Back from my Tom Holland class — not coming down!

I started writing a post about Tom Holland’s wonderful presentation about Ancient Beads, but realised it was going to take me time and research to finish. I wanted to do a show and tell about his class as well so here goes -

I have just finished a class at The Glass Shoppe Studio in Ottawa with Tom Holland.  There were nine students including myself, once I get the group shot from Grace I’ll share that too.

Tom Holland creating a Triple Fold Islamic bead

Three days in class with Tom Holland is the most amazing thing I have experienced since I started making beads!

You may think that an important aspect of class time is getting to try techniques out yourself — I think we all agreed that one of the best things about this class was that fact that we spent 90% of the time watching and learning from Tom.

I’ve come away with a notebook full of tips and techniques that I can’t wait to try — my biggest problem at the moment is deciding where to start! Just a few of things we covered included – safety, raking and feathering, stringer, pulling latticino, making a star cane, bending beads, Islamic folded beads, layering dots, placing dots, pulling ribbon cane of different types .. ah the list goes on, the bead goes on, the beat goes on!!

Raking practise

Throughout all of this Tom eloquently added descriptions to what he was doing and also must have told at least a hundred stories most of which had us laughing or gasping in awe.

I think you could have heard a pin drop when Tom demo’d the Islamic folded beads, to see his skill with these is something else!

My bead left, Tom's bead right

The only thing that could possibly have made the class any better is if it had been longer!

Again, Tom's triple folded bead and one with applied Latticino cane.

– I’ve got more pics of Tom creating, but totally forgot to ask his permission to use them, so Tom or Sage, if you happen by this post please leave me a message and let me know if I can use the pictures or not! ;o)