Ofcourse there is more you can make with hot glass except from beads. One of the thinks I'm working on to improve my skills at the moment are small vessels. You can hang them on a leather cord or silver chain and fill it with your favorite perfume or essential oil.

Here are some of the vessels I made last week:

The glass I used for this vessel looks like liquid soap or shampoo... soft, shiny and an absolute gorgious shade of blue

I'm really happy with the way this one looks... elegant and stylish! The glass used is a vetrofond odd lot called "Belgium lace" with purple for the "stripes" and silvered Ivory for the small dots.

Oh and about the small challange I brought upon myself... it didn't work for me yet. Yesterday I did some playing with Photoshop and Illustrator but nothing memorable came out, so nothing to show on that front yet ;)

Today I've worked on a major update for my Etsy-shop. I added a lot of Trollbead/Pandora/Biage style beads and this one:

Now I also need to make some new things for my other shop as well!

I don't know why but browsing through my archives I discovered I mentioned that I like making little lampwork angels here , but I appearantly I have never written on this blog the special purpose I now have making and selling them...

It all started with my youngest nephew, who's suffering from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. I'm not going to talk more about him or his condition here, because it's way to personal. I also suggest you should visit the website of Duchenne parent project to learn more about this disorder, because they do a much better job on explaining than I can.

What I do want to talk about is raising money for Duchenne Parent Project, to help them in their search for a cure or viable treatment for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and that's where my angels come into picture.

In my webshop I sell these little lampwork angels:

The "standard angels" have bodies made from ivory and decorated with a colored border, dots or lines depending on my state of mind while making them. You can order a boy or a girl (with sweet little ponytails). There also is a version (which is just a little bit more expensive) you can personalize a bit more, because during the ordering you get the possibility to give specific instructions like for example you would like to have an angel with blond hair and a green body with white dots...

They are made into pendants and finished with a small carbine closure, so you can either use them as a pendant or attach them to a zipper for example and on top of that they are delivered in a small handmade origami box to make them into a wonderful present!

My idea is that my angels should be given to someone you think could use some angel-luck and top of that I will donate 5 Euros to Duchenne parent project for every angel sold so that makes them pretty special don't you think?

So go to my shop order an Angel and start spreading some Angel-luck!

I also will put them in my Etsy-shop later today.

Yesterday I had booth on a craftmarket called "Hip en handgemaakt in Deventer" wich took place in Deventer (wich by the way is one of the 5 oldest cities in the Netherlands)

My daughter (the one in the jeansjacket behind the booth) and me had to get up real early because we had to drive for 1,5 hours to get there. It was a wonderful day with lots of sun but also very wet rainy moments (as you can see on this particular picture).

I brought my hothead with me so I could give some demonstrations and although most of the time it was too windy, I did manage to demonstrate how to make a small spacer with dots a couple of times.

A lot of people came by to look at my work and I did sell nicely and to be honest we were so busy I didn't even had time to look at all the other booths and meet their owners other that the ones in front of mine. I did feel a bit sad about that because it always is nice to meet fellow artists/crafters. Ah well better luck next time ;)

I did promise a while back to give a bit more information so you can understand my messages about lampworking a bit more.

So I thought I start with the mandrels. Mandrels are stainless-steel rods which are dipped in a bead-release or seperator (a mixture of alumina and high-fire clay). This coating is used to make sure the bead can be removed after it is cools.

They come in different sizes and even variations and you can't do without them because it holds the molten glass that's used to form the bead. This is what forms the beadhole so the thicker the mandrel used to make the bead, the bigger the actual hole in the bead will be.

I don't have a big variation yet most of them are 2mm-3mm-5mm and 6 mm plain mandrels. I do have one ringmandrel (the very large one in the middle) wich as the name already implies can be used to make a ring. I also have two hollows which can be used to actually blow glass, for instance to make slightly bigger vessels than the ones I make now or to make your own glass-shards which can be used to decorate your beads.

So that's the first entry explaining lampworking... more will follow soon.

I am participating in the diary 2009 project, which is a project where artists from around the world design pages to form a diary for next year. Participation is for free, so you don't get paid or a free copy, but I think it's fun and also lovely publicity for my etsy-shop so that's why I joined.

This is the page I designed for the diary...