Andrea Guarino-Slemmon's Class ~ August 2006

This is Andrea ~ a super nice, very cool teacher that I originally had a 2 day class with, but it was extended for 3 days!  In this photo she's pulling a twisty cane (latticino).  It was exciting to see her work because she's so darn good.  Andrea's been making beads for 15 years & has had such a major influence on the North American bead world, however, she is unbelievably modest, so unless you do the research, you would have no idea how much so.  She's just a real gem & I felt very lucky that she came up here to teach us! 

This is one of Andrea's beads - on the surface it's designed with stringer work & fumed in pure silver.  She's just about to cut it open with a grinder...

Here she goes ~ grinding the bead down to expose the middle...

And here it is shortly afterwards - sorry about the blurry nature of this shot, but you still get the idea of how cool this bead is!  

I don't know if you remember, but I made a big bead to grind down in Corina's class back in April (the black one above).  Because we didn't have the proper grinder then, I had to wait until this class with Andrea to open it - well I opened it & it was all cracked inside - what a bummer!  So I decided to go home & make some more beads like it & try my luck again with Andrea's grinder.  You can see those beads in the photo of all my beads below.

This is Andrea & my first teacher Phil.  I love this photo!  You can just tell how nice these two people are by their smiles.  Phil got me hooked on lampwork beads.  He donated some of his own glass beads to the Cross Cancer Institute while I was taking a beading course there (stringing beads on wire).  When I saw his beads I was blown away that someone in town actually made them so I inquired & within a week or two I was at his house taking a class & I've never looked back since.  Both these 2 are the best bead teachers I've ever had lessons with! 

Here's a sample of some of Andrea's beads.  The lower left one is the one from above that was blurry.  Look at the size of these guys - big, bold & beautiful!   

And here are the beads I made in the class - over to the left you can see two of those cool "window" beads.  I love the names she gives her beads: Salmon eggs, moth wings, galaxy & sea garden beads, tide pools & nautilus beads... can you guess which names go with which beads? 

I learned many wonderful techniques in this class, some new things to try with dichro, fuming gold, off mandrel work, new types of twisties, cool new tools that I want to get.  It was fantastic!  A big thanks to Kathy at Bedrock Supplies for bringing Andrea up here.

Oh & here's the full picture of the bead that you clicked

on to get to this page, made by Andrea.   

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