Shop name: The Venerable Bead
Etsy: shop www.venbead.etsy.com
Website: www.thevenerable-bead.com
Blog: www.venbead.blogspot.com
Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/venbead/
I tweet twitter.com/#!/Venbead
I facebook: www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/The-Venerable-Bead/43852369052
and you can watch me torch here: watchmetorch.blip.tv/#1976555.

1. Tell us about your work
My name is Paula McDonough and I am The Venerable Bead. I am a wife and mother of two beautiful and smart children ages 13 and 10. We live in Rhode Island, the smallest state in the union. I am a clinical social worker working part time as an employee assistance consultant by day and at night I melt borosilicate glass rods in the flame of a torch to create wearable works of art.

2. How did you come to be a professional artist/crafter?
I’ve had a love affair with jewelry making since 1994 when, on my first wedding anniversary, I walked into a little bead store in Boston's Haymarket Square and picked up a handmade bead. It started with polymer clay and moved into semi-precious gems and silver. The glass bug hit in early 2005 while I was reading a Bead and Button magazine article about a borosilicate bead artist Emily Lake. I had never seen borosilicate glass before but I felt drawn to it. After that, I started buying boro beads from self representing artists to incorporate into my bracelets. Then it occurred to me that I could probably learn how to make them myself.

In the spring of 2005 I took a wonderful nine week lampworking class at the Worcester Center for Crafts taught by the very talented Jennifer Geldard and in July 2005 I set up a glass studio in my home. I have been happily melting glass ever since. Recently I have added metalwork and enameling to my skill set in a never ending desire to raise the bar for my work.

3. Where do you draw your inspiration?
I am inspired by trends in fashion and jewelry. I love picking up fashion magazines or taking a walk around the mall. I love to surf the internet and look at my lampworking sites. I have a serious bead and glass magazine addiction too. Etsy inspires me. I love to make treasuries. The colors the textures it's all so inspiring.

I am a geocacher and nature often inspires me too. I think being near the ocean influences my work. I can't imagine living anywhere else. There's an organic quality to my pendants and many people tell me my implosion pendants look like creatures and plants from the sea.

My kids inspire me. They are funny and my toughest critics and they tell me what works for them and that makes me want to be a better lampworker. I take all of it with me to the torch but then I go to my zen place and all that has inspired me is revealed on more of an unconscious level.

4.What is your favorite item to make?
I love making my flower pendants. Using the implosion technique, colored glass is heated into clear making a bloom or glass flower. I always pierce a hole in the top and use a metal ring as a bail. I like that look. I think it allows my pendants to be incorporated into strung beaded necklaces better which goes back to my roots as a jewelry designer.

image: etsy

My most recent design is a collaboration between myself and a husband and wife woodcrafter team www.Grahtoestudio.etsy.com. They are handcarving wooden hearts and I am putting my glass flowers in the center of them. They are absolutely gorgeous and one of a kind.

image: etsy

5. What is your best seller?
I would have to say my best seller is my key necklace. I melt glass rods directly on the shaft of antique skeleton keys and create a bead on a key and then incorporate the beaded key into necklaces with hand-stamped tags, beaded dangles and other vintage items like watch parts and charms. Because the stamped tags can be custom ordered with any saying names or dates, they have been fantastically popular.

image: etsy

6. How long have you been in RI? 
 I grew up just over the border of RI in Seekonk Massachusetts and have lived in RI since I attended Providence College. After college I moved to east providence and then providence and have been in Warwick since I got married 18 years ago.

7. What do you {heart} about RI? 
 I love love summers in RI. In fact someday I will live in a big house in Narragansett right on the beach. My studio will be set high up on the top floor so I can torch and look out at the ocean as I work, but for now my favorite place in RI is my little basement studio in Warwick.

8. Please include anything else you'd like to add:
How did you determine what your target customer base is?
they found me. I was doing something really original with the lampwork beaded key in 2007. I was the first etsian to make a boro lampwork bead on the shaft of a skeleton key. They keys really took off and I found my customer base. she's an edgy hip slightly above the trend woman looking for something very original and fun. she's a sentimental girl who has an appreciation for old, worn but well loved objects that have been updated with the smooth modern sometimes futuristic looking artisan glass and personalized just for her.

How do you not get lost in the crowd? 
I am constantly striving to stand out. Once the beaded lampwork key caught on and every glassmaker out there was making them I turned mine into necklaces by making charms handstamping sayings. When I was copied again i learned how to etch metal so I could add very unique things to my keys things that no one else would have. I also took many weekend classes with experts in my field to build my skill level to a place I am really proud of. I have recently added metalworking and enameling to my skill set in an effort to stay ahead of the pack and I am constantly looking for new and original ways to showcase my glass. be original. make things that people want to copy and when they do, move on, grow change evolve, always evolve.