Instructors: Lucio Bubacco and Diego Bottacin

Class: From Glass Beads To Sculpture – 3 day class
Level: Intermediate to Advanced
Price: $375 + $25 for materials*
Date: June 2 – 4 2012

Class: From Glass Beads To Sculpture – 2 day class
Level: Intermediate to Advanced
Price: $250 + $25 for materials*
Date: June 23 – 24 2012

*Don’t forget to add 7% Sales tax to your final total before sending payment

Class Description:

For more information or to sign up for this class please contact us at 1-800-922-1167 or use the form below:

• Saturday and Sunday, Nov 17 & 18 2012

*Don’t forget to add 7% Sales tax to your final total before sending payment

Class Description: A variation on the Quark Beads in a way – this class focuses on making components for “sea-creatures”, and assembling them on the surface of the bead, rather than in the classic (and time-consuming) encased aquarium bead.

Depending on the interest of the students, we will make sea-weed, corals, anemones, jellyfish, starfish, octopus, crab, as long as time doesn’t run out. We will also discuss how there creatures can be encased later on, and make an encased Ocean bead at the end of the second day, if time allows.

For more information or to sign up for this class please contact us at 1-800-922-1167 or use the form below:

• Friday Nov 16 2012

*Don’t forget to add 7% Sales tax to your final total before sending payment

Class Description: This is probably my all time favorite classes, I can hand over all I know about this in one day (wait? really? that is scary!) – and while some people told me in the past that they were not interested in making frogs, this is one of those times where I can answer: it doesn’t matter, you’ll enjoy it ANYWAY. Because making a frog is all about one thing: heat control. If you can make a frog that is 3-dimensional and still sticks to the bead, you’re in buisness!

And there is more to a frog that just bright green! You will learn to use silvered glass or add color and texture by using frits and stringer…and I will teach you to make 17 different types of eyes – which you can put on any other kind of creature, or just use on beads in general as accent points. Once we get beyond the lizard, we will add horns, wings or other types of additional decoration….So, even it frogs aren’t your things, you might want to consider this day of fun and learning.

For more information or to sign up for this class please contact us at 1-800-922-1167 or use the form below:

Instructor:

• Saturday April 21 2012
• Sunday April 22 2012

*Don’t forget to add 7% Sales tax to your final total before sending payment

Class Description: It’s time to go back to the beginning with the basics and move through making precise, well executed beads. Yes, this class is for the intermediate to advanced bead maker! This class is a bit of potpourri but will include clear casing, hollow beads, making an assortment of twists and applying the twists well so their ends meet nicely, stringers and laying the glass on those challenging large mandrels.

Where do you find ideas for new beads? Heather knows and will be happy to share some great ideas with you.

It’s time to fine tune your skills and take your work to the next level. Please join us for this exciting class!

For more information or to sign up for this class please contact us at 1-800-922-1167 or use the form below:

Heather Trimlett discovered this unique art form in 1992 in a class paid for her as a birthday present and found herself immediately hooked on the magic of molten glass. She returned home and promptly set up a small makeshift studio, eager to cultivate the images of her imagination into colorful and illustrious glass bead realities. She explored this new medium, focusing on developing her distinct style and perfecting her lampworking skills. After practicing on her own for a number of years, word of Heather’s exceptional work spread. Soon thereafter she made her first big sale, which catapulted her into a second career quite unexpectedly. Prior to this, she had run a successful business fashioning stained glass for restaurants, synagogues and upscale homes. But after making her first big bead sale she found herself declining a stained glass commission offer. “I don’t do windows anymore,” she said.

Today, looking out her studio window to the garden of her El Cajon, California, home, she creates both small production and one-of-a-kind flameworked beads and jewelry. For Heather, beadmaking is more than a way to make a living – it’s about having fun and creating beads that capture her vibrant personality and enthusiasm. Her color palette is crisp and clean, made of mostly primary and secondary colors in high contrast combinations. Her work ranges from raised bump beads to two-color twists, vibrant disk beads to her beautiful new bicycle beads – gorgeous rounds made of colored stringers and twisted glass reminiscent of wheel spokes. What remains constant throughout her designs is her knack for diverse textures, and distinct application and juxtaposition of color. “The high color contrast gives the beads punch, drawing you in for a closer look,” Heather explains. “Once you’ve arrived you can enjoy the details, of which there can never be too many!”

Heather’s glass beads have a lively energy; they beg to be touched, admired and displayed on the body for all to see and enjoy. The bold, bright colors of Heather’s imagination decorate her beads in dynamic dots, spots and twists that she has perfected over the years. But don’t let the playfulness of her work fool you-Heather loves a technical challenge and prides herself on maintaining clean, tight designs in her animated beads. “Of course I’m inspired by the color, the magic and the melting of lampworking, but I also really like the technical aspect, like trying to figure out how to do things and do them well,” she says. As an artist who has exhibited both nationally and internationally, and whose work currently sells at galleries across the country, it’s safe to say Heather has figured out how to execute her techniques well. Like tiny little sculptures, her glass beads are visual smorgasbords that have captured the imagination of thousands of customers she’s had over the years.

