In the summer of 2003 I had the chance to take a beading workshop with Wendy Ellsworth at Common Ground on the Hill in Westminster, MD. The workshop was actually on making a lidded vessel, but I convinced Wendy to show me the techniques of making this gourd stitch bracelet.
When I came home I wanted to make more bracelets, but I had trouble finding suitable buttons for the closures, so I made a barrette and decided I needed to learn to make glass buttons myself! I took a workshop on flameworked beadmaking in early February at the Sharon Arts Center near Peterborough, NH. Sally Prasch was a wonderful teacher and I left knowing a little and anxious to do more work in the flame!
At the end of February I spent two days with Ann Scherm in her studio in Virginia Beach and came away with new techniques and a "burning" desire to get set up for melting glass in my basement. (See pictures of me making a lampworked bead.)
I admired one of Ann's beads that reminded me of a calla lily. This was one of my first beads on my own torch.
Ann also taught me about the cool reactions of turquoise glass and ivory -- also about silvered ivory stringer -- and when my friend Michael Millard saw some early samples he said "make me a dozen". I did. And then some more.
One thing leads to another. And I treasure my time spent at the torch making lampworked beads. But I still wanted to make cool buttons for beaded bracelets. That's when I took up fusing glass. It turned out that making buttons was an entirely different process -- and in some ways easier. The irony is that once I learned to work with the dichroic glass in my fusing kiln, I didn't have much time for making beaded bracelets. Ah well... I'd rather be melting glass!
Barb Ackemann
Brattleboro, Vermont
barb@irisbeads.com
802.257.7391