Signs of Spring

I was out doing yard work the other day, and discovered these little daffodil shoots coming up!

My beads are also tending towards brighter Spring colors this week. I've been working with pink, light green and aqua blue. I'll post photos when the sets are done.
Think Spring, it's almost here! Yay!

Happy Valentine's Day

I have a heart bead to show off, but this time it's one that I didn't make. It was made by my boyfriend Steve, and he gave it to me for Valentine's Day!

The heart is made with Silver Plum and a special transparent red and black stringer in the center.

These are some Silver Plum beads I've made recently. This is a set in progress, "pipes" and "jumbled up wire":

Happy Day everyone... back to the torch!

Some New Shapes

This week I've been experimenting with new shapes. My favorite is the 10mm rondelle. They're like mini disc beads, and the shape fits easily into jewelry designs.

These are Psyche rondelles:

This is a set I have on Etsy right now called "Middle Earth Rondelles":

Another variation on the spacer bead are these crystal shapes. They're also made with Psyche glass:

Here's another new shape I've made this week. The focal bead is a curved rectangle, a shape I don't see too often in lampwork. The crystal-shaped spacers are Kronos:


The weather is nice and mild this week, Yay! It's warm today, so I'll be back at the torch. Have a great day everyone!

Six... More... Weeks...

Okay, Phil's prediction is already seeming like an eternity! At least we get the rare treat of a snowfall in the desert to make things all pretty around here. Today is actually the second morning in a row we've awoken to snow covering the ground. Here's a photo from my backyard this morning, a prickly pear cactus covered in snow but still holding its red fruit:
And in the bead world... I pulled lots of nice beads out of the kiln this morning. Now off to clean and photograph them. Stay warm everyone!

Studio Time

I just found out that Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow yesterday, predicting six more weeks of winter! Well there's actually about seven weeks until the Spring Equinox, so six weeks is really not that bad.

Since the beginning of this month I've been enjoying lots of time in the bead studio. I decided to take at least three days off from the computer. I've discovered that I spend a lot of time on the computer and online promoting my beads in various ways, leaving myself no actual time to make the beads! So I set blogging and Etsy-listing aside and I've just been making beads for about four days. It's been great.

I'll have photos of my new work soon, but in the meantime here's a photo of some beads I have up on Etsy:

Tibetans and Beads

While reading about dZi, I came across these two pictures of Tibetans wearing great beads. I bet the gigantic beads in this first photo are coral, but I've never seen beads that big made out of anything before!

Kyipup, an offical, in New Year dress.
Lhasa: The Holy City by F. Spencer Chapman, 1938

This man is wearing dZi beads. He's at the palace of the Dalai Lama, celebrating the Dalai Lama's birthday:

dZi Beads

I've been fascinated by dZi beads lately. Here is a picture of an old agate dZi bead with "dragon skin":

DZi beads are usually made of agate or fossilized palm wood and found in Tibet and India. There are many new dZi beads being comercially manufactured today, but the real dZi beads are hundreds or thousands of years old and they are dug up out of the ground. There is a lot of mystery surrounding who or what entities made the beads, and how. The beads have patterns of lines and circles that symbolize different things from the Buddhist tradition. They are considered amulets that protect the wearer.

DZi beads like the one pictured above get scales or "dragon skin" from burning in a ritual fire. Hundreds of years ago, monks would take part in a ritual of tossing a bead into a fire and chanting over it all night. When the bead was removed from the fire in the morning, it had the scales. These dragon skin dZi beads are considered very special.

I love the simple geometric patterns of the dZi, and I'm fascinated by their different meanings. I've made a few dZi-inspired beads with lampworked glass this past week. Here is one I've made into a pendant for my boyfriend Steve who is a massage therapist. It's a "healer's dZi," so called because of the pattern of 5 "eyes" (circles) connected in a cross with a lightning bolt on the other side. These photos show both sides of the bead:




More information about dZi beads:
http://www.dzi-beads.com