Freakin' jealous!!!!

--
Kandice Seeber
Air & Earth Designs
http://www.lampwork.net
"EL" wrote in message
...
I spent last week at William Holland School of Lapidary Arts --
http://www.lapidaryschool.org.

For those of you that don't know about William Holland, it's not only a
great place to learn a astonishing number of jewelry related things but
it's
one of the last great bargains. A week long class, room and board
included,
can be had for $285 ($250 if you share a room). There were 13 separate
classes going on last week, from beading (stringing) to silversmithing to
making glass beads to fusing glass to cutting cabochons to faceting stones
to to to ....

Three of us went together. We hauled the 25' travel trailer up and hooked
it up in the very nice full hookup campground. Ellen and I took Wire II,
Linda took beading.

Our Wire II class was taught by Jessie Donnan, who literally wrote the
book -- 8 of them at last count -- on wire. She's an incredibly talented
wire artist and a very gifted teacher. Her books are excellent. She's
self
published, so they're not bound, but she has a great Beginning Wirecraft
book and seven volumes of Advanced Wirecraft books. Each book has over a
dozen great projects with very good instructions. They're only available
from her or from William Holland.

My main goal for the week was to get my basic techniques honed -- wraps,
loops, using pliers well -- and I definitely succeeded in that. If I can
figure out the digital camera anytime soon, I'll post pictures.

Linda's beading class covered knotting, various closures, design
principles,
what stringing material to use for what, French bullion, etc. Her
teacher,
Dot Kasper-Eberle, had an entire bead shop set up in her room, and Ellen
and
I "shopped" daily. I came home with a much augmented bead stash.

Teachers are all volunteers and do it strictly for love of the craft.
They
do make a little money selling supplies, but it's precious little. It
truly
is a labor of love for them. Almost without exception teachers opened the
classrooms after supper to work with students who wanted extra time, and
the
same was true on our "free" afternoon.

Friday was show and tell day, and I was amazed at what people were doing
after only one week.

It was a great week -- off in the woods in the North Georgia mountains,
nothing to do but fiddle with wire and beads and relax with good friends.
Wish I could go back tomorrow.

Elise