Snippets from our August 2013 Issue

Here is a selection of the articles that you can find in our 1st August 2013 Issue, No 24.

An Interview with Rowanberry Designs

We love your beautiful creations but tell us a bit about the lady
behind them.
I’m Claire and I live in Staffordshire with my lovely husband Tony and my fantastic (and very demanding) cats, aka “Fur kids”. I'm lucky enough to be a full time glass artist and jewellery designer.  I'm currently living in a built up area at the moment but I am country girl at heart, being brought up in Kent, then onto live in Wales before I came to Staffordshire. I love getting out and about in the UK and ‘experiencing’ and connecting to the landscape. It may be hard doing this living in an urban setting, but we are at least very lucky to live only a short trip from the Peak District, Cheshire and North Wales, so we try to get ‘out there’ as much as we practically can. I'm also a Pagan and environmentalist and this is central to my creativity as well as my everyday life. My spirituality, pantheist beliefs, and love of nature and the earth play a big part in my inspiration.

Have you always been creative or did your talent evolve over time?
I've always been involved with arts and crafts, and as a child I was always drawing pictures or doing something creative. This carried on through my whole education and after school I went on to study Fine Arts along with English at university.
   
I became a full time jewellery designer 10 years ago, including designing jewellery for a high street store for a while. I got into making glass beads in 2006 so I could use them in my handmade jewellery, however the love for making them overtook my life so I just focused on glass and that is when Rowanberry Glass Art was born. In the past 2 years my love for making jewellery has been rekindled, this time using etched copper and metal clays, so I changed my name to Rowanberry Designs to reflect this new direction. My style has always been pretty much the same whatever medium I have worked with, mixing a love for nature with a love for figurative detail. My biggest change in my creativity was the change from making glass beads purely for people to make jewellery with towards making a bead as a collectable piece of art as itself. Now I approach each bead as if it was a wearable painting or sculpture.

To read the full interview you can purchase our August 2013 Issue here

ThrasionTM - Carved Couture

Ever since the late 80's I have been saving our skateboard decks. Being a skater I know that a skateboard is not just a toy, it holds history and a huge amount of meaning to a skater from the start of the relationship until it breaks. The beauty of my jewellery and accessories is in the thrashed state of the board as every scratch or ding is important.

I am currently supplied with our skateboard decks from skateshops, skateparks, skate companies, pro skaters and friends and family. I only use broken or used skateboards and where the board has come from is part of each product. The decks and wheels are used in their original state and apart from being cut, sanded and finished materials and waste is kept to a minimum.




To read the full article you can purchase our August 2013 Issue here

Gone Fishing!

We often hear people say it when they want to get away from it all. To sit quietly by a riverbank, flask of coffee by your side, sandwiches, crisps and maggots at hand.  Birds singing their sweet songs and dragonflies, dipping and diving across the surface of the water, bliss!
Well, just recently, I have taken up a bit of fishing too.  Not quite the fishing as described above but certainly a kind of fishing.
Lamp work Fishing!
So here I will tell you about a typical lamp work fish production session in The Bead Bounty studio.


To read the full article you can purchase our August 2013 Issue here 

An Interview with Styles of Sonia

Add a little eastern promise to your life with the beautiful creations of Sonia Subash from Styles of Sonia.
Creating from her home in Malaysia Sonia hopes to make the entire world sparkle just that little bit more.
Tell us about yourself Sonia.
I am a proud mother of two boys; one aged thirteen and the second, just about four months old. I have been addicted to making jewelry since a couple of years ago. And it has allowed me to work from home. I am also pursuing a business degree so needless to say, my hands are certainly full and I love it!     

To read the full interview you can purchase our August 2013 Issue here



 







 





   

Custom glass - for the obsessed, fascinated or just plain gorgeous!

Published in Issue 21, February 2013

Written by Sally from The Bead Bounty

www.thebeadbounty.weebly.com

Custom glass - for the obsessed, fascinated or just plain gorgeous!

Why buy ‘off the shelf’ when you can have custom designed so easily?

For as long as I can remember I have had a fascination for glass. I love it’s many and varied colours and the ways in which it can be formed and manipulated to create wonderful objects from the practical to the decadent.
When I was a youngster I remember visiting the Victoria and Albert museum in London on a trip from boarding school and the one thing that sticks with me from that visit, is the glass that they had on display. I remember being mesmerised by its beauty. I even bought a post card with a picture of a gorgeous red glass goblet I had seen, as a reminder of the experience. The post card is, of course, long gone but my memory of that stunning goblet is as vivid as ever.
I have even earlier memories of my joy and delight where glass is concerned.
My family moved quite a lot and one of the houses we lived in for a short time near the Pennine hills in England, before we crossed the pond to Africa, had the most spectacular stained glass arched window. It reached from the cellar to the fourth storey attic and when the sun hit it, it cast the most beautiful colours down the stairs and hall ways. At only seven years old, I can remember being awestruck on more than one occasion when I saw the light dancing and bathing everything, including me, with the most glorious rainbow of colours.
As a designer I love to produce original one of a kind pieces of art work and over the years I have tried every craft that has been available to me, but never found anything that truly fulfilled the thing that I was obviously looking for. I came close once with pottery. The way glazes melt under extreme heat fascinates me and with my wheel and kiln, I have made many a pot that has had an amazing finish to it, but even that did not hit the spot, so to speak.

Five years ago on the 14th of February, having spent many years making jewellery, I decided to go for broke and set up “The Bead Bounty”. The concept was to bring glass beads, bead making products and handcrafted designer jewellery to the public. After a short time I became frustrated by the lack of quality and the fact that the beads were mass-produced and too commonly available. I decided to do something about it and learned the art of Lamp work bead making. The skills I had acquired over the years helped and once I bought the equipment I needed, I started to produce good quality beads I could put my own designs into. I had finally found the thing I had been looking for.
I was now able to offer my customers one off, good quality originals, that only they could own. A whole new world opened up.

I started to receive orders for bespoke pieces of jewellery.
One customer saw the beads on a bracelet I had made and ordered a large Hole European style bead for a silver bracelet in that design.
I have had Order requests for jewellery to go with prom, wedding and special occasion dresses.
One lady even requested a bracelet to match her team colour at school. One of the pieces I am currently working on is a child’s bracelet with pink and blue beads. The mother wants her daughter to have a keepsake that she can treasure forever and that will be unique to her.

The beauty of Lamp Work is that I can produce, within reason, any style or colour of bead that is requested.
One of the most exciting requests I have had was to make a full range of jewellery for a local museum, to accompany an exhibit that they were about to put on show. A Saxon Princesses grave had been un-earthed at Loftus in North Yorkshire and was the first Saxon Royalty to be found in England. The museum wanted to have jewellery to sell to mirror the colours of the main gold and garnet pendant that had been found in the dig.
I produced many pieces of jewellery for the museum and named it “The Princess Collection” as my name means Princess.
I never know from one day to the next what exciting ideas my customers will come up with and ask me to produce for them. That is one of the true pleasures of my job.
As well as making the beads into jewellery I also produce beads for the customer to make into their very own one of a kind pieces.

Which ever pieces I sell, be it ready made jewellery, bespoke items or loose beads, I feel greatly privileged that people part with hard earned cash to purchase my products.
There is no feeling like it and I would like to thank customers past, present and future for their appreciation of just what an amazing art lamp work is.
It is a joy when people understand that they are purchasing something truly unique.