Hello! I guess you were wondering: "Where the h... has this girl gone?" (or maybe you didn´t care at all!) . Anyway, here i am! "(^.^)"
I´m sorry for having you all so long without news. Sometimes i forget about the responsability of maintaining a blog. You must take care of it, as you would with a puppy or it will perish. But i have an alibi!

I have been attending the coolest workshop in one of my favorite places in Lugo and the whole world!: The "Centro de Artesania y Diseño" CENTRAD. This official center for Arts&Crafts is unique in all of this part of Spain, and it´s located in my city!. Their work is to promote Crafts in a way that can be also comercially viable. And they maintain a high level of workshops and lectures all year round. They are also promoting this very cool project, Avantcraft, which aims to find an atlantic identity in crafts, and which joins forces with similar centers in Ireland, France and Portugal. You can view info in english here. Oh!, And they also commercialize chicadecanela products. So, the cream :D

And why do you tell us all this? Because this past week i was engaged in this extraordinary lampwork workshop, conducted by talented Susana Aparicio. We learned how to professionally make glass beads and also a little bit of jewellery making. I enjoyed the lampwork to pieces, and i might be thinking about getting myself a little lampwork studio. As for the jewellery making part, it was toughter, really hard work to mold the metals and so many machines and tools to use that it was a bit overwhelming, from here my respect to all professional jewellers: yours is an impressive job! I´m all for buying the components ready made and play around with them. Cheat!

But the lampwork really stuck with me. Here are some images from the workshop:

Note: this is a collage made with the work of all the classroom, not just my work.

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Also, i think we have missed, like, two "Friday i´m in love", so, even though today is not Friday, here it goes:

Y Y Everyday i´m in Love Y Y

Today: Cute Lampwork

Yes, let´s continue with my new found obsession with handmade glass beads. I have been doing my research. I already new from flickr a japanese girl who makes beautiful beads, Courts for Snails. Through her site i found all the other amazing artist who, in pure zakka style, make cute beads for you (as if...) to use in your designs.

Amazing, right? Here are the links to the cute zakka lampwork you can see above:

Corti (Courts for Snails website)
Gem Beads
Melting Point
Kirari

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I have many other things to tell you, but this is all for today. I will try to find a gap tomorrow.

See U! *