great big bicones

a new favorite handmade shape - no presses, thankyou.



each bead is almost 1 1/2" from end to end.



dark ivory, sage green, black, raku orange, clear and bits of assorted fly away rod shards from the work table.

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.

ebay bead virgin

while i am certainly no ebay virgin...
it is with great skepitism and low expectations, that i am attempting to auction some of my beads on ebay.





click here to see the auction
it took a lot of time and patience to design the layout and create html for the template.

(no i don't know how to write code)
i write code like pepe le pew speaks french.

for now, a cupcake.

it was a long and blissful session with the torch...

every mandrel i had dipped and dried got used- always the sign of a good go'round with the flame.

all the new forsythia beads are soaking and waiting to be reamed.
they are much more defined than the first set, new tweezers did the trick, sorry no new photos yet.

in the meantime, a snack!



this image come from a favorite blog of mine called
"All Cupcakes All the Time."
if you look in my side bar you will find a link to them in my linky-doos list.

aren't the colors great!
a sweet combo for a set of summer beads.

forsythia beads

"Forsythia is pure joy. There is not an ounce, not a glimmer of sadness or even knowledge in forsythia. Pure, undiluted, untouched joy."

- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

the forsythia is bustin' out all over.

my favorite color of glass is bright translucent yellow.
transparent uranium yellow makes me week at the knees.
we have a pantry shelf full of vases this color, no yardsale is safe from my need for acid yellow glass.

i plucked some flowers from the back yard, did some sketching and headed over to 'More Fire' with a plan.

i used:

translucent yellow (morette effetre odd lot #401), pea green (#212) and clear.

starting with a clear oval bead, i then added the petals and finally the stem wrap. simple enough.

i really need to find some tweezers without serated tips - I am losing to much defination when i melt out the ridge marks.

loving the open center/twisted tip hearts.





when i plonked the buds into the can'o'vermiculite every stinkin' one of them was too hot and bent sideways.

i anticipate that the second set of forsythia beads will be much better, but i am still loving these.

first pair of earrings & goldstone stringers

cash will get you sterling silver findings
and then you can make earrings.
these are my first.






2 amber glass seed beads
2 handmade oval tab glass beads
2 gold fresh water pearls
1 lucky roadside smashed bottle cap
& sterling findings.

something that elizabeth of 'More Fire' taught in the intro to flameworking class was how to pull an encased goldstone (aventurine) stringer.

there were pre-made ones in the case, so why bother pulling your own?
but the shopper in my bought a wee bag of goldstone chunks.
besides, the commercial rods were so 'shocky' that it was an adrenaline rush every time you exploded one across the bench.

once i got started, i must have spent 45 minutes pulling multi-colored encased goldstone stringers.

they are gorgeous!





make some - start with bright transparents, especially grass green and anything pink/violet.
they are twice as bright and so much more satisfying than the "ones in the case."

little richard or what i did when i could have been beading...

my dog napoleon and little richard, they're tight like that.

i had the morning off and i could have been beading, but i had fit of photoshop instead.