Unicorn Games ( Happy Halloween )

Always be yourself, unless you can be a unicorn - then be a unicorn.

She Just Can't Help It

Six new pairs of glam skull earrings.

Four pairs are already taken.

These green cheese ones look like moon men.

Why so grumpy little blue guys?

I just can't stop making them.
Every pair is so stinking fun to find the perfect collar and and heads to pair with the glass headpins.

Bonus! I need to go shop for more rhinestone rondelles.

Frost on the Leaves

So many little leaves.
White frit on clear and on pale transparent gray.
They were made 'off mandrel' and each one is about the size of a penny.

Seagulls

Seagull at the crossroads.

I walk the line.

You stay on your side and I'll stay on mine.

Hold the line.

Stay in the center lane.

Short & Sweet

I bought new boxes and sorted my hoard of short rods by color.
If you know me, you know this was lots of fun and made me happy.

Chocolate Bon Bon

Candygram.
Playing around making bead caps and paillettes from an old candy box.
No. I did not cut up a precious antique tin. It was just a banged up box, with no lid, I found at a garage sale.

I think I like them. They have a great shabby, crusty look to them.
I'm not a fan of new and perfect, I'm more about well worn and mysterious (like me, snort).

Making paillettes:
First thing is to cut up the tin into a flat, usable sheet of tin using metal shears.
Then I used my little disc cutter to make the circles and a helicopter punch to make the little holes.
Next the filing starts. The bitch is there is a lot of filing to get the edges nice and smooth.
Time for some better files.

Why does every good idea in the studio lead to more damn equipment?

Now all I want is to upgrade to a Swanstrom disc cutter...

Ghostly Teardrops

The long road to holiday sales begins with making jewelry components.

Seventeen Effetre 'Opalino White' headpins on 18 gauge bronze wire.
 
This is the most beautiful white glass, it is vaguely transparent, ghostly would be a good description.
When you work with it use extra oxygen in your gas mix or you can get nasty black wisps of carbon on your beads. Be sure to pre-warm this color, or introduce it very slowly into the flame, like all opalinos, it likes to pop and shatter all over the place.

The plan is that these will become part of a bracelet.

Big Blue Babies

A great big set of beads fresh out of the kiln. I'm thinking necklace.

They are made with every shade of transparent teal, blue and green I could find in my boxes of short rods.
There's electric blue, ink blue, light teal, pale aqua, dark aqua, cobalt blue, dark teal and on and on.

On top of the mash up of watery blue greens in each bead I wound, and lightly reduced, hair thin stripes of 'Double Helix Aurae' glass to give them an iridescent shimmer.

Blue, green and turquoise boxes of short rods.
Did I mention I love glass rod shorts? Nice people give them to me, sometimes I buy them on line, wherever they come from. Most lampworkers shun them - I love them.

How about some tool talk?
The cheese knife, right there in the front, is what I used to make all the facets on this set of beads.

Make a roundish bead and let it cool down until the glow is fading and nothing is moving - then spot heat and pat, pat, pat with the flat side of some tool.. Rotate the bead and spot heat and pat, pat pat. Repeat around the bead until your whole thing is faceted. Lightly work out any chill marks in the end of the flame.

It's simple to do, try it. I bet you have a cheese knife you can pilfer out of a kitchen drawer.

Chairs, No Beads

Apparently I am too lazy to photograph my new beads.
So, here are some random chairs and a sunset.

Goobers

Ghost Skulls - glass headpins, vintage milk glass rondelles salvaged from a necklace and white stone skulls.

Purple Fridas - glass headpins, pink rhinestone rondelles and carved bone skulls.

From The Forest Floor to Etsy

A large seed pod pendant with a brass cap made from a vintage brass button.

A chocolate brown glass acorn with a pewter cap made from a hammered vintage button.

A speckled green acorn with a brass button cap.

Pairs of little leaves, perfect for earrings, or use them as charms on a bracelet.

And lastly, another "I Love You Pumpkin" bead that will fit a Pandora bracelet.

All of these little things, and more, are new listings in my 'Belvedere' Etsy shop.

Grape Expectations

It's wine country here and the harvest is on.

These snapshots are from the Konstantin Frank vineyard
We made a very pleasant, and tasty, stop there on our way back from the Corning Museum of Glass.

The fields were amazing, the air was full of the smell of purple grapes.

I took dozens of photos for potential grape paintings.

Pumpkin Lovers

Back by popular demand - the "I Love You Pumpkin" bead.
One one end the hand stamped cap says "I Love You" and on the other 'Pumpkin."

Two are brass and one is copper.
Perfectly size for Pandora bracelets and for sale in my 'Belvedere' Etsy shop.
(sorry this batch is now sold, sold & sold - more will be listed in a day or two)

So many pumpkins.

#CMOG

We loaded up the van and went to the Corning Museum of Glass yesterday.
It is one of my most happy places.
If you love glass and have never been there... what the heck are you waiting for?

If you are a glass bead maker the exhibit - "Life on a String - 35 Centuries of Glass Beadmaking" runs thru early January.