Congrats to Kandice!!

I just looked too Kandice! You are rocking lady.

I've been able to roll the Corina beads in my hands lately and I see lots of artists that are as good or better. I believe you are in the latter category.

W00t! Kandice is da bomb!

ROFL - I am noooo competition for Corina! But I am pretty happy about the bids I got for these beads. :) And swamped with custom orders, as well. (This is a good thing - I need the money!). The really good news is I am still having lots of fun making the beads. I am blessed to be able to make money doing something I really love. Thanks for the kind words. :)

Whatever! All I know is that I am happy I got my hands on some of your beads now, while I still afford them. ;o)

Beki

It's something I picked up on usenet. Actually nicked it from the nicest little tr*ll. Anyway it's a short version of "whoohoo!" and "way to go!"

Substitute the letter "o" for the *.

Thanks -- I'd gathered the correct usage from context, but it's nice to have the etymology as well.

Celine

Kandice!! I love the mystic garden beads and it was a great idea to offer them as a special order. I would have done so if January were not Hell month for bills -auto insurance, etc. Next time for sure. I am the proud owner of some of Kandice's beads. Have to get started on that special necklace. I seem to be stuck on collecting lately....lol. Patti

:) Thank you, Patti. This went really well, so I am probably going to keep doing this idea with different sets. I really like doing it. :)

How sweet! :) My head is huge now.

That it is.

The thing about Corina's beads... and I hope no one takes this wrong, because I think she's a wonderful lady, a great, strong, personality in the field, and a very good beadmaker... is that they sell for extremely high prices because she's well-known, not because she's a master beadmaker. *BUT*, before we compare her to Kim Miles, we do have to look at the fact that she's been making beads for only four years, and her accomplishments in that time are stupendous! Kim's been making beads for over a decade. Corina is solidly in the "upper intermediate" level, IMHO; a journeyman-II level beadmaker. If you watch her, you'll see her getting better along with the rest of us!

Corina's great contribution, so far, has been to make readily available in a step-by-step format the beginner basics for making beautiful beads. Her instructions helped me learn to encase, something I never could do! I also hear that she is a very good teacher. I hope that as her skills advance, she'll do something similar for the intermediate to advanced beadmaker.

There are a LOT of new beadmakers right now, and for a long time, the work of everyone with a couple of years of experience under their belt really stood out. That's changing now; as the "newbies" work hard to improve their skills, the relative "oldtimers" are pushed to get better and better in order to retain their relative position. I hear a lot of complaining about it, because a lot of people who have been selling for years are suddenly faced with a whole new market, but in my opinion, this is the very thing the lampwork world had been waiting for in order to be pushed, as a field, forward into the realm of "respectable" glasswork (glassblowers do not hold lampwork in high esteem, as a rule). It needs competition from within, and a motivator to drive the older members of the field to higher levels, as well as bringing fresh blood and new perspective. For an art that, in its current incarnation, is only two decades old, it's doing pretty well, and we are the lucky ones that get to sit back and watch it mature!

Starlia, I was explaining to my husband today why I want some of your beads... that every so often, in any art, someone comes along who is fearless, and who pushes the boundaries of their capabilities. Those people inevitably get very good, very fast! Your beads are progressing shockingly fast, and I want some NOW, in the fleeting moment when you're still a newbie.

I sure wish I had some Kandice beads from when SHE was a newbie! Or Tink's, or Susan's... the list is long. The coolest thing about it, is that for all the glassworkers out there, as superb as they all are, their beads are as different from one another as thumbprints.

-Kalera

starlia wrote:

Yeah, it's something my nerdly friends use online... LOL! I'm an "Oldsk00l BBSer" so I have tons of friends who bandy about such terms as Woot, BIMP, pr0n, lamer, TSIA, etc.

-Kalera (closet nrrrrd)

MargieK wrote:

I also try to keep in mind that Corina's beads are definitely smaller than my own, and she usually makes them on smaller mandrels. That actually takes more skill - at least from my perspective. My beads are in the 8-15mm range, normally, and hers are smaller than that - and sometimes even more detailed. She does a lot with encased florals and frogs that I just can't do right now. My encased florals are abysmal. However, encasing simpler things has become a lot easier for me, as I practice it. I am hoping to have certain skills by the time I have been making beads as long as she has now (about 4 years - I am at the 1 1/2 year mark) - encasing and stringer control have gotten much better these past few months. I have absolutely no desire to do encased flowers or frogs, though, because the market is already saturated with those, and the artists that do them are really really good at it. It's true that the lampworking art has exploded with newbies within the last couple of years - I don't see that ending any time soon. And it is really challenging a lot of the veterans to improve their skills. I think that's great! I don't branch out and push my limits as often as I think I should. I am a Virgo perfectionist - and I tend to work at one thing until I am satisfied with it, and then beyond. There are things I will never get sick of doing (raised daisy-type flowers, scrolling, geometric patterns, cubes). There are things I just don't have the desire to work on at all (raised rosebud-type flowers, frogs, encased florals, tiny decorated beads). There are things that I am hoping to move on to sometime in the future, just not now (organics, lentils, metallics, big focals, sculpturals). All in all, I think I am doing relatively well for my experience level, and I would definitely still consider myself a novice/newbie - on the verge of becoming intermediate. I don't think I have found my own particular style yet - my beads are still very much like a lot of others I see. At least to me. Lately I've made a jump in quality (my shapes, cubes, encasing) that I hope pushes me into the intermediate category soon. And I hope to find my own style - the kind of thing that makes it easy for someone to pick my beads out of a huge pile of beads. Someday. :) I'm rambling. :)

vj found this in rec.crafts.beads, from Kalera Stratton :

]The coolest thing about it, is ]that for all the glassworkers out there, as superb as they all are, ]their beads are as different from one another as thumbprints.

definitely! thanks, Kalera - for the entire post. i think you're right. and every time i sell jewelry i think "boy, you don't know how lucky you [buyer] are, because those beads from that artist will never be available at that price again!"

----------- @vicki [SnuggleWench] (Books)

(Jewelry) newest creations: ----------- The measure of the menace of a man is not what hardware he carries, but what ideas he believes.-- Jeff Jordan

Kind and true words. I've shown every creation of yours to Brook as you've progressed. We both think you're a talented artist. I'm glad I bought early!

Thinking of painters and sculptors, there are some like Rodin who start of with lovely figure (but a little trite) and end up with very powerful and even raw works. But then there are people who have very young, elemental and powerful works, and as they age become more refined and subtle and the power is not so strong and visible. I got some beads from Gina de Stephens (GMD) a year or two ago. They were every bit as good as what she's doing now (I had picked the best of what she had then).

You know, some times very advanced bead makers or other artists gain mastery over their materials, but I think corroboration with materials is more important to me. (Thinking of my wood sculptures).

Uh oh. Babbling.

Tina