A Big Bouquet

I got up with the birds and wired up a pile of little glass flower earrings this morning.

The centers are freshwater pearls in all sorts of springy unnatural shades with little bits of peridot, jade and laboradite beads anchoring the ends.

This pair is my favorite - the butter yellow pearls look so sweet with the transparent, iridescent green petals. They were made with Double Helix's silver laden reduction glass called Gaia.

The top of the bead has a little ruffle of twisted glass. You make this by adding a raised ring of glass around the bead and then spot heating and twisting with non-serrated tweezers. Dipping the tweezers in water to cool them helps, otherwise they get too hot and start to stick to the glass. Don't forget to keep flashing the entire bead while forming your ruffle, there's nothing more annoying than hearing a pop when you introduce it back into the flame because you forgot to flash.