Artisans I Buy From ...
Updated: Jun 14
I use Facebook quite a lot ... to stay in touch with friends and family and to see what people are thinking about. However, my most significant use of Facebook is related to my jewelry business. I have connected with many people who also have a passion for being creative. In particular, I have found a number of artists who create the lampwork glass, silver, porcelain and other components that I incorporate into my work. I would like to introduce some of them here:
Judie Mountain Art Glass
Judie Mountain and her husband Wayne Robbins are extraordinary artists in glass and porcelain clay. In particular I have purchased many porcelain pendants from Judie to incorporate into my necklaces. The pendant inspires the rest of the design. Here are some samples of the range of her work ...
Unique Lampwork Glass
Tennessa McLean Does not promote herself very much - that's because she is busy creating new ideas for lampwork glass beads. Here range of color and designs is quite unique ... and I particularly like the satin finish on her beads, which has a different look from the high polish of many glass beads.
Raku Beads
Amy Mealey of Xaz Beads is a master of working with Raku for the jewelry business. Here work brings out the magnificent colors of the porcelain clay raku process. Raku is a firing process. The beads and pendants are removed from a very hot kiln (about 1800F) and quickly immersed into a metal container filled with shredded news paper. The lid is immediately closed and the reduction process begins. The oxygen is burned up around the beads and pendants resulting in beautiful color flashes, due to the copper in the glazes.
Lampwork Glass Focal Beads
Heather creates lampwork beads, glass marbles and handmade jewelry one by one at the torch. Each bead is properly kiln annealed, cleaned, and structurally sound. She works with a lot of silver laden glasses which results in a slightly different result each time.
Recently Heather has been working with adding copper electroforming to her glass creations. You will find several examples in my shop, including feathers and tear drops.
Masha experiments quite a lot with color and combining metallics into her designs. I have focused on her work in the earthy colors that I love. Her designs include some moths that I have included in several necklaces over the years. See here for my most recent design using 2 of her small moths in a long necklace.
Masha lives in Israel, and was an electronic engineer in high-tech when she started to create lampwork beads 10 years ago. Now it is her primary job, working from home. She dreams of opening her own studio one day. Her work is only sold on Facebook.
Jewelry Components
Kim is a designer of artisan jewelry as well as jewelry components. Her offerings include clasps, connectors, pendants, bracelets, bangles, earrings, cones and rings. She designs her pieces using autocad, and has them produced in both sterling silver and high quality bronze at a casting house in New Mexico. Kim uses bronze because "They have dug up bronze jewelry from thousands of years ago that is still intact."
Many of her designs are intended to be mixed and matched, opening up a wide range of opportunities for jewelry designers such as myself. I have incorporated her findings into many of my designs including most recently a custom order (see Blog Post) as well as many necklaces and bracelets.
Over time I plan to add more information about the very talented people who help me to create the designs that I create for you.
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