Introducing me.... Laney Mead

I am a new member of the admin team here at Art Jewelry Elements and thrilled to be part of a great group of extremely talented artists - the head pin challenge of last week left me with a serious addiction to head pins and making them!  I am a lampworker, writer, mother to 2 grown up kids who refuse to leave home, wife, cleaner of house, walker of dogs, chief dribble wiper  (we have a special needs cat, he was brain damaged at birth and dribbles, more about him further down.... ) and de-hairer of the furniture.  What I am not, is a cook or shopper, I do neither well so my husband does those jobs and has been known to leave me easy meals in the fridge should he be at work! 

I thought I would introduce myself via various photos I found whilst looking for one - which I didn't find - and wasting the last 30 minutes or so!!

So this is me... the cute one in the frilly knickers petting the dog, Barney, whom I was told was the most aggressive hound and the person who is headless (!) is my 19 year old mother (she was too young!) wringing her hands in terror.  That was the beginning of my love affair with animals and is in the early 70's - don't you just love the frocks of the day!!  

This is where I live, the beautiful, rural countryside of Hereford, in Herefordshire UK.  We are just 13 miles from the Welsh border.  My bedroom window looks out over the Black Mountains in the Brecon Beacons in Wales and we have the greenest grassland in the UK, because it is nearly always raining!!

One of my walks through the ancient woodlands with my dogs, this Old Man Oak tree is over 300 years old, I tell him all my secrets.

I have drawn since I could hold a pencil and had big dreams of being a famous artist but due to being fostered in my teenage years I hit the job market as soon as I left school at 16 in a bid to leave home for good.  All my artist endeavours have been through just sitting and doing, I am self taught in everything I do from the pencil drawings below to the glass I do now.

Some of my drawings were made into dog tags, prints, key rings and cross stitch designs, to name a few.  I love to draw and although I don't do it to this level any more I still doodle in the evenings, but I do it for pleasure.  Making money from pet portraiture in pencil is hard work as each drawing can take over 50 hours and that is for a small one.

I did a few whimsy ones too!  This one is called 'Bottom's Up'.  I used to keep chickens but being this rural, the fox and the badger came one night and my girls are no more.  I  miss their fluffy bums running around the garden and chasing Defi, my youngest Golden Retriever who used to annoy them!

Some of my doodles, I love eyes, they are windows to the soul.  These are just for pleasure, although I have been known to sell the odd one every now and again, I do them for me not for profit.

I 'found' glass completely by accident.  A chance 'go' with my (ex) sister in law who used to use fused glass and I was hooked.  I was shown how to light the torch and what a mandrel was and left to my own devices.   Hours of practice in the converted studio: my easel was packed away and my bench was set up.  I started with flowers, but I always wanted to create my pencil portraits in glass.

No matter how hard I tried the portraits 'went' whimsy so I ran with it for a few years.  All my animals had bums, stories, googly eyes.  They are all beads and if they didn't make me smile going in the kiln they didn't make the grade! 

This one is 'The Mummy Cat'.

'Baa-Humbug' was made for a friend who is an author and had just finished writing a book on English sweets and the heritage of them around the UK.   Great book!  For those not in the UK the Humbug is a black and white mint sweet (candy):  Bah-humbug is a miserable old 'git' and the saying was made famous by Shakespeare's Scrooge in A Christmas Carol.

I write tutorials too, this one is for badger beads, but I have done leaves, roses, bees, butterflies... all whimsy ones.  You can find them in my Etsy shop - links at the bottom.

I have written for several magazines too, this is the most recent tutorial I have written and it was published in the 2016 September issue of Glass Line.

..and was for this elephant bead.  My glass work has finally come full circle and now my beads are more realistic, just like the pencil portraits I used to do.

A Lynx, the customer wanted the holes in the ears so they could affix the fluffy bits of the Lynx's ears themselves. 

I have also been experimenting with boro glass and marbles, they are getting more and more round! 

The Wolf, my favourite animal in the kingdom, this one is made with enamel glass powders.

And finally...  I write about my special needs cat Gordy, who is a British Short Hair and more recently Teeko, a Birman,  who is 15 and came to live with us last year, for Cat World magazine.  Gordy is almost 4 and he is a forever kitten, he has limited balance, dribbles and can never go outside on his own due to not learning from his mistakes.  He wears bibs (this is an old article) to protect his fur and those are specially designed for him by Claire of Clasicats.

