These beads almost look good enough to eat. Cherry quartz comes in a variety of color intensities—and most of the time the beads that I see are lighter in color. I like to work with intense colors, and this new bracelet (featuring a sterling silver fish) is a good example. I wish I had bought several strands, but…oh well. Now I need to think about a matching necklace.
I’m not sure that this is exactly the same pattern as the piece I showed yesterday, but it is close (and from the same batch). I had fused it on top of a black base.
The last time I bought some dichroic glass, I bought it from a different source (online). It had really pretty patterns that I hadn’t seen before so I thought I’d try it out. Thankfully I didn’t buy too much of it because there seems to be a problem with the dichroic coating disappearing at a lower temperature than you’d expect. This happened to me twice. I thought the first time was my mistake and maybe I hadn’t been paying enough attention to the kiln (I wasn’t using a digital controller, but usually don’t for fusing small pieces). The second time I watched it carefully, and turned off the kiln at exactly the right point….and here are my results:
You can barely see any dichroic coating…it all burned off.
I didn’t complain to the seller, just decided to stick with my usual sources from now on. Dichroic glass is too expensive to be throwing out….
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I found these really pretty fossilized coral beads about 2 months ago, and have been just letting them sit around on my beading table until I had some sort of idea. This morning I decided to use copper wire, some small copper beads, and Swarovski crystals and came up with this design. I think I will also do another one, with a different design, using silver wire. This piece is also in my store.
Looking for a way to connect with other beaders? Check out Beaders Showcase. This new site is for anyone that does any type of beading.
I spent the morning trying to get back into melting glass on a more regular basis. Since I had bought this new sugar coating frit, I decided to make a series of transparent beads that look like they have a sugar coating—-or they look like life savers,
or something……..
From time to time I make canes out of polymer clay, and have made some pretty interesting beads. However, when I saw these pink and black beads in a store, I just had to buy them and make a bracelet. This piece also contains Swarovski crystals and Swarovski squaredelles, as well as sterling silver beads with pink enamel.
