A Lava-ly time!

I have been making quite a few beads lately, and have re-visited an old friend in the lava beads. I enjoy making them, there is no need for them to all be the same size or pattern, they are just organic pebbles really! The first neclace here is the second one I made actually. I made the clasp from heavy gaugue copper wire which has been hammered and wrapped (and prompted a custom order for sterling ones, yay!). There are some swarovski bicones and some snakeskin jasper beads in here too, and the spacers between the round beads are new for me as well, round flat peyote stitch. The necklace is a whopping 85cm from clasp to clasp, plus the pendant is an extra 7cm.

This one I made with a 2 hole bead, made with my button mandrel. That clasp is mine too!

Finally here are the earrings I made for Mum for Mother's day. Thank goodness she liked them!

For Sale on Etsy!

These are the beads I currently have for sale on Etsy, hope you like them!

Even more Macmillan Beads!

This is the final one for this coming Friday. Thanks!

More Macmillan Beads!

These start this Friday:

Beads for Macmillan

I have decided to sell some of my beads on ebay to raise funds for Macmillan Cancer Support. The first four here have already sold, the ones in the next post are a sneak peek of some that will start on Friday. I hope to raise as much as possible as part of the Worlds Biggest Coffee Morning which takes place on 25th September 2009. I am very grateful to the members of the Frit Happens Forum who have donated much of the glass used to create these beads. Thank you!

Goddesses

I have tried some glass sculpting, these are "Goddess" beads!

More from me

I have been playing with molten glass again! It's fun!

OMG!! I MADE BEADS!!

I finally got myself some equipment to create my own lampwork beads! I have always admired what lampworkers can achieve with molten glass, but the craft has been prohibitively expensive, until now! I will have to save up for a kiln ( £600, that's gonna take a while! ) before I can sell anything, as the beads have to be annealed, that is they need to be cooled down really slowly so they don't shatter when worn as jewellery. So for now I can only practise getting shape, size and colour right. Anyway, here are some of my first offerings. I made the larger beads on the earrings (top right), the clear bead and the flower bead at the bottom, the white speckled beads and the two unstrung beads. I had a blast, but I ran out of gas for my torch, so I can't do anymore for a while. How we suffer for our art! I will be setting up an Etsy shop soon to sell some of my jewellery, the proceeds of which will go towards feeding my new glass addiction!

I was playing around, putting colours together, and the pink and green reminded me of a watermelon! I love watermelon, it's so refreshing and sweet and colourful. I can see me creating a range called "Tutti Frutti" or something!

I have had these silver coloured beads in my stash for over 20 years! Does that make them vintage? It is nice to be able to do something with them after all this time, I think these neclaces have a Medieval look to them.

The bead is the thing here. I really loved the colours of these beads, so I have simply strung and knotted three together. Foiled Indian glass can be so pretty!

Comic Relief Prizes

I got my hands on some bead sets which I had coveted for a while, and these are the first two necklaces I made from those sets. I gave these as prizes in a raffle for Comic Relief. The pendants were made by threading the first bead then knotting at the mid point lengthways. I then passed both ends of the thread through the second bead, so that they crossed in the middle. Knotted at the mid point again and so on. I don't think they are too bad for a first attempt in 20 years!

How Exciting!

After about 20 years of hardly picking up a single bead, I have finally started jewellery making again! I have already made several necklaces, two of which I raffled for Comic Relief on Friday. I will start uploading pictures as soon as I have taken them, see you soon!