Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Customer Gallery

Here are a few recent creations using my glass beads from the multi talented artists, Claudia Rubenstein and Kirstin Butler.  Enjoy!
 





And Ade Loe enjoying a super yummy looking lunch wearing her Beadlicious fruit necklace.


Thursday, December 4, 2014

Last Market For The Year!


Tomorrow marks the last day you will be able to see my wares this year.  I have been busting my gut making a TONNE of brand new jewellery for tomorrow......so make sure you come and see me at The Square Market in Bendigo!

Friday, November 14, 2014

Custom Work

Every year at one of my Bead Shows I have a regular customer who buys a handful of pendants.  She then brings them all back the next year and gets me to make matching sets!  This is some of her work that I have completed this week.






Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Recent Work for October

I've been busy stocking for The Bead Expo which starts in Melbourne tomorrow.  I've done a bit in every style which includes non jewellery style beads in the form of keys to dogs to cats to Roman style.  Enjoy looking at a fraction of what I've been up to lately!  As always, check out my Facebook page, Bead-licious Lampwork, for more eye candy and updates.
 







Hopefully I'll see some of you this weekend!

Thursday, October 30, 2014

The Melbourne Bead Expo...Only 1 Week to Go!


This time next week Miss 13 and I will be selling lots of beads!  I'll be bringing along a whole stash of new work, along with a fresh batch of favourites.  Will I see you there?
Kingston City Hall from 10am Friday to 4pm Sunday.

Sunday, October 12, 2014

I Can Now Spill The Beans On My HUGE Order!


The Bead Society of Victoria recently commissioned 10 Victorian Lampwork artists to submit a bead design to be incorporated into their Anniversary giveaway for all their members.  So 10 of us each had to make 40 focal beads......all the same 40 beads!

After the 20 bead hump, making the rest flew by quite quickly.  And it wasn't such a chore if you only made 5 or 6 every bead session!


My design was a 40mm bicone focal with an Ivory base, rolled in Gold pixie dust, Double Helix Terra flowers with vine and leaves.  Depending on the flame, each flower turned a different shade of rainbow color, they turned out quite pretty in real life.


I then individually bagged them into a gift bag with a small business card so they knew who made their present!

Were you a recipient of an Anniversary bead?  And which artist did you receive yours from?

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

WHY Do Lampwork Beads Cost So Much?

I found a fabulous blog post on WHY lampwork beads cost more than mass produced Chinese crap (for want of a better word). The original blog post is from www.hollysfollybeads.blogspot.com. You can almost double those dollars for Aussie dollars too.

Let's take a look at why:

•Torch - While a beginner torch costs as little as $50... most glassers quickly move on from the hothead as it's loud and the ability to control the oxy flow is intimidating! Oxygen flow is used to develop colors in pricey silver laden glass and controlling that on a hot head involved grabbing the head of the torch with expensive welding gloves!
The next torch up is $188... but depending on model and features (heat and the ability to control it from big and bushy to pin point accuracy), the price can go into the thousands!

•Cost of Glass - The average big hole donut weighs about a gram. Some larger focals, such as a 1.3" lentil, can weigh 36 grams. The cheapest glass is around 9.60 a pound. 9.60/ 453(grams / pound) = .02 per gram. Add in the breakage / popping to be generous and for a single big hole donut, our beadmaker has invested about .03...in glass.
But...that's plain glass. Did you know that most glass gets it's color from some type of metal? The price of gold, silver and copper has been on a steady increase for years. And premium glass that we all find so mesmerizing... costs $80 to $100 a pound! So that same one gram donut made out of premium glass is now around .33... in glass.

•Kiln Cost - So many don't even calculate this in...but they should! A small 6 x 6 kiln uses 1.4 kilowatts / hour and runs for 12 hour cycle for a total of 16.8 kilowatts. Your electric bill tells you the cost of kilowatts...Mine is 13.3 cents per kilowatt hour + a 10% surcharge from my city. That come so 14.63 cents x 16.8 kilowatts = $2.46 per session to run the kiln.
 
•Fuel Costs - Most of us use propane and oxygen mix torches. A tank of propane can last from a few weeks to a few months depending on output. Prices vary per state but can run from $16 to $26 per five gallon tank.
Oxygen comes in the form of an oxygen concentrator or in a tank. A small oxy con burns about .46 kilowatts an hour. So lets say our beadmaker torches a full eight hours / 5 days a week: .46 x 8 x 5 = 18.4 kilowatt hours x 13.3 cents = $2.25 spent every 40 hours on the oxy con... And this is a small one. Many lampworkers use a large one or have two networked ones... Meaning that number could be four times higher for some glassers!
Tanked oxy is $35 per 300 cubic cylinder (about a five foot tall tank) but there are also deposits on tanks ($50) and delivery fees. Again, overall costs vary with size of torch, whether the artist works hot or cold and how many hours a day they work.

