Everyone knows how much I love murrini – I love making them, and I love using them a lot in my lampwork bead designs. I even wrote a tutorial on how to make beautiful murrini!
Something I have been working on perfecting for the past year has been encasing murrini beneath a layer of crystal clear glass so that it resembles an underwater ocean scene. It started with my pier beads and has evolved into my new coral reef series beads which are more complex with many different elements in the design.
This week brings more mixed media jewelry featuring my own hand finished metal components. In some cases I combined them with my lampwork beads, and in other pieces I let the metal work speak for itself. 🙂
Introducing new metal items! 😀
These are solid brass and copper bead caps used to finish European style big hole beads like Trollbeads, Pandora, Biagi, Chamillia, etc.
Once the bead is cored with metal tubing, and flared over the top edge, the bead cap is permanently secured against the bead as a decorative accent. (You can view my Etsy store for my finished lampwork beads with bead caps!)
Something new for me lately is the combination of metal components with my lampwork beads.
I have been exploring making my own bead caps, experimenting with different metals and different techniques, and finally developed a way to stamp and finish them that works well with my bead designs.
So far I’ve been working mainly in brass and copper as I love the rich coloring of these metals, and the way they look when antiqued.
This is a design that has been on my mind for months. But, as often happens, ideas don’t always come to fruition on the first attempt…or the second, or even the third attempt… In my case it took quite a while before I taught myself to make a nice hollow bead and then figured out all the details as to how to finish them so they looked the way I wanted them to.
But after much trial and error I am very happy with the results, and as a bonus they are so fun to make now. Not frustrating like they had been for so long – lol! 😀
CCGlassArt 