Fall is Organic Bead Time

Good morning, good afternoon, happy Monday bead peeps! Fall is my favorite time of year for beadmaking. Not only is the studio cooler, but I get to bring out all my favorite brown, tan, and dirt colors and mix them all together into earth toned glassy goodness!

For starters, I have this bead set made with Effetre Dark Fossil and Double Helix reducing glass, available in my Etsy shop:A fellow beadmaker suggested I try Fossil with silver glass, so I bought a 1/4 pound to try out the color. WoW, I love it! I will need to go back and order at least a pound of this, it's going to be one of my favorite glasses for organics.

I've also been working on a series of organic big hole beads, which I've silver cored and capped with my own handmade sterling silver bead caps. A couple of them are shown in this recent blog post, and here are a few more:
This one has gold leaf in the mix and hammered bead caps:
This one also has gold leaf and a paisley or wave pattern:This one is my pièce de résistance - a bead with double caps! It started out as an experiment, I wasn't really sure I could do a double cap on this size bead, and it took a lot of time to get the bead caps to line up just right... but I had a blast making it and I'll probably do some more in the future. I recently bought some design stamps for my new line of charm necklaces, so I used one of the stamps to decorate the outer caps. The inner caps have a hammered texture:I think it's going to be a good week!
Many thanks to all the folks who've started following me on Twitter. I'm still trying to figure out how the whole thing works! I'm looking forward to the new Twitter layout they're rolling out over the next few weeks. Lately I've been tweeting every day, maybe a couple times a day. Click the link in the right side bar to see my Twitter profile and follow me! Thanks!

Two New Scroll Sets

I have two new scroll design bead sets in my Etsy shop. This first set has Triton scrolls melted into an Ivory base. The reaction between these two glasses makes a great organic webbed effect:The second set is made with a Nyx base and raised Aurae scrolls. I love this glass combo:Here's another Nyx and Aurae set I made a few months ago:
TGIF!!!
:-)

The Fruits of My Summer

Happy Monday bead peeps! I'm back with a blog post after a long summer hiatus. I spent July and August hunkered down in the studio like an obsessed mad scientist, having a great time learning how to make silver charm necklaces. I'm now carrying this new line of custom charm necklaces in my Etsy shop! Here's one example:I have a variety of styles, or you can design your own. The charms can include crystals, pearls, and hand-stamped initials or designs of your choice. They are so much fun to make!
I've also been hammering out sterling bead caps and adding them to my silver cored beads:Here's a recent bead set, made with CiM Halong Bay and Aurae, a beautiful combination:More photos of my new work coming soon. Have a great week!

New Silver Cored Beads

I have a couple new silver cored beads listed in my Etsy shop today:The first bead is made with Double Helix odd lot KA-356 and encased with Aether clear. It looks like a sunrise to me. I love the colors and the soft look. KA-356 is translucent so the bead has an inner glow from light reflecting off the silver core.
The second bead is Ivory with Aurae scrolls. It's a nice small bracelet bead, with lots of crackled Ivory detail.

I have 10 more big-holed beads sitting on my bench waiting to be cored. It's been a while since I've listed any new silver cored beads... that's because my Mom bought the silver Pandora bracelet I have been using as a prop in my photos. She asked me how much the bracelet cost, and I thought she meant how much I paid for it. When I told her the price, she wrote me a check for the bracelet. I froze for a second, suddenly realizing that she was buying my photo prop which I need to photograph my silver cored beads. But I couldn't turn away Mom, right? Mom should have what she wants! And if it inconveniences me, well, I think I've inconvenienced her a few times with things a little more dire, starting with birth. So, I've been saving my pennies for a new silver Pandora bracelet, which has now arrived, and is now pictured in my new silver cored bead photos. Whew! And Mom LOVES her bracelet, and now I get to make her a bunch of beads for it!

Organic Brown and Metallic Beads

I listed this on Etsy tonight. It's a set of 9 beads with 2 that are larger than the others and could be used as a separate earring pair. To me they look like sandstone with metallic ore running through.I'm also going through my bowls of extra beads and making up some 'destash' listings for Etsy. I have so many extras that are perfectly good, I just never made a complete set of them, or else they're a set of the same style but mis-matched sizes. There are lots of reasons nice beads become orphans.
I put up these two destash listings today and they're now sold, but look for more in my Etsy shop during December.
These are made with ASK Blue Bahia and etched:These are Ivory, not etched:

What I've Been Up To!

It's been quite a while since I last posted on my blog! I'm going to jump right in with a few photos of some beads I've made lately.

