May Class - Beads in Mineral Point

Ever since I started my monthly class quest, I have been wanting to take a class at Shake Rag Alley in Mineral Point. I finally got my chance! I signed up for a bead class, which was taught by Julie Lukositis, and was really looking forward to it!

The classes at Shake Rag seem to fill up quickly, so I had signed up for the class several weeks ahead of time. In the meantime, I had gone to a bead show, and mentioned it to someone there – she was excited for me, saying that the instructor was one of her friends, and that I would learn a lot from her. It only heightened my expectations.

On the day of the class, I headed out through the rolling hills of southern Wisconsin to Mineral Point and showed up at Shake Rag Alley a bit early. It is a really cute spot, and has several buildings that are dedicated to crafting. There were several classes going on at the same time, and the weekend was full of a variety of jewelry making classes. Some people there were staying for the whole weekend and taking several classes. I didn’t know about that earlier, or I might have done the same thing.

The class itself was great – Julie had a well-honed system, where she started with a short video, then moved on to the flames. The video allowed her to stop at certain points of the process to emphasize a point. (Something very difficult to do in the middle of a real live flame!).

We started making circular beads, then moved on to adding dots, making bubbles, and then also decorating with silver! So cool!

I learned a ton and am looking forward to taking another class with Julie soon.

A few of the key take away from this:

1. I had been holding the mandrel “wrong” all this time – she showed me a better way to add the glass to the mandrel, and it works much better.

2. Making the bubbles in the glass is fun – but requires some precision or they turn out very wonky.

3. I never knew silver wire would react to flame by basically making a bunch of little balls. What a neat effect!