Maybe it’s just me, but I think a little bling in a bead is a good thing – make that, a GREAT thing!

I had a hard time offering this bead for sale, I wanted to keep it for myself!

This bead is so incredibly beautiful in person (if I do say so myself 😉 with all that shimmering, glittering goldstone suspended in crystal clear glass.

I usually don’t photograph my beads outside but I just had to take this one out in the sun to try and capture its true beauty.

I also love the fact that the colors are fairly neutral, so this bead can be worn with any other color.

My Celestial series beads were a ‘happy accident’. I was trying to achieve a layering effect with both transparent and opaque glass. I wanted to be able to see the inner layers of glass from the surface.

With the addition of the silvered ivory and Dichroic glass it was clear that this bead resembled something ‘other-worldly’, hence the name = Celestial.

It may look like a pretty straightforward, easy design to create, but this is actually one of the hardest beads to make simply because the colors and layers are so carefully arranged.

And when you’re working with hot, molten glass you don’t have a lot of time to think about placement. Half the time the colors are completely different when heated so a lot of it is guesswork, hoping it will come out as planned.

Speaking of ‘happy accidents’… This bead started off as planned, but then took on a life of it’s own half way through.

There is a lot going on with this bead and including the time it takes to create the twistie you see in the middle, it’s one of the most time consuming designs I have made.

The twistie is handmade, by me, using olive green, deep red and ivory colored glass. It is applied in a specific pattern  to a ball of glass then carefully heated and, when molten, handpulled while being twisted at the same time.

This bead also includes a sheet of pure fine silver foil encased just beneath the surface. The silver foil gives the bead this unique warm glow as it reflects light from within.

I wound goldstone stringer around each ‘hemisphere’ and left it slightly raised off the surface so that the bead had some texture and dimension to it.

**All these beads are currently available on eBay – just click here to view them! **

Until next time,

CC