My workshop with Anastasia

I feel like I haven’t posted in a long while – July has flown by and I was sick for a good two weeks of it, thankfully I was fully recovered for my beadmaking workshop with Anastasia that took place over the last two days.

Here’s Ana showing us how to shape the bead by adding glass to the base bead.

It was an incredible experience, partly because it was my first ever bead class but mostly because Ana was teaching us and we covered so many different topics.

• Adding fine stringer
• Sculpting with stringer
• Using enamels
• Many different ways of applying enamels
• Shaping beads
• Murrini making
• Applying murrini

The workshop took place at Alex Hamilton’s studio in Manotick – that in itself was a treat and I hope that I’ll go back there for more workshops in the future.  Grace Edwards made it all happen – THANK YOU so much Grace, huge thank  you’s to  Ana for sharing her wonderful teaching and beadmaking skills and also to Alex for putting up with 8 women at one time his studio!!

Me at the torch!

Beads from day one that focused on the skills that Ana uses to create her incredible tree beads.  I don’t think I’ll be too much competition for her in that direction!