Jenelle Aubade-Caracas

One day I was surfing the net and bumped into SortaFlowering Designs featuring some great tutorials that instantly became a must have.

SortaFlowering Designs is run by Jenelle Aubade-Caracas and her husband Daniel Caracas.

The beads are gorgeous and the pdf tutorials are excellent! Pay them a visit. You definitely will not be sorry :)

Our Studio:

Susanne Clarke of Scarab Glass Works has been wonderful at hosting the teachers willing to come here.

So far Kim Osibin and her wonderful helper Toni Lutman have been here 4 times.

The KING OF HEAT ... Jim Smircich was here mid April. EVERY beginning lampworker should take Jim's class. After 3 years of making beads I now know the importance of HEAT CONTROL.

Our first crack at Boro with James Daschbach from Lily Rose Beads

Michael Barley Oh my gosh what can I say but SUPERB!

Then the fun interesting magnificent techniques taught to us by Sherry Bellamy of Orca Beads.

Then when you think you know it all along comes Trey Cornette. What a great teacher not to mention an all round nice guy.
We all LOVE his new brass tools!
An absolute must ... I kid you not.
All of us who bought the set from the class agree we can probably toss our forming tools because this will do the trick.

Visit the class gallery showing a bit of Trey at work in our class.

For those of you new to lampworking it is well worth your time to take these classes. There is no better way to get involved in a craft than seeking out the experts in the field.

Free Blogs for Fresno and surrounding area lampwork artists coming soon.
For more information visit the MEMBERS AREA.

We are the Fresno Lampworkers.

All of this started with Suzanne Clarke of Scarab Glassworks taking a class at Arrow Springs from Kim Osibin.

Suzanne is a talented artist who designs and makes exquisite stained glass windows. I have known her for over 35 years when she taught me to make windows long ago.

After Arrow Springs and some practice Suzanne started giving classes at Clovis Adult School and that quickly branched into classes in her own studio. Our workspace is huge. Brad (Suzanne's hubby) has custom made tables and we can comfortably accommodate up to 12 in a class. I think we have had more a time or 2.

From those beginnings our Fresno group found its way to Suzanne and one another.

Our backgrounds are varied but we have a common thread ... LOVE of FIRE. Most are artists in some form and a few of us were also into stained glass at one time or another. What is there about hot glass that we find so intriguing?
Cut it, paint it, fuse it, slump it or turn it into a bead ... oh my.

EVERY ONE of us are tool junkies. If it is out there most of us have it or we at least have one among us. Many of us are fast narrowing down our tools to a few favorites.

Personally I am also a glass & frit junky ... I love Val Cox & Double Helix ... what can I say? I do however have a ton of colors from a number of other glass & frit makers. I would say if I quit buying glass & frit tomorrow I probably could make beads for the next 10 years.
WHAT?
A new color or ODD?
Gotta have it!
Sound familiar to any of you out there?
The real point is most of us here are like me when it comes to bead making. If it's out there we have to try it out.

FAIR WARNING TO ALL TEACHERS: If you come to Fresno to teach bring your special tools we will probably ALL buy them :)

It is thrilling for our little group to have enjoyed some of the best lampwork teachers in the United States. We try and show them our Central California hospitality and feed them well. After all GREAT FOOD always helps inspire great glass outcome right?

We are a lively group and have a lot of fun when we get together which is every few weeks in the cool months. We grab our torches and Brad hooks us up to the tanks and we eat and bead.