series I'd not seen before for my pre-dinner knitting television and I decided to try The X-Files. I never watched it in the 90s and it's always seemed like a lot of TV show to catch up with but I decided to dive in anyway and oh my word, I love it.

I am over thirty years late to this but goodness me, Fox Mulder is a huge bit of alright, isn't he? (Especially in his season one specs. And his season two sunglasses.) I'm surprised by how much some of the episodes have freaked me out (Tooms, possessed children, general aliens-coming-to-Earth stuff) but I am thoroughly enjoying it.

When I happened upon Charlotte Stone's The Truth is Out There socks pattern a couple of weeks ago I knew I had to knit them.

These were made with Opal Uni 4 Ply in shades 2619 Black and 2011 Neon Green.

And here are the socks I'm currently working on. These are Summer Lee's August Colorwork Cuff Club pattern. I think they're very fitting to post today seeing as it's the first day of spring.

I adore this mossy green. The yarn is Drops Nord which is an alpaca and wool mix.

Right, shed. Let's see if I've got any more petal power in me...

See you later!

Sound the Klaxon of Ennui

2025-03-19T09:36:00.017+00:00

What noise would the Klaxon of Ennui make? I reckon it'd be a big, long, loud sigh or maybe just the sound of someone going "Urgh" in a really mopey way.

I've wanged on so many times before about how my apparent 'maladaptive perfectionism' affects my beadmaking but it's reached crazy levels to the point where more often than not I think I'm actually sort of afraid to make anything. I think my brain is saying "What's the point in making beads when you won't be happy with any of them?" and I simply don't know how to overcome that feeling.

When I'm having a particularly naff time with beadmaking I look at photos of beads I made years ago in the hope that it'll spur me on but I usually just end up despondent at how past me made so many different beads in such quantities and I get quite doldrumsy again.

* S I G H *

Anyhow...

I dragged myself into the shed on Monday and decided to make lentil beads. Years ago I had a lentil press made for me that does 8, 10 and 12mm lentils but I asked for it to be made to take a 1.6mm mandrel and that is the exact size they made the mandrel groove which is no good when you've got a dipped 1.6mm mandrel in it because the bead release cracks when you press the bead, so the press has been sat there literally gathering dust for about nine years.

I've been a fan of tiny lentil beads ever since I bought a strand of eight of them about two decades ago. They were transparent ink blue and white ones made by Corina Tettinger and I turned them into a bracelet.

Bracelet made with Corina's beads

I was, and still am, wowed by how Corina decorated such small (about 11mm) lentils. These beads are not easy to get right, even though they're pressed. Too much glass and you'll get a lip around the edges and too little and you'll get a misshapen bead with sharp hole edges. When you're adding decoration that is melted flush with the bead's surface you have to take into account the extra glass that this will add, so all in all it's a beady tightrope walk.

I decided that Monday was the day to dust off my tiny lentil press and have another go. After recently working with and getting used to 1mm mandrels I decided to see if they'd cooperate with it. They do but blimey, remember all that stuff I just said about them being not easy to get right? Yeah. A whole day in the shed should not result in only a dozen correct beads but that was what I ended up with. The photo below shows my water jug at the end of the day. That's a lot of lentil failures.

Interesting fact: 'lentil' rhymes with 'mental'

And I can't fully blame my bead perfectionism for all of these rejects because some of the beads were just bad in that they had sharp holes or too much glass. Sharp bead holes are my number one pet bead peeve; if I see them for sale anywhere I get really annoyed. (My number two pet bead peeve is people describing random spots as polka dots but that's where we really are entering the realms of my pedantry and nobody wants to go to there.) What also didn't help is that I chose to use Effetre Light Red 428 for the lentils. Don't get me wrong, this is one of my favourite reds but it goes a bit streaky and you can end up with darker and lighter reds within one bead. This isn't a huge problem but sometimes it can look a bit jarring, especially as such a small and simple-looking bead, and because of this I rejected some of the beads after I'd cleaned them.

Pleasingly tiny lentils

Anyway, I turned the twelve 10mm red lentils into a bracelet. What I like about this shape is how comfy they are to wear. The beads sit nicely and not too high so you get a sleeker lampwork bracelet look than you do with round beads.

Can you see the light and dark red variation?

The smaller bead hole definitely makes for better-behaved beads when you're making jewellery too as the beads don't wobble about as much on your thread or wire.

I've got a few strands of smaller-holed beads for sale in my shop.

Blue 'Spots & Dots'

Black and yellow 'Spots & Dots'

'Light Sapphire' Spotties

These were all made on 1mm mandrels so with bead release and cleaning the holes end up at about 1.2mm.

I've still got more leaf beads to photograph but my eyes had enough of doing that yesterday. I got new glasses on Saturday so I'm trying to get used to a new prescription plus the fact that they're varifocals and it's not going well. To say I hate them is an understatement. I'm keeping going with them as they say it can take a couple of weeks for your eyes to get used to varifocals but I'm constantly seeing things as out of focus and I have to keep bobbing my head about like a pigeon to see properly. Things like washing up and chopping vegetables have suddenly become challenging tasks as my depth perception is out of whack. It's very tempting to go back to my old glasses but the one thing the varifocals do well is that they allow me to knit and see the telly at the same time. Before, I'd have to choose the glasses that would enable me to see the television clearly but that I'd have to peer under or over in order to see my knitting clearly, or to opt for my readers so that I could see my stitches but have to put up with the television picture as a blur. The varifocals do a great job of letting me do both so that's a win and it's why I'm persevering with them in the hope my eyes will soon adjust properly to everything else.

Talking of knitting, here are those finished Dear Björn socks I mentioned last time.

The pattern is by Nataliya Sinelshchikova and the yarn is Malabrigo Ultimate Sock in shade 214 Magenta. The pattern is in the 52 Weeks of Socks book and it's also available on Ravelry. The socks are a tricky knit but the results were worth the effing, jeffing and many instances of ripping back and re-knitting.

I've got another pair of socks finished but I'll save them for next time as I think I've droned on for quite long enough today.

Have a good Wednesday and I'll see you soon!