One Thing Leads to Another

I've been oh, so slowly working my way through Lori Anderson's Bead Soup Blog Party and at the rate I'm going may finish by Thanksgiving.  For a link to my bead soup reveal click here.

Making jewelry was such a challenge and such a rush, I felt compelled to keep it up and have been working on some new pieces I'd like to share.

 This necklace was created at the request of a friend and will be auctioned to benefit the local humane society.  I used a set of matching lentils and spacers I had and made some more spacers, added a few copper accent beads and joined it all together with a simple leaf clasp.

 This bracelet uses one of my tabular focals and some lampwork spacers in black and silvered ivory that I combined with pewter findings, black glass rounds and a cool pewter snake toggle.  It's a drama piece but I love the way it turned out.  It is currently in my Etsy shop here.

I'm having so much fun I've got more in the works.  I'm trying out another asymmetrical design using beads I made with CiM African Gray and DH Psyche, some iris black pearl coins, gunmetal and miscellaneous bits and bobs I've got.  I'll confess I've got this idea in my mind but am having trouble getting it together.  I need something to lighten up the colors visually, or do I?  More to follow, I'm sure as I work this one out.

Yay! It's a vessel!

 I made a vessel!  I used CiM sapphire because I love the color and it is perfect for it.  It is stiff enough to hold its shape while I fool around with it in the flame and stable enough to not crack when I forget to reheat as often as I should.  Then I remember and bang it back into the flame and it behaves itself and doesn't blow apart.  This only happened to me once, when I first started, but I still have the bead on my bench somewhere.  It looks like it split open from the middle.

 I was very pleased with how this turned out.  I got the shape "right,"  not that there is a right shape other than to have a hole in one end, but it was the shape I had in mind.  It holds about 1ml so I can use it, and it's pretty symmetrical so it won't look bad hanging from a chain.  No, this one isn't going away.  I'm keeping this.

There were a couple things I feel I can improve on next time.  The handles are just a little too narrow to fit a chain of a size that will balance the bulk of the piece.  I'll use jumprings, but next time they are going to be bigger.

It isn't precisely symmetrical and I'm not sure if I can do this, but I need to try again and again before I give it up as a lost cause.

This is the biggie.  When I made it, I was thinking of it as a different type of hollow bead rather than as a transparent object with a bottom that would be transparent as well.  Therefore, I built up glass on the end of the mandrel  and worked it back toward the center rather than working straight toward the bottom.  I have removed the bead separator but am left with a rough surface where the separator was.

Still, I will proudly wear this and if I even think about the flaws it will be as a learning experience.

Finally, just because it's so blue, here's me playing with the editing software.

Tish, that's French!

I've got the song from the Addams Family stuck in my head.  I recently listed the earring set below on Etsy, named L'Heure Bleue after the way the intense blue, glowing color reminds me of twilight.  Of course, being a child when I was I immediately made the association, "Tish, that's French!" and viola!  I'm stuck with Gomez for the rest of the day.  The old one, not the excellent portrayal by the late Raoul Julia.

 These earrings seem to glow on their own just like the light at dusk seems to almost self-illuminate.  I love the glass, CiM sapphire, because everything I make with it does this.  I don't think you could make a truly horrible bead with this color.  I don't know whether it's the degree of saturation or the just-right frequency of light that it transmits, but it's a winner.

 How does it stack up against the innumerable transparent blues out there?  I only have a handful and I've got most of them pictured above and, except for the CiM sapphire, all are Effetre.  Up until a couple days ago, if you asked me what the perfect transparent blue was, I would have told you 060 cobalt on the top or it's fraternal twin, mosaic blue.  This is the blue most people think of when they think of blue glass.  Truth be told, in beads, it's just a shade too dark to show up well.  Mosaic blue is almost identical in intensity and hue, but I love what it does with silver glass.  The next rod down is 058, ink blue.  Yes, it looks darker than the cobalt, but this is a trick of the light and the camera.  It's less intense and slightly more red and grey.  057 is next and is more intense than sapphire, but it is again a hair too dark to be able to transmit that intensity in the bead.  Next is sapphire and finally, 056 medium blue, which is a good blue and shows up well in beads, but if you take an average person and show them a bead made with this, they will tell you that it is light blue.

Finally, above, a gratuitous shot of the first hollow bead I made that I felt good enough about to list.  It is CiM sapphire and DH aurae. 

I'm definitely going to be laying in a supply of this lovely glass.  It doesn't do for everything, and for what it won't work for there are other glasses to use, but if I could only have one shade of transparent blue in my palette this would probably be it.