I took a spontaneous 3-hour class in Murano during the Venice glass week with Maestro Aldo Boscolo "Goblets in softgass.” This is what I made when I was back home at the torch.

~Petra Pepper~

Class with Frank Scott called "Welcome to the Flower Garden".  Frank taught a variety of floral-style beads, including his lapped Botanical Geode bead.  We learned multiple techniques including creating and applying flat leaf cane and floral cane, and Japanese flower beads which involve applying and blooming floral murrini.  The geode bead was coldworked on a flat lap to open the "window" into the bead.

~Wendy Conant~

I make mostly Beads of Courage donation beads. One of my favorites is face beads, inspired by a Bead Camp class with Sharon Peters (I don't recall it having a name). She is a wonderful instructor, and made the class lots of fun too!

~Eileen Robbins~

I took the ISGB reverse vitreous enameling class with Bronwen Heilmen. We used liquid enamel to paint on glass tiles and the creative quite large beads using the fired tiles. Great class!

~Carolyn Ferrell~

My name is Mirela Popovici and my favorite class was the Clio Masterclass by Hillary Lawson. Not only did I fight my fear of the precious double helix glass Clio, but learned how to use this technique with other double helix glass as well and combine them. A happy accident was cutting into a reduced circle and plunging it to create sunken flowers, while keeping the reaction.

~Mirela Popovici~

Dori Dadgar is a young flame working artist located in central Arkansas. Her glass focuses on fun, whimsy, and all things color. Glass fish, one of her favorite things to create, were inspired by the works of her teacher Laurie Ament in the class "Exploration of Glass Bead Making".

~Dorae Dadgar~

This is a large disk bead I made. Astrid Riedel is the amazing teacher/artist. Her class is called "Advanced Glass Bead Blowing Silver Glass and Cells". It is a large blown disk bead using her cell technique, and I combined it with her hot pink Clio technique where I get a beautiful hot pink and mirror shine Double Helix reducing glass is known for. The class was in May of this year in Murano.

~Suzy Hannabuss~

I was very fortunate to go to The Studio at The Corning Museum of Glass in August to take "Immersive Murrine" with Lucie Kovarova-Weir.  In this class, we made several smaller murrine, but our big class project was to create a human face.  I like this photo from my workbench because along with sliced face murrine canes, it shows the mouth component that was used in the construction of the face.

~Ann Conlin~

I took Ikuyo Yamanaka’s online class on blown hollow beads this year, and it inspired me to think about bead making in a different way.  I began to think more about the movement of the glass and ways to combine different types/colors of glass for more organic effects.  I have much to learn, but here is my attempt.

~Carol Personte~

I recently started back on my journey in lampworking and I’ve fallen in love with Murrine after this class. I am constantly in awe of what can be created with glass. I tried to do a bit of each technique within this flower, triangle shaped stamen, pulled cane for the first round of petals and layered on stripes of cobalt for the outer ones.

~Natalia Masopust~

This is a Kim Fields style mushroom in 104 Effetre glass. I haven't had the time to take many lampworking classes lately - mainly I've been teaching, traveling, and assisting! I did get to try my hand at a sculptural mushroom during my time as a TA for Kim Fields recent class at Corning (Kim will NOT tolerate idle hands!) She is a fantastic and meticulous teacher, and her sculptural glass is amazing!

~Laura Simone~

My entry is a borosilicate marble containing tidepool murrini created in my 2025 class with Kevin O'Grady. The focus of the class was creating borosilicate canes composed of color layers surrounding a clear core, which simulates the colors and structure of undersea reef animals. Individual canes were then stretched out and, in some cases, assembled into complex groupings of four to forty canes. We then included slices of the various canes into marbles and jewelry.

~Steve Bay~

Last month I took a class from Frank Miguletz at Beadmaker’s Bench studio in Berlin, Germany. Frank was an excellent teacher and the owner of the studio, Maike, was great too. I’ve been practicing his “Lexi beads”. They are made in layers and cut in with a knife. I’m getting better, but I still need more practice.

~Inge Von Roos~

Bronwen Heilman’s "Reverse Vitreous Enamel Painting" class was a great opportunity to combine my love of painting with my love of flameworking.  This bead started as a slide of 104 coe clear glass.  The design was carefully reverse painted, layer by layer, with enamels on the surface.  Each layer was fused in the kiln before adding the next colour.  The finished slide was then carefully melted in the flame onto a lampwork bead base.

~Susan Otto-Bain~

The MVLBA chapter had Laura Simone come and teach her awesome class in Painted Beads. These beads are from all the members of the class, "Hand Painted Imagery with Glassline Paints on Lampwork Beads" with Laura Simone. Beads by (Top & left group) Jackie Andrews, Multicolored Lines = Laura's experiment with Thompson Enamel  Glass Painting Powders, Janet Thurman, Lisa Inglert, Rachel Goetz, Pat Westby, Carolyn Harman and Marti Meratla.

~Miami Valley Lampworkers Bead Artists 

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