i heart mom

another swanky birthday bracelet & earring set - this time for my mother.




these beads are made from effetre black, dark ivory, mango coral, a wee bit of avacado green and handpulled aventurine stringers. this time the goldstone is cased in pale topaz. the small beads are ivory freshwater pearls and the findings are sterling silver.






i love the fancy stick pearls, they are new addition to the stash.

raku voodoo

when you do that voodoo that you do so well...




can you believe it?




i finally got the raku frit to work. turns out i wasn't supposed to be reducing it, just touching it to cold metal (brass) when it cooled to dark cherry red.




the classic combo - black, dark ivory and raku.

j'ave maria

this is maria.




this is her birthday present.




this is her birthday luncheon at java's market cafe.




and chocolate cake & strawberries aftermath.

wisteria

double dated the other night with the j's. we walked the gardens at the george eastman house while waiting for a screening of the marx brother's "animal crackers."

jackie loves wisteria, i love her spring coat with the wisteria.

with this snapshot as my inspiration, i selected my colors. now you know how i came up with the color combination of pastel & transparent periwinkle, rubino oro, opalino nile green, opalino white & aventurine (i substituted encased goldstone for the yellow gold of her formidable handbag). they are quite large, the center bicone is just over an inch long.

spring skies

a nice unplanned flameworking session last night.
usually, everything is all carefully worked out ahead in my bead sketchbook.



after a flowering tree filled dog walk in highland park i think this wonderful color combination just happened.

these new beads are made from moretti/effetre copper green, dark ivory and handmade goldstone stringers. the stringers were pulled with transparent grass green (medium) encasing the aventurine chunks. if you neeeeed some, you can get aventurine chunks from island glass' ebay store Moretti & More

i love working with the highly reactive copper green, the little sparks when you're flaming are so fizzy and somehow exciting.

walking highland park, the week before the lilac festival, is one of the lovliest walks of the year.

better than ever - forsythia

finally got around to cleaning out the newest batch forsythia beads.




much, much better with the new non-serrated tweezers.




the leaf spacers came after watching Mahine (of More Fire) give a demo on shaping flower petals. they are basically pulled flower petals made from a droplet of glass flattened, and pulled with tweezers, off the bottom of a very basic bead.




the spacer beads are just yellow encased with clear and rolled in apple green frit.



i don't know what's up with me and the color spring green? yesterday was the annual barn sale for Flax clothing in Ithaca. as i do every year i drove back to my hometown and bought a years worth of clothing - it's all i wear except for black jeans. i did not buy one piece of black - and somehow came home with three pairs, all different shades, of spring green flood pants. the trees along the lake were all budding out and i think i was so in love with that color on the drive down that i just bought everything i saw in that color range. i also bought some thing the color of dirty orange sherbet - that's an all time first, we'll see if i ever wear it...

old odd pod bracelet

"hooray hooray the first of may outdoor fucking begins today" -sam abrams

one of the first bracelets i ever made came back for a visit this morning.

it's clasp had gotten snagged in the cuff of a black sweater and one of the crimp bead gave out.
i performed a 'while-u-wait' re-stringing and got a quick photograph of it.




i love these beads.





they were my very first attempt at beads inspired by seed pods.




no, they do not look like molars.