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.
I recently stumbled upon a neat trick that transforms simple colored glass frit into a washed watercolor effect on a reactive glass base! The technique produces translucent pools of color that take on a unique, one of a kind look with every bead. 😀
Here’s a bead I made using an old tried-and-true technique which always produces great results and a unique look – combining dark ivory glass with fine silver foil. It turns ordinary glass into what looks like natural stone.
After enjoying some time off, and taking a creative detour for a while, I am finally back to making lampwork bead sets just for jewelry makers and collectors.
I have had so many new ideas and designs in my head just waiting to become a reality in glass. Here are some of the recent results:
This week’s beads feature designs in varying shades of one of my favorite colors – pink!
This “Black Opal” bead uses a fantastic technique generously shared with the entire lampworking community by Amber of Naos Glass. It uses fine silver foil and silver glass to create amazing colors like rich orange and honey with bright flashes of intense cobalt blue and violet.
In “Rosewood”, I used Rubino Oro (which gets its fuchsia hue from real gold!) over dark silver plum creating a lovely, soft mauve-rose shade. The hand blown, reactive silver glass shards layered on top add a unique organic element with the webbing effect created in the flame.
“Ruby Storm” is a large hole bead that has multiple facets of a deep rose-red colored glass with specially treated ‘Stormed’ stringer on top which creates the floating swirls.
With “Pink Dew”, fine silver mesh is encapsulated beneath a thick layer of crystal clear glass. Once the glass is super heated to a molten state the mesh pulls apart to create all the tiny silver beads you see in the photo. A great effect – and a stunning bead to have as an addition to your Pandora bead collection.
All beads are available now on eBay – just click the images above to visit my store 🙂
Though we’ve experienced some frigid temperatures in recent weeks, the past few days have been unseasonably, but wonderfully, warm and breezy. It is absolutely perfect weather that has me pining for Spring and all the beautiful flowers that come with it.
In the meantime I have been having a lot of fun creating some flowers out of glass. This week’s beads feature many pretty designs from 3 dimensional raised flowers to smooth and shiny encased designs as well.
All items are available for purchase now – click the images below to visit my eBay store for more information 🙂
CCGlassArt 