Beadfest Fall is almost upon us (from October 13-16th 2016) at Tacoma but I realise that I am yet to write about my experiences at Beadfest Summer 2016. The last month has been pretty exacting – I have been extremely sick yet was working full time. I was the organiser of a 2 week long event with competitions and ceremonies at work and then came the navaratri display. But slowly I am getting a handle on things. Without much ado here are the highlights of my beadfest workshop experience – well in two quick successive posts.
Beadfest Summer 2016 happened at Oaks, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. From King of Prussia (where I stayed at) I had to go through the valley Forge park to get to Audoban and Oaks. The first morning I was pretty scared, for the route looked like a hill station roa d- completely green and devoid of houses or stores for a few miles but then slowly I began to enjoy it for it is impossible to find such beautiful trails in Chennai. So coming back to the workshops – I had such fantastic learning and so many experiences in four days that I cannot do it justice by by cramming it all into one post. Hence in this post I am going to only talk about the first two workshops. Find the part two of this post here
Day 1: Celestial Fusion
I couldn’t have asked for a better class to start my beadfest experience or a better teacher than Jean Van Brederode of Charmed I’m Sure Studio. Jean was very sweet and patient and her work with both Crackle Enamel and stamped solder was fantastic and very inspiring. Including me there were only five of us in the class so we got to learn and experiment a lot. At first, we learnt was to create the back piece for prong setting – cutting the plate and wire, making the bail and soldering them together using sheet solder which was all very new for me.
Some instructors do not like to part with extra supplies but Jean encouraged us to make as many pieces as we wanted in the 7-hour class which was so refreshing. I made three extra discs and 2 sets of earring charms. I also tried counter enamelling. In the Beadfest site this class was referred to as “Kiln enamelling” which troubled me as I wanted to learn torch enamelling (something that I could do at home) but it turned out to be torch enamelling only. Jean had brought a kiln but we never used it.
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| Using black Crackle Enamel |
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| The back of the disks with flame patina |
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| counter enamelled charms |
Day 2: Rainforest leaves
Ever since I chanced upon Anodised Niobium jewelry in the newsletters of beading daily I have been fascinated with the technique. So on 19th August after a relaxing lazy day at the hotel, I spent an hour exploring the beadfest stalls and then I took a class with Marti Brown of The Dragon’s Odyssey. She is yet another fabulous lady and she has been making niobium jewelry for around 20 years. This was a news to me as I thought that this was a new – modern technique.
In all the four workshops that I attended, I was the only one who had never taken a class from a master jewelry artist or an expert jewelry professional before. Most people were already practising that type of jewelry and had come to learn the same technique from a different instructor for more depth or for a different perceptive, which was very surprising to me. My design degree was the only reason that I was able to match them, inspite of being completely self taught when it comes to jewelry. I was and I am still in awe of the American culture of wanting to “learn to become the best” and their passion for a craft which is so different from the east’s perception of the west.
Classes
While So many of you have asked me about teaching Enamelling classes, I have to politely decline. I need to practise it a lot before I can teach it. In the meanwhile Craftsy has a fantastic class on Torch enamelling by Barbara Lewis which is incidentally on sale now. You would want to stop everything that you are doing and dive right into enamelling when you watch the video, so don’t miss it !!
I hope you found it interesting
Cheers
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