•Cleaning: Once cool, the beads are soaked in warm water and cleaned with an electric dremel with a diamond bit. Let's just say the electricity and water cost is negligible.. 2 cents

•Giveaway Money: Etsy takes 20 cents to list plus a percentage. Ebay takes around 10%. Paypal steals 30 cents plus almost 3%. Yes these are the cost of "doing business" but all selling costs must be factored into the price of the bead! And many bead makers often host giveaways and promotions on their fan pages...trying to get your attention!

• Overhead: Yet another thing many artisans never think about.

◦ Tools... Glass tools are VERY pricey but I'm going with the bare minimum here to make those beads. Granted, they can be used over and over but they still have to be bought and often replaced! Most presses that allow for consistency in sizes start at $55 ... EACH. Bellflower presses are $165

◦ Protective eyewear to see in the flame... $60 and up

◦Mandrels: 1.66 per mandrel. This makes the bead hole and you use one per bead or maybe two beads if you rock your heat control.

◦Kiln - digital kilns start at $700

◦Tweezers $10 To move glass around when you have a little too much on one side and not enough on the other.

◦Special molding tools- $60 each shape Ensures consistency in sets.

◦Decent camera - at least $200

I'm not including a computer since that seems to be a given for selling online but... what about photo editing software?? We've got close to a thousand dollar investment in those beads and it seems only fair to say a buck of those beads should go into "overhead."

• Time: This is my favorite category because so many of us never pay ourselves a decent wage! Let's say we're making a set of five of those big hole beads:
Making the beads 5 x 5 - 7 minutes each. Let's say six. 30 minutes
Cleaning: 8 minutes
Photography: 10 minutes
Editing: 10 minutes
Description Writing: 10 minutes
Promoting: 20 minutes to an hour
That's an hour and eight minutes assuming everything goes according to plan... An hourly wage MUST be attached to this time! And with fast food workers and other unskilled labor demanding $10 an hour, should the time, skill, cost of educating ourselves AND the fact we play with FIRE all demand a decent wage???
And then as a "professional beadmaker" or one who is hoping to make a living selling her art, you have to contend with the "hobby beadmaker." With no commentary on skills or quality here because there are many talented hobbyists out there... but the hobby beadmaker is often content to simply "make enough to buy more glass." But in reality, that hurts the market and lowers the wage of the professional. Just as Chinese glass has hurt the pricing structure so has the hobbyists.
Add in that it is a field dominated by women and, sadly, so many women undervalue their time. There was a time when prices were calculated at $60 / hour of time involved... a buck a minute. Those days are long gone which is another reason there are so many fabulous glass beads out there, longing for homes.

•Pricing: That thing we hate to talk about. But bead makers all need to consider everything above in setting prices! And wholesale... many of us wholesale our beads and that price structure has to be in place before the retail structure!
A good rough formula for any artist is Materials + 25% of Materials costs for Overhead + Labor (for all aspects: making, cleaning, photographing, writing) = WHOLESALE price
Retail is usually double to three times the wholesale price.
So while those fabulous beads may seem pricey, they were made by an artist...with some very real and expensive costs to consider.

 Ultimately the responsibility of educating our buyers falls to us...and to them as they must educate their customers as to why the glass bead jewelry costs so much more than the other jewelry out there. Jewelry designers, like bead makers, are selling miniature works of art. And educating buyers and building an appreciation for the work is the key!

Thank you to Holly for writing such a fabulous blog post and explaining our system so eloquently.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this subject?

Monday, September 15, 2014

Custom Work


 
Discs, discs and discs have been my custom orders for the last couple of months! 
 

Darling husband is modelling just a few of a 200 bead order.....this measured to almost 1.5metres long!  It was incredibly heavy but looked completely FABULOUS.

 

I wished I could have kept this whopper order for myself.....

I do take custom orders.  Have any ideas?  Shoot me an email.

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

I'm On The Front Cover!


I just found out a month or two late, that my beads graced the front cover of Volume 10 number 5 edition of Creative Beading!  I tried a couple of newsagents today but they were all sold out.  Thank goodness for ebay!!

Thank you to Annlee Butler for making my work look so gorgeous.

Did anyone get this issue?

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

I'm Giving Away FREE Beads!


 


To celebrate 500 Facebook LIKES I am giving away this set of beads!  To entre just head on over to my Facebook page, BEADLICIOUS LAMPWORK and like.  Giveaway ends on the 24th of June and is open Internationally.  Good luck!

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

The Bead Show!

Has it really been that long between posts???  I do apologise.  My bead taking camera got smashed by Miss 5, my computer crashed and took my Photoshop along with it and I don't want to pay $100 for another one.  My photos are still sub standard.

Head on over to Facebook and fine me on there, Bead-licious Lampwork, as I am much more active on FB!

The Bead Show is on tomorrow!  I have all new beadies!  Want to see some?








The Bead Show is on at the Box Hill Town Hall
1022 Whitehorse Road, Box Hill. Vic. 3128
10am -5pm.

Will I see you there?