Here's a picture of a necklace I made as a birthday present for my niece. It's a red leather cord with 5 lampwork beads and two silver-colored spacers.

The focal bead is made from Effetre's Dark Red Brown carefully multi-layered with red, white and striking red. After that I added some multi layered dots using several kinds of red and pulled those to the edges of the beads. The bead is finished using some more layered dots forming the base for the little flowers.

The two smaller beads are made from Ivory using the same red colors to add some multi-colored dots. The spacer beads are made from plain Ivory.

I especially like the combination and I'm planning on making some necklaces like this to sell in my future shop.

I haven't been much of a swapper. I had one very bad experience about two years ago were I send my parth but never received anything in return and another one in about the same period were the receiver wasn't happy with what they received at all and did a great job in letting me know in a terrible way. These turned me into as you might say a bit swapping-shy person. I always doubt if I can live up to the expectations, am afraid my package will not arrive in time or get lost in the mail.

But seeing some of the swaps going on at for instance Flickr made me realice I need to be brave because I love the idea of swapping with some other craftster/illustrators/artist and I must say the last year I did a few swaps wich turned out great. Not only did I received some wonderful stuff, for what I've heard the receivers where happy too!

This bracelet is a result of a swap with Antonella from Italy. She makes the most beautiful alternative jewelry and I'm so happy with this one she made especially for me!

It's been a while since I posted some inspiration links so here are some new:
Melanie Moertel is an amazing lampworker. I love her use of color and shapes and she's able to make super thin lines... I'm totally impressed by her stringercontrol! Mine still sucks and I don't know if I will ever reach her level of control to be honest because my hands are way to shaky most of the times.

My most favorite are her "Indian Elephants"-beads:

Joan Miller makes lovely beads from porcelain. A lot of them are combined with beautiful sterling silver findings from Penny Michelle.

As I explained in this entry earlier this year , me playing with hot glass started when I came agross Sarah's beads on her Flickr account and seeing this entry on her blog. That truly was a real eyeopening moment... it's possible to work with hot glass at without having a specially equipped studio. Although in all fairness I have to admit it would be very helpful to have some kind of studio because most of the time a big part of my living-room-table is a total mess because of the hothead and glass standing there already and it's still growing.... some more supplies are ordered or on my wish-list ;0)

Anyway imagine my joy to learn she was planning some workshops and her first ones ever would be given here in Holland! That's an opportunity I would not pass and so I signed up right away for one of them. Because I still feel I'm not an advanced lampworker yet I signed up for her beginner course about color reactions.

Here's a picture of the whole bunch that took this workshop as well (with thanks to Miriam and Sarah for taking the pictures and sharing them):

That's me second from left with bandeau, glasses and two chins ;) Sarah is standing in the middle with the purple sweater.

I really enjoyed the workshop and learned a lot. I thought it was a rather cool but noisy experience to be lampworking together with so many people (one hothead already makes a lot of noise imagine 7 of them making that same noise together!).

It also was a real pleasure to meet Sarah herself. She really is a very kind and friendly person, as was to be expected from reading her blog. I really admired her stringer-control and knowledge of lampworking and wished I was able to take all three workshops, because it would have been great to learn some more of her freestyle techniques and silver secrets as well.

Here's a little compilation of "action-pictures" taken by Miriam and Sarah:

The focal beads are all made during the workshop using selfmade twisties and murrini's and using the raking-technique. Some of the small beads I made at home last night.

For the focals I was able to use Sarah's crunch-beadpress and since I really like the results I decided to order a crunch and a lentilpress so hopefully soon I will be able to make some more pressed beads.