the elements

I decided to do a set of beads based on the 4 elements:  earth, air, fire and water.  But how to encorporate contrast into the bead.  I could have done brown, pale blue/white, orange and blue/green beads, but that lacks imagination.  Following Pat Frantz' advice, I went to http://www.pixdaus.com/ and downloaded 3 photos that contained the elements I wanted in the beads.

The first is titled New Zealand On the trail by expatpeter.  Earth.

This one is called line of the rising light by michal ostrowski.  Air.

This was a little hard to nail down, since there aren't too many pictures of raging infernos out there.  It is called foggy morning and the photographer isn't listed but it was posted by roboWater was also, surprisingly hard to nail down because most of the pictures I liked involved unconventional water aspects and/or not enough contrast to be visually stimulating.  I thought I could do something with this one.  It is called Lyretail Anthias and the photographer seems to be sbailliez.  Water. 

Fire was very difficult to nail down because the predominantly nature photography site doesn't have many pictures of raging infernos.  So I googled it and came up with

http://www.freefoto.com/index.jsp and the picture I chose was reference 33-15-37-fire/flame textures.  Fire.

Now, how to translate these photos into beads.  I stupidly decided I wanted them all the same shape, which was a mistake since now I had to make 4 beads of roughly the same size with varying amounts of decoration.  It's all I can do to make 4 round spacers of the same size some days.  Well, here with varying degrees of sucess, are the beads:

Earth, incarnation number 4.  I had some problems with concepts and shaping and this was the closest I came. 

Air.  Version 3, a better shape if not size than the others and did you know that Effetre white agate separates and devitrifies when EDP is applied?  I do now.

Water.  This was the only bead I made on this, and I decided to quit while I was ahead.  The shape could be better, but I'm making these for myself.  I can always make better beads and replace these later.

Fire.  This is version 5, and the closest by far that I came to my concept.  I still had some shaping issues, and I moved the camera when I photographed it.  this one caused me so much aggravation that I doubt I'll revise it.  It is pretty close.  Maybe.  I'll update later if I do anything to these.