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)

When I sat down to make this bead, it was going to be a Goddess standing in front of a tree. She was going to be obscuring the tree, which would be in the background behind her. Sometimes things don’t go as planned. . .

Grove Goddess

As you can see, this was one of those times. As I painted on the branches for the tree I realised there was a beautiful space and a little hill that was crying out for someone to stand upon. I decided to try and put a much smaller Goddess in the distance on the hill. I like the result! The question is – can I recreate it?? I had used a little left over stringer for the tree and I don’t know what the colours were. I’d like the branches just a little darker but not too dark – what colour to use?

I had also layered copper leaf over silver on the bead and some of the copper embers landed on the ivory glass – don’t want that! I have a vision in my mind of how this bead should look – it’s a glorious vision – I hope I can figure out how to turn it into reality!

FIRE UP THE TORCH!!