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I've not made many beads lately but have made just a few to keep my hand in as it were. The top left is a vessel and the two bottom beads are made on curved mandrels. I foolishly decided to enter a cat bead swop on the Frit Happens Forum where you send a few beads to a coordinator who then send you the same number back from other participants. Can you see which three are meant to be cat beads?

I made this ring froma tutorial by Donna Spadafore and presented by the JewelryLessons.com website.

Occasionally, I try a cat face and the one below is the latest,

The eyes are a bit off but on the whole, I am happy with the outcome. At least I know to make the eyes or at least the pupils smaller next time around.

I am a member of a Forum for mostly British Lampworkers, i.e. people who make handmade glass beads with a propane torch and oxygen. We sometimes have swaps, a bit like the Secret Santa swaps held at Christmas. We are now having a fishy bead swap with some of us buying an E Tutorial by Cathy Lybarger of Aardvarkartglass. You can find her Etsy store here
and my pictures of the fish I've made so far are below

Here's one I did today using CIM Sangria glass. I've threaded 4 strands of copper wire through the bead hole and twisted then to form a stem.

I love flowers and try to capture one in glass every so often.

As you may have noticed, I've been doing a bit of chain maille recently and have been trying different types. I was told that Jens Pind was simple but it seems like it's taken me forever to get this necklace done. I think the difficulty was that I was advised by someone with a lot more experience than me to try a slightly smaller copper jump ring. Next time, I'll go by what my book says and use 1 mm copper wire wound on a 3 mm mandrel for the jump rings. The beads i made ages ago and thought the copper would go well with them. The toggle hoop and bar are handmade too.

I'm practicing faces and this is the latest. She's 40mm high.

and I did another "Chaos" bead last night to keep my hand in.

I made these before going to Morrisons for shopping this morning.

I'm only just posting as I visited Dizzy Di at her Studio in Wat Tyler Country Park for a few hours. We swopped tips and she tried out my silver bead corer bought from Dave at artintheround in America.

I've decided to make up some of my older beads into jewellery and this set of lampwork beads was made about 18 months ago. They're not very adventurous and I picked up the green in the beads with the seed beads. They still looked a bit plain so I added the fringing at the bottom.