All this success has not gone unnoticed. Heather has garnered quite a bit of attention since she started her career in 1992. Her work has been featured in publications from The Washington Post to more specialized jewelry and art publications like Bead & Button, Glass Art Magazine, and Ornament. Many of the comprehensive books on lampworking beads include Heather’s work-Cindy Jenkins’s Making Glass Beads and Beads of Glass, and Bandhu Dunham’s Formed of Fire. Heather’s work is also found in Jim Kervin’s The Brightly Colored Beads and Vessels of Heather Trimlett, and will be included in Louis Dubin’s seminal The History of Beads.

Heather’s beads and jewelry-made in stunning combinations of her glass and metalwork to produce bracelets, necklaces and earrings-can be found at Arts Afire in Alexandria, Washington; the Dennison-Moran Glass Gallery in Naples, Florida; Symmetry Gallery in Saratoga Springs, New York; and PISMO Galleries in Denver and Beaver Creek, Colorado. And she’s quickly gaining accolades for her newest venture in glass buttons. A few years ago, while attending a conference for the Society of Glass Beadmakers, she saw a demo on glass buttons. This new design concept piqued Heather’s interest. She has since begun fashioning her own glass buttons, incorporating her signature, one-of-a-kind style to each one. Not only has she added glass buttons to her repertoire, she teaches a glass button course, which she says she loves doing.

In fact, Heather’s been teaching for some time. It makes up another major part of her craft, second only to working in her studio. A natural instructor – encouraging, demonstrative and patient – Heather has packed classrooms and studios in San Diego and across the U.S. and Canada throughout the last decade, offering step-by-step instruction in flameworked beadmaking to individuals of all ages and skill-levels. The most rewarding aspect of this endeavor for her is her students’ reaction to having created something fascinating and eclectic. “I love the end of the class when they string up their beads and put them around their necks, pumping out their chests with these big grins on their faces, amazed at what they’ve accomplished,” she says. Heather loves sharing her flameworking knowledge and has taught classes at private and commercial studios and craft schools such as the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine, and Penland School of Crafts in Penland, North Carolina.

No doubt Heather Trimlett loves making beads and has no intention of slowing down anytime soon. As long as she is physically able to work on the torch she’ll continue to awe people with her creations – constantly reinventing new color schemes, illuminating patterns and unique shapes. And for that the world is a brighter, bolder, more whimsical place.

Instructor:

• Saturday March 3 2012
• Saturday April 7 2012

*Don’t forget to add 7% Sales tax to your final total before sending payment

Class Description: Introductory level class that focuses on working with borosilicate glass. During the class, students will learn to make colorful pendants while practicing the fundamentals of heat control, punti work, and colored glass application. Students will leave with a good foundation in working with borosilicate, as well as a wealth of information about the art of flameworking.

For more information or to sign up for this class please contact us at 1-800-922-1167 or use the form below:

While I was still in high school, I first experimented with manipulating hot glass with a simple torch and some clear glass rods that my father had bought for me.

Being born and raised in Southern New Jersey, I was in the midst of a rich tradition of Glasswork, having many glass factory’s within an hours drive of my home.

In 1977-78. I received my formal glass training, in scientific glassblowing technology, from Salem County Community College.

I worked as a Scientific glassblower for three years, hand fabricating laboratory apparatus that was used by the petroleum, drug, and scientific research industries.

It was during that time that I became exposed to paperweights, through the work of James and Nontas Kontes, owners of the Scientific glass company that I was working for at that time.

Although I am self-taught in the art of paperweight making, The Kontes brothers offered me guidance, advice, and endless support with my learning to make lampworked paperweights. I consider them my glass mentors, and we share a cherished friendship.

I also volunteered to work at a nearby glass facility, Wheaton Historic Village. there I learned how to work with hot glass, in the traditional way, gathering the glass from a hot tank, and then shaping and forming it with the traditional tools used by Glassblowers.

To this day, I continue to learn new techniques for working glass, through research, trial and error, and by participating in workshops.

I attended Michigan State University and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Advertising. After working for a local radio station for a year, my husband and I moved to New York City where I landed a job in television production.

In 1983, we moved to Chicago where I continued my career in television production management. Although it was rewarding, the artist in me still needed another means of expression. In my spare time, I dabbled in all sorts of crafts such as painting, embroidery, designing floral wreaths, decorating goose eggs, and making beaded Christmas ornaments. Using the beads from the ornaments, I began making simple beaded bracelets and eventually moved on to creating more complex necklaces using lampworked beads. It was these beautiful beads that first piqued my curiosity about glass.

In 1999, I took a beginner’s lampworking class, which led me to Cindy Jenkins book, “Making Glass Beads”. So I bought a torch, a few simple tools and began making beads using her book as my guide. Later that year, I took my first workshop with Sage and Tom Holland, which really helped my beadmaking skills. Working with glass was so fulfilling that I dedicated myself to making glass beads and designing jewelry full-time. Since then, I have had the privilege of studying with Loren Stump, Leah Fairbanks, Kristen Frantzen Orr, Larry Scott, Michael Barley, and Bronwen Heilman.

Lampworking has brought me tremendous joy and I am always delighted when people appreciate my beads and jewelry. I am continually exploring new techniques and ways to express myself through glass and jewelry.

I teach beadmaking at several studios around the country and my work can be seen at shows, galleries, and exhibits, as well as in numerous publications. I live in Metamora, Michigan with my husband, Stu and our Scottish terrier, Rosie.