LilianaBead Tutorials Available Now

I've been a teacher for many years now.
I taught public speaking, rhetoric at several universities and colleges, but my passion for the last several years has been lampworking.

I love to teach glass, heat, gravity and design in part because the students in those classes really want to be there - that makes all the difference sometimes :) I think of the lampworking process as communication. The communication between

• your urge to create and the powerful medium you're creating with
• your desire to learn a skill and the ways of the medium to teach you those skills
• ways of interpreting the clues of the process and translating those into design
• glass and heat and gravity
• and much more

So far I've created two tutorials to share some of the knowledge I've accumulated and formulated over the years. My teaching style is reflected in these tutorials in that I am quite informal in my interaction with glass while paying close attention to observations I make during the process and systematizing those. Each step is an instruction followed by numerous clues that you should watch for in order to make that long-term investment.

The tutorials contain pictures of each step in the process. In my Basic Horizon Tutorial I took the pictures myself - a long and tedious process. In my second tutorial, LilianaBead Apple Core Design - Starting with the Center - Part One, I was aided by my friend, an accomplished photographer and artist, Marie (www.mariecraigphoto.com). You will find wonderful photos accompanying each step of this tutorial.

My intention is to keep creating tutorials of my designs as I believe in my heart that sharing knowledge and making it available to others is very important. My preferred way to share knowledge is by teaching in a classroom environment. I will be teaching two workshops this year at Snow Farm. Please my website for more info and/or browse the Snow Farm Catalog (you can access it by clicking the pic on your upper right).

Happy Martisor Day!

March 1st. Growing up in Moldova we celebrated this day by giving "Martisor" - a symbol of Spring - to our friends, teachers and family. Memories of teachers wearing dozens and dozens of them all over the left side of their chests on that day make me smile.

We wore this white and red amulet for nine days and then hung it on a fruit tree for prosperity and peace. The more people wore such amulets - there were many kinds available commercially and a lot of us made them ourselves out of yarn, silk threads - the better the chances of spring coming soon and bringing joy with a new cycle of life.

On this day I would like to give you all an imaginary Martisor which I hope brings you health, spiritual wealth, love and peace, and prosperity.

To learn more about Martisor and its 8,000-year tradition go to Wikipedia! :)

The Crafts Report: March 2009: Beads

I volunteered to write an essay for the March Issue of the Crafts Report in which the Insight Section is dedicated to Beads.
It's available online now.
Click here to read about artist/designer thoughts and suggestions on how to market one's work.
A longer version of my submission is available in an earlier post here.

The Crafts Report online is quite resourceful in that a multitude of articles is available to the public (at no charge). Go to its Column Categories Section and read about photography, marketing, business basics and more.