Am I a hot dog or what?  Today I am live on the great big world known as the internet!!!!!  I am so excited, Kitty my graphic artist who designed this website is the best.  If you like my website design i encourage you to go to hers and check out her portfolio (i am there, hee hee)!!!  Just go to the bottom of any of my pages and you will see ink2art!!!!  She’s the best!!  Kudos to Kitty!  She has had to put up with my website for dummies mentality for a long time and hopefully i will get good at this stuff eventually although i have a feeling i will be emailing her quite often when i encounter probs.  for example, i tried to put a cool pic on the site and it will not let me so hopefully i can get it up here soon!!!  Please comment because i need to know you are all out there!!  Ok, well i am working on a bracelet right now that i was taught how to do by the famous Stephanie (cool name, huh?) Sersich!!!  It is a fun bracelet and I will put a pic of it on here today.  I cannot wait to take another jewelry class with her, she is soooo inspiring!  Also, i am working on two custom necklaces and of course loose beads.  I also am getting ready to work on a black and white bracelet and necklace with my beads and wool beads, yes, wool beads.  they are soooo fun and funky.  stay tuned!

Ok, obviously this site is still under construction, however, there is an end in sight!!!  the lovely Kitty is hard at work and almost ready to blast off!  please leave a comment if you happened upon this sight so i know about you and can reply to your comment.  I am really excited to get this ball rolling and keep everyone who comes here up to date.  Well, i am off to a birthday party and it is sunny here for a change in gool ol’ Cincinnati Ohio!!  later gators!!!

A variant of the wound glass beadmaking technique, and a labor intensive one, is what is traditionally called lampworking. In the Venetian industry, where very large quantities of beads were produced in the 19th century for the African trade, the core of a decorated bead was produced from molten glass at furnace temperatures, a large-scale industrial process dominated by men. The delicate multicolored decoration was then added by people, mostly women, working at home using an oil lamp or spirit lamp to re-heat the cores and the fine wisps of colored glass used to decorate them. These workers were paid on a piecework basis for the resulting lampwork beads.

Modern lampwork beads are made by using a gas torch to heat a rod of glass and spinning the resulting thread around a metal rod covered in bead release. When the base bead has been formed, other colors of glass can be added to the surface to create many designs. After this initial stage of the beadmaking process, the bead can be further fired in a kiln to make it more durable.