A Girl and Her Torch

As you probably know, I began dabbling in jewelry "design" a couple of months ago. I originally hoped to turn it into a reasonablly profitable little business,* but I'm finding it takes a LOT of time to market oneself on the big "www". I'll be totally honest, I don't have time to spend marketing my little beauties, so I'm not sure how "profitable" this venture will turn out at the end of the year.

Even though I'm anticipating a net loss on the old Lily Tree Studio** income statement, I still really enjoy having a creative outlet for myself. I love bending and hammering the metal. I love the endless possibilities in bead combinations. And, now, I've discovered I REALLY love torching beads. I'll explain...

Lampworking is a term for melting rods of colored glass in a flame, and wrapping the glass around a mandrel to form a glass bead. I took a lampworking class a week ago, and this is what I made:


I am many, many, many hours away from creating anything that's worth putting into a piece of jewelry. Regardless of how much junk glass beads I end up making, I'll treasure the opportunities to don those awesome welding goggles, crank up the propane, and mold globs and globs of molten glass into various shapes and colors. And, someday, I might get to update this post with a picture of beads worthy of my inventory.

* A little "whoot-whoot!" shout-out to those of you that took the leap and purchased a pair of earrings. I hope you aren't too embarassed to wear the earrings out in public :)

** Shameless plug for my business. If I'm gonna spend the time to blog, I may as well throw a little self-promotion in there, too, right? www.lilytreestudio.etsy.com