Stones of Fire and Giggle Gifts

For those of you who have read my blog over a period of time you will have seen that I have been suffering a major identity crisis in my glass work.  As I sit and look back at it there are definitely a number of conflicting ideas

• wanting to create a range of up market jewellery
• beads that seem to have developed a nature theme and are more arty
• beads which are more simple but funky
• a desire to create more costume jewellery

Putting these together it becomes clear that I have been struggling to find out who I am which affects how I promote myself and all those other fun things that come with trying to run a little business. 

I know you might think that I am thinking about things too much and making life harder than it needs to be.  Well if you don’t I certainly do.  I had thought about just letting the style continue and grow until I realized that there are probably two distinct styles that I want to create and ultimately it boils down to the difference between art and craft.

So simple I create an art range and a craft range

So let me introduce STONES OF FIRE the art range

This will be a place to showcase my intricate art beads using murrini, implosions and fine stringer control.  Often these will be set by myself in silver.  The silver will be hallmarked by the assay office in London so you can be assured you are receiving awesome one off wearable glass art.

And let me introduce GIGGLE GIFTS the craft range

This will be a range of more costume jewellery, simple jewellery beads which is affordable and has a funky edge to it.  My hope is that over time that this range may end up being specifically focused at young families and include fingerprint jewellery, jewellery with personalised pictures and electroplated shoes and the like.  I'm not going to develop the young families range too much at the moment simply because whilst I am having fertility problems it's not really so wise to be around babies too much.

Thank you for your interest in my work.

Julie

Big Bead Show

Well... its happened... and it went great... well I think it did anyway.

Like this it doesn't really look all that much but the good news is that bead show tables are nice and narrow so it looks like so much more.

If my aim was to break even, I did that and more and I'm so pleased.  I know others weren't so happy with the day but as a first show I think it went great.

The things to learn are about how to price my beads... man do I underprice... lol.  Having a wide range of beads is a really good idea but the things that sold were the things which were different from the other lampworkers and not production beads.  If a bead is only worth £3-4 put it in a rummage pot rather than trying to sell it as a focal.

The most fun thing for me and my ego was one of the sales I made.  The show was organized by Bead magazine.  The editor came round towards the end and was checking out how people had done.  She then proceeded to purchase a bead from me saying that she'd broken her own rule and I was the only one she had bought from today... just how cool is that and sooooo good for the ego.

There are loads of beads now up on the website.... happy hunting.  Julie