When my bougainvillea bloomed this year I was inspired to make this collection of beads using my favorite glass color of all time, Rubino Oro (‘pink gold’).
This glass gets it’s amazing fuchsia-raspberry color from the addition of real gold!
This week I followed a couple ‘creative rabbit-trails’ working in both organic and traditional floral design when making these lampwork glass beads.
I rediscovered my stash of glass frit which I used all the time when I first started lampworking a couple years ago. I had forgotten about how much variety and the unique color combinations you can achieve with it, especially when paired with fine silver foil. The reactions that happen in the flame are just magical to watch, as they appear right before your eyes – no waiting on the kiln fairies!
Glass frit and fine silver foil are abundant in this organic style bead collection:
After my frit fix, I had a floral design and a new color combination in my head I have been wanting to try. I made these 3D floral murrini but went back and forth trying to decide if I should encase the murrini or leave them dimensional on top.
That decision was made for me, however, as the base bead got a little too big to be fully encased again, so I added the murrini to the surface, partially melting them in, and loved the end result!
Sometimes the best beads come from happy accidents 😀
Years ago we traveled to the Big Island of Hawaii and visited Waikoloa Village where there’s a large hotel resort.
The resort is just beautiful with sprawling pools, lush tropical gardens, amazing architectural sculptures, and of course it’s right on the beach. They even have dolphins there!
Waikoloa Village is the inspiration for this bead collection. I used colored glass in shades of lavender, blue, aqua and turquoise with bits of bright orange for a pop of color here and there.
One of my favorite places to visit is the central California coast. The weather is cooler, it’s very green, and there are quaint little towns dotted all up and down Hwy 1.
Cambria is one of those little towns and was the inspiration for this set of beads. The pale blue-grey colors and sandy ivory hues are soft, pretty and naturally neutral-toned.
I have a tendency to gravitate toward more muted, natural colors most of the time, but every now and then I like to do something different with a color I haven’t worked with in a while.
This time the color was a beautiful soft cherry. I love this color glass because it’s not too bright and it’s more of a blue-based red, rather than a tomato-y orange based red.
Speaking of blue, this is one of red’s most complimentary colors so I incorporated bits of it into this set with some reactive silver glass.
CCGlassArt 