Voucher from Tuffnell Glass and a Hoped-For Book Review!

Some of you might have seen this design already, it was my entry into the "Beads & Beyond" Jewellery Maker of the Year competition. It was inspired by Van Gogh's famous painting, hence the name "Van Gogh: Sunflowers". I was very proud of it, as finally I was able to explore the "painting" possibilities of working with glass colours. And, of course, my favourite goldstone insertions as the middles of flowers are also present, and again, I think, they are very successful design-wise.

We were not allowed to mention or to show the pix anywhere so that the public would vote not knowing whose work it was. It was a very pleasant surprise when I received news that my beads were short-listed for the award. Never mind that I didn't get it in the end, after all, I was up against many very talented designers whose work I admire. But I was even more pleasantly surprised when yesterday I got in the post a £25.00 voucher for Tuffnell Glass products as my reward for being a runner-up! Yippee! So now I am very excited about spending it!!! I'll have to go through Tuffnell's website carefully, as this should be really a present to myself - any suggestions?

Also I had another piece of extremely great news: finally one lovely lady posted a very good review of my book on amazon.co.uk, giving it five stars! Here it is:

"***** Lovely lampwork book, 11th Jan 2011 by Jessica R. Mytum (Lees, UK)

The thing about lampworking is that there aren't that many books about it that don't have all the basics of how to make a round bead, a tube bead and so on. This was a great book for the lampworker who already knows a little bit about lampworking and is keen to make some more complex beads. The price means that it's great value for money compared to tutorials that can be bought from bead artists.

Each style of bead is demonstrated with plenty of pictures and then in the second section of the book is shown how to incorporate it or them into a lovely piece of jewellery.

Highly recommend."

Thank you so much, Jessica, for this lovely review!