EllyLoo Creations-Lampwork & Jewelry

I have my first listing (IN A LONG TIME!) up on ebay!
YOu have the opportunity to buy a “Hope” pendant at auction prices!
It’s right here.

I’ve gotta whole lotta Hope!
Pendants, that is.
And… okay, the real stuff too!

I’ll probably say this a lot, but:

 Hope gives us strength to rise above the adversities of life and carry on.  What gives YOU hope? 

I’ve been pretty busy making Hope pendants in every colour under the sun (Pink is coming…!).
I’ve written a bit of a write up, and have been listing them on my Etsy Site.  If you like, you can contact me with a colour you’d like to see, and I’ll make one for you! 
Price: 50$, plus shipping.

I had the fortune to have been asked to try out Nortels new Beadliner for a month or two.  I had been itching to get into lining beads!  I thought that it would be a nice new addition to my art.   

It turns out not to be ‘my thing’–I love the look of a nicely lined bead, but I’ll continue ogling others.  Like Dwyn from Dragonjools… she’s done a lot with the Nortel Bead Liner!!  Check it out here, she’s done a step by step video!  Dragonjools Youtube Video

I would like to introduce you to an EllyLoo design that I call “Hope”.

HOPE gives us the strength to rise above struggles and trials that threaten to pull us down into despair.  It allows us to carry on.  What gives you hope?  What helps you through your struggles in life?  People who have hope sparkle like diamonds…there’s just something about them!

As you can see, “Hope” pendants can be personalized with any colour.  Each, while similar in design, is unique from the others, because I make each by hand.  While the glass is still hot and soft, I embed a cubic zirconia in the glass. Some can be etched to give them a soft seaglass look, while other colours glow when left in their natural glass state. 

These pendants are showstoppers when I bring them as a display, particular favourites are the red and the black. 

If this pendant brings meaning to you, it makes me happy.  Contact me through elly@ellyloo.com , and let me know which colour you prefer.  Hope necklaces are $50 US, and they come with a chain included, so you can wear it as soon as you want.

This beautiful bead was made last summer, when I took a trip out to British Columbia.  We had a great time, and I torched alongside some AWESOME artists.

This little treasure was one I took home with me, and is now available for purchase!  I’ll include a 16 inch chain, unless you prefer a longer one, then please put it in the note, and I’ll be happy to do so.

28$ Cdn 

This is one of the most common questions I’ve heard about this type of bead.  It’s quite flattering! 

There actually are no real flowers in this bead!  Even if I tried, the poor flower would vaporize in the flame I use to melt the glass!  Everything you see, each design element, is made from different colours of glass!  This bead is made from layers upon layers of glass. 

The bottom layer is black, and I drizzled colours on top of it that make it look like vines.  Then I “encase” it all with a thick layer of clear glass.  Once I get the basic shape I want, I start adding the ‘flowers’.  Each flower in this bead is comprised of 6 very thin layers of glass! 

Pretty suprising, even to me, when I just counted it up! The design is made up of dots of glass, melted in, and layers of dots on top of it.  It still looks like a bunch of dots, until I take a sharp tool, and POKE the center down deep into the bead. This makes the dots all of a sudden become PETALS.  And if you look closely, you’ll see a bubble trapped in the middle of each flower, sparkling and special.  This is done deliberately.

Since each floral like this has so many layers, the time taken to make it can range from 20 minutes to an hour!  It all depends on how many flowers, layers and other details are included! In this bead, I put a little bit of Dichroic glass into it for a beautiful delicate sparkle.

This bead is made into a pendant already, and if you purchase it, will come ready to wear right out of the box!  It’s a lovely size.  Don’t forget to tell me how long you would like the chain!  
$50 + shipping($6.50)

Chain Length?

Any more christmas shopping to do?

If you would like to see my pieces up close and personal (which I highly recommend!)
I will be at the “Maple Leaf House”, December 13th, 1749 Lakeshore Blvd. West, Etobicoke Ontario.
Doors open at 9:30pm, close at 2:30am.

It’s a PARTY! With shopping and dancing, and music, and drinks… man… can it get any better? Oh yeah! It’s a Curvacious event…THAT’s how it could get better! Meet models of all sizes… BEAUTIFUL BBW women, and appreciators. Go check out the site!

“So, why are you freaking out that your kiln is broken?”

Well… a kiln is very important component in the process of glass making.   Without it, most of what I make would be cracked, or well on it’s way to cracking by now.

The simplest way to explain ‘annealing’ is this:
When I make a glass bead, I melt it into glowy, runny glass that can be shaped and manipulated into whatever shape I can make it.  As soon as this glass is out of the flame, it starts to cool off.  And once a bead is made, the part that cools off the quickest, is the outside skin.  The inside core is still hot and glowy by the time the outside is hard.  This creates stresses, because heat wants to expand, and cool wants to contract. 

If I just put the bead down after I was done, I could probably watch it pop open as the stress got to be too much for it.  I need a kiln so that I can bring every part of the bead up to the same temperature, and then start cooling it off, degree by degree. (not too fast!)   There are ways to slow the cooling process down without a kiln, but proper annealing needs to happen at a certain temperature, so if you’ve cooled your beads off in a fiber blanket or vermiculite for example, they still need to be put in a kiln, brought slowly up to that temperature, and then cooled off again, just to ‘iron out’ the stress in the beads.

A bead that has been annealed is much more durable and lasts longer then one that has not been.  Think about that bracelet or necklace, and how many times it knocks against the counter or desk…That can be pretty hard on a bead!

Unfortunately, proper annealing takes time.  The better part of a day.
Unfortunately, some people/companies think that annealing isn’t a process they need to bother with, and therefore can afford to sell lampwork beads for pennies.  They’re often very pretty, and hard to resist, especially for the price…they’d make beautiful jewelry…but would you stake your reputation as a jewelry designer on them?