This is a silver cored bead made with Aurae glass. I gave a light reduction to an Aurae base bead before applying clear dots over the reduction and melting them in. The translucency of the glass gives the bead a pretty inner glow:

This style I really like, it's a silver cored bead made with Dark Ivory and Aurae scroll designs. Ivory and Aurae mixed together create an incredible 'crackled' look on the bead:

These next beads are made with Dark Silver Plum. They were made for a customer who wanted beads to match a DSP sculptured bird bead she bought from Jennifer Geldard. These beads mimic the eye of the bird. It was an honor to think that my beads might end up on a necklace with a Geldard bird!
If I want to play catch-up, I really have so many bead photos I could post here! The photos above are just a random sampling of some of the things I've made recently. I will be showing more of my favorites in coming posts.

So what have I been up to lately? Life! :-D
In addition to Life, I've been up to my ears in custom bead orders for at least a month. On one day alone I received 6 custom orders which is a record for me. I had to develop a system of index cards to keep it all straight. It's been a real blessing and a great opportunity to talk to some of my customers in more depth, which I love to do. However, I'm so ready to be done with the custom orders now, make beads I 'want' to make, and focus on re-stocking my Etsy shop. I've decided not to take any more custom orders until after the new year.

Now that Life and custom orders are chilling out, I hope to be writing here more often.
Enjoy your weekend!

Siver Cored Beads on Etsy!

I've been working on silver coring beads for a few weeks now. I have quite a little collection going. I love to gaze at them, polish them, put them on my Pandora bracelet. Trouble is, I love them so much I'm having a hard time letting them go. They are my babies.
:-D Lampworkers, you know what I'm talking about :-D

Yet all babies must one day venture out into the big world and find a new home and gainful employment. Such it is with my cute little silver cored beads. The separation anxiety has been a little tough, but I've finally listed a few on Etsy! Here are their photos:

Etched organic:Double Helix Kronos with Kronos frit:CiM Mojito with Triton (2 photos):CiM Slytherin and Mojito with Triton:

Have a nice Monday and happy beading :)

"Stormclouds" Bead Set

"Stormclouds" on Etsy:These were made with a base of Triton and Ivory, swirled together and then encased with Aether clear from Double Helix. I love the organic reactions between the Triton and Ivory!

Ivory and Aurae Beads

I finished one of my Aurae sets yesterday and it's posted in my Etsy shop right now. This set has a base of Curdled Ivory with Aurae scroll designs:The Aurae and Ivory react to make the Aurae turn brown with organic-looking jagged edges, and the Curdled Ivory got very 'curdled' when it reacted with the silver in the Aurae glass.

I'm still working on Aurae sets... can't seem to put this glass down!
More to come, stay tuned!

Organic Bead Set

I enjoyed making this set of organic beads the other day. The base glass is Ivory, decorated with enamel, silvered ivory stringer, gold leaf, silver foil and Triton:*click on these images to enlarge them, you get a much better view of the detail*The beads are encased with a layer of clear. The clear magnifies the designs underneath, revealing roots, trees, rocks and streams! Truly 'organic'! This set is available in my Etsy shop.

Stone Beads

The nights are already getting cooler and it's time for fall colors again! Time to bring out my organic and earth tone beads. This is my favorite beadmaking time of year.

In the early 90's when I first started making fabricated silver jewelry, I used a lot of gemstones. I rarely used glass in my designs. In my opinion at the time, the role that large glass beads played in jewelry making was mostly to replicate the look of real gemstones, sometimes going so far as to deceive the buyer into thinking they were real stones. I had very low esteem for glass. LOL!

Soon after that, lampworked artisan glass beads started to hit the scene. This was a completely new way to use glass, and I was transfixed by the highly skilled work of these glass artisans. Then comes the story of how I started making glass beads, but that's another post....

This year it seems I've been returning to my roots in silver and gemstone jewelry. Not making it again, but looking once more at silver and stone as ways of expressing myself artistically. Most of my beads this summer have been metallic, and the rest of my beads usually look like stone or organic in some way.

Here are two sets of my latest Stone beads. This first set (2 photos) was made by combining six different glasses into a large, layered molten blob, then stretching the blob out into a multi-colored rod. I used this rod to make these beads, which look like banded agate or jasper to me:The glass colors I used for the blob are: CiM Stone Ground and Canyon de Chelly, Double Helix odds T-106 and VK-192, Vetrofond Olive odd and River Rock odd.

This second set is River Rock mixed with silver foil. I'm a newcomer to the River Rock craze... I just bought a small amount a few weeks ago. Figures I'd wait until it's $40/quarter pound to try it. Oh well, I'm glad I did, but it's a sad time to get hooked on this glass, too. It was a small odd batch that probably won't be made again. It's amazing how it reacts with silver:
So, I've come full circle with my art: now *I'm* the one who is making glass beads that look like stone! Ha ha! I promise though I won't deceive my customers as to the materials or whose blood sweat and tears went into making them :-D Happy September!