Category: What’s Happening Now

All That Glitters…Is Goldstone!

On By ccglassartIn What's Happening NowLeave a comment

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

Echo Series Bead With Encased Goldstone

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.

Celestial Series Bead in Deep Blues

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.

Art Deco Series Bead w/ Handpulled Twistie

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

ECHO Beads – Goldstone & Rubino

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Goldstone Coral/Aqua Echo BeadI am so inspired by the new color trend this summer; coral and aqua or teal. You will definitely see more from me in this palette.

Aside from Dichroic glass, there is another way to make glass shimmer with sparkly highlights. It’s with goldstone, (also known as Aventurine).

Goldstone comes in many forms such as stringer, tiny chips or chunks. In this particular bead I used both chips and stringer.

When the bead is molten, the coral glass base is rolled several times over the goldstone chips, then the whole thing is encased in clear glass to add tons of depth and sparkle.

**Click here to view this bead on eBay**

I also love working with Rubino Oro glass (which gets its brilliant Rubino Oro Flower Echo Beadpink color from real gold!) In glass, there are few pinks to choose from, and of those pinks, fewer of them turn out looking as stunning after some time in the flame as Rubino does.

For this bead, I worked with a combination of colors that have been on my mental ‘to-do’ list for quite some time. It wasn’t until the heat of summer arrived that I decided to bring them to life in a bead. 

The result was even better than I imagined. These cheerful shades of lime green, yellow, black, pink and white bounce off each other beautifully. The bright colors just pop, especially in person! Perfect for this time of year!

**Click here to view this bead on eBay**

Echo Series Lentil Bead w/ Rubino & Silver Glass

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Rubino Oro Echo Series BeadSome of the most fun I have lampworking is playing with specialty or reactive glass. You just never know what you’re going to get.

So with this bead, I went to town! There is encased rubino oro glass (getting it’s pink color from real gold!), silvered ivory, silver pink, metallic black and a unique silver glass which reduces to beautiful blues and teals when exposed to the heat of the flame.

***This bead is currently available on eBay***

CC

Dichroic Lentils On ‘The Bay’

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Dichroic glass is my current obsession. It has completely captivated me and I just can’t get enough. It is a tricky glass to use as the dichroic coating can easily burn off if exposed directly to the flame and sometimes the glass it’s adhered to can be fussy. I’ve lost 2 big beads, and 2 beautiful strips of expensive dichro to incompatible glass reactions…

Thankfully I had success with the beads below, just listed on eBay for only .99 cents each (and free shipping)! I’ve been selling on eBay for over 10 years and this is something I’ve done before and would like to continue. I feel starting the price at .99 cents enables people to set their own budget for what they can afford.

Soleil Dichro Bead

I had a hard time letting this bead go. It’s a Soleil series bead which came out so beautifully. The dichroic glass is simply stunning in person. I’ve held onto it for a couple weeks so I’ve had time to admire it all I want – and I have some beautiful pictures to remember it by. But now it’s time to allow someone else the enjoyment of owning this shimmering bead.

I wish I could show you this bead in person, especially in direct sunlight. Definitely an eyecatcher with bold, cheerful colors just in time for summer!

****Click Here To View This Auction Item On eBay****

 Celestial Focal

I had a hard time coming up for a name for this bead. I knew I wanted it to relate to outer space in some way since to me it looks like a planet. But ‘Planet Bead’ just didn’t have a nice ring to it…I thought maybe ‘Lunar’ but I already have a dichroic bead series called Luna. So I settled on Celestial. This can apply to any ‘other-worldly’ things like stars, planets, etc.

Because this bead has many dark shades of glass swirled throughout its design, it was difficult to get a photograph that really captured it’s true beauty. This photo shows the bead off well, but it is much more breathtaking in person. Those bits of dichroic suspended between the opaque and transparent glass is incredible, the depth in this bead just cannot be fully appreciated in a 2D photo.

****Click Here To View This Auction Item On eBay****

Until next time,

CC

The Netflix of Music

On By ccglassartIn Tips & Tricks, What's Happening NowLeave a comment

sansa

Whenever I am at the torch I always listen to my iPod (remember when we called them ‘walkmans’?) But now that I am torching upwards of 10-15 hours a week, or more, I am quickly growing tired of listening to my same playlist over and over.

Recently I found out my local library offers audiobook downloads for free, I just needed to get a compatible player. So I purchased a cheap, little portable device called a Sansa mp3 player. It clips onto your shirt, just like my iPod shuffle, but can play all my mp3’s as well as the audiobooks.

When I looked through the inserts that came with my new Sansa player, I noticed an advertisement for Rhapsody.com. It offered a free 30 day trial so I signed up to try it.

Much to my surprise this service was a lot more than just another iTunes! You pay a monthly subscription fee and download as much music as you want as often as you want. You can either just rent the music, or choose to pay for the songs if you want to keep them forever (.99 cents each). I get sick of music so quickly, I can’t see myself buying music too much anymore.

However, if you still like buying music, not only is Rhapsody less expensive per song than iTunes, BUT as a subscriber you can listen to the entire length of every song before purchasing it. I know I’ve bought a lot of ‘duds’ because the 30 second clip sounded great, but the rest of the song…not so much!

Because I’m just renting the music I know I will change out songs often and will be able to listen to so much more music than I would if I had to purchase each individual song (especially with iTunes raising the prices of most their songs to $1.29 each!) I wouldn’t ordinarily let myself buy as much music as I would really like to listen to just to keep my playlist ‘fresh’.

Rhapsody charges $12.99 a month for downloading the rented music on up to 3 computers. If you want the ability to also download the music to a portable device, it’s an extra $2 a month.

I guess if I ever got to the point where I didn’t want to buy as much music to justify spending the $14.99 a month then it wouldn’t be worth it. But because I’m listening to my iPod for up to 20 hours a week, this type of service is great for me!

Oh! Rhapsody also has a feature where you can upload their preselected music ‘channels’ (grouped by genre, artist or your own custom choices) to your compatible portable device, and everytime you connect to their website this playlist of music refreshes with new content. How awesome is that?!

Between using Rhapsody and the free audiobooks from my library, I’ll never get bored listening to the same songs over and over again while torching – woo hoo!

CC