This is one of my favourite photos of Gordy my son took him outside in the sunshine to play cars and he loved it... Gordy was quite happy too!  Gordy can go outside but can not be unsupervised.

This is all my gang, my dogs Izabel and the reason I am also known as Izzybeads, she is 10, Defi is 6 and came to live with us at 13 months old and Teeko who used to live next door but they moved to Spain so he came here.

And that is me!  You can find me at Art Jewelry Elements but also on my blog

Dust, Dribble and Dog Hair

on Etsy

Izzybeads

and also on FB, I do have a business page but I prefer to use my personal one so come and be my friend!

Laney Mead

Guest Post: Lampwork Tutorial - Make a Father Christmas Bead

Today we have a lampwork tutorial written by guest blogger Laney Mead, the creative mastermind behind Izzy Beads. She's helping us prepare for Christmas gift giving. In August. Enjoy! -Jen

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Don’t shoot the messenger but…just 126 days left until the 25^th December. That’s not many weekends to get your shopping done, so why not make fabulous Santa’s to hang on the tree instead? Make two little ones and have earrings, a pendant, a bookmark?  

Here's a tutorial on how to make Santa beads using lampwork glass and lots of fire.  Make them and sell them at craft fairs or give them as gifts, or if you get the chance a few for Beads of Courage, the arts in medicine charity that supports the families and children. Please visit their website for more info.  

Glass needed

One rod of red – I used Effetre Deep Red
One rod of pink – I used Effetre Light Pink
One thick stringer in pink
One thick stringer in black – I used Effetre Black 
One stringer in clear
One stringer in white
One Filigrana stringer in white and clear – I pull my own,. or you can buy them from your glass supplier

To make a filigrana stringer for this project, just wrap a small amount of white glass onto a mandrel, without bead release, marver into a small barrel shape, allow to harden slightly, encase in clear glass, melt in and pull into a stringer, you might need to pull several of these to make sure you have enough.

Remember that red glass goes very black during the heating process, so all these pictures show the red glass as being black.

Step 1. Wrap a small base bead in pink. I make a nice sized spacer bead size. This is the head. 

Step 2. Wind on the red glass above the pink head. This will be for the hat, which we will shape in a minute, look at my photo, I don't wind the red glass onto the pink head, but leave a small gap, this is so I get a neat cone shape adjoining the head.

Step 3. Heat up the red glass, try to keep the pink glass as stiff as possible, gently marver the red glass into a cone shape. This may take several heat and marver steps to get a nice join to the head, without squishing the pink glass.

Step 4. Add another wrap of glass to the other side of the pink bead. I add just a bit more of the red than the pink at this stage, this is for the body so you will want a slightly larger shape. Gently marver the red body glass, into a longer round shape, a cross between a round and a barrel, a Santa shape!

Step 5. Now you have your basic Father Christmas shape, its time to decorate! Add the eyes next. Using your black stringer melt in two dots, melt flat. Add white dots on top of the black, melt flat, add clear on top of the white and melt nearly flat, then add a small dot in the middle and melt flat.

Step 6. Using your filigrana rod, start to give Father Christmas his beard, using simple dots, melt gently to stick them fast, but not enough to flatten them.

Step 7. He is looking Santa like now! Using the pink stringer, give Santa his nose. Melt to stick fast, but not to flatten.

Step 8. Finish the hat. Still using the filigrana rod, add two dots and a nice white brim. Again melt to stick, but not to flatten.

Step 9. Using the black stringer, add two nice sized dots to the bottom of the body, heat gently and press onto either a hand held marver or torch marver. He now has feet!

Step 10. Nearly done. Using the thick red stringer add two swipes, one either side of the body for his arms. Heat to stick. 

Step 11. The last step I forgot to photograph! Using the thick pink stringer, add two dots, one on each arm end for his hands. Heat thoroughly, check all joins are secure and pop into the kiln to anneal.
  
Additional ideas: 

- Add a stringer line of black glass all around his middle with a dot of yellow/gold, for a belt. 
- Add more white filigrana to his head for hair. 
- You don't have to use filigrana, you could just use regular white, I like filigrana for this bead I think its looks more Christmassy.

- Make little ones and use as earrings. 

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You can read more by Laney on her Blog, shop for her beads on Etsy and on Ebay under the ID izzy-beads, and find her on Facebook.