I am cleaning house to make room for 2012 beads by offering this set of Odd Lot Focals on eBay!
This set includes five medium sized 1″ lentil focals, one 1 1/4″ sized large lentil focal, and one of my large round ‘Pier’ style bead focals.
I recently bought a new silver glass that not only has fun and unique reactive properties, but also produces some of the most vivid and intense deep shades of cobalt, plum, teal and turquoise I have ever seen in glass.
I had so much fun using this glass in most of this week’s beads…
Summer may be winding down but the heat is cranking up where I live! While the rest of the country has seen some of the hottest weather we, here in SoCal, have been experiencing a fairly mild summer. Until now…. Typically, this time of year, we really get cooking all the way through October.
So even though Fall is just around the corner, I am still thinking of and inspired by the beach!
This week’s beads include my new ‘Pier’ series. These beads just reminded me of the pylons of a pier and all the little creatures that you can find attached to them:
Continuing with the sea life theme, I have two small round beads (perfect size for earrings!) featuring an organic design that reminded me of prickly sea urchins:
I am having SO much fun making beads with this fabulous, and rare, Z-99 glass frit which is no longer in production. It’s vibrant purple, periwinkle and violet colors have me mesmerized!
When it’s gone, it’s gone – so I’m making the most of my time with it while it lasts. 😉
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
CCGlassArt 