SCA: Glass Beads

 Before the pandemic, I got the awesome opportunity to learn to make glass beads with FIRE.  It's called lampworking or torchworking - it's where you melt glass rods over a very hot flame, and wrap the molten glass around a steel rod called a mandrel to form a glass bead.  It's utterly fascinating, and SO much fun - and it's historically accurate! Not only did the Vikings make beads in this way, but many other ancient cultures did as well.  

I was immediately hooked, and set about slowly amassing the supplies to set up a glass-working shop in my own garage.  In February of this year, I was afforded another opportunity to make glass beads in the same friend's workshop; and I finished collecting the supplies I needed to make beads at home.  Although it was simple enough at first, the learning curve was huge, and I'm in the process of making a LOT of beginner mistakes at the moment. 

That said, I'm coming along pretty well, I think.  I'm working on making my beads and smooth and round as possible, and beginning to work on creating enough beads to thoroughly re-work my Viking "festoon"bead strands.  I'm not nearly there yet, but I'm having a LOT of fun doing it.  

Here's a sampling of some of the beads I've made.  Most are tiny, some are messed up, but all of them have been a really awesome learning experience:  

Regency-Adjacent: New Jewelry Box Just For Fun

Here's a little wooden jewelry box I just finished making, to house my Regency jewelry: 

It started life as a little $9 blank box from Michael's.  I stained it (Minxwax's "Special Walnut" and "Dark Walnut"), and then painted the insides, and painted the little vine/leaf design on the top and drawer front with gold leafing paint. 

The lid is clear (plexiglass), and shows all the little square compartments inside, so you can show off your nice pieces and the inside of the box, so I wanted a color that would pop against the golds and blues and corals of my jewelry.  

This, by the way, has no basis whatsoever in actual history - I've seen exactly *one* Regency-era jewelry box to date (it was green on the inside), but other than that, I have no idea how a real Regency-era jewelry box would have looked.  From what I know about furniture and accessories in the Regency, natural wood tones were a thing, as well as hand-painted details, so I went with that...but I have no research to point to for this project, I just wanted to make something pretty.