Thursday, December 25, 2008

I'm in a Treasury!!!

One of my favorite thing about Etsy is the treasury. If you are unfamiliar with it, it is where any member can make a list of their favorite things on Etsy and create a mini-gallery. It stays up for about 3 days and is great advertisement and quite the ego boost! I love creating treasuries but that requires a bit of stalking that I don't always have time for. When the regular treasuries fall below 333 then they open up for new ones to be created. The kicker here is that you have to be pretty fast, because once it opens up it closes just about as quickly. Anyhoooo, I was browsing around and found that someone put my sunshine disc beads in their treasury.




Here are the beads!

Click below for a link to the treasury!
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list_west.php?room_id=37162

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

My Customers Rock!!



Aren't these earrings stunning! I envy people that can make jewelry. I am the first to admit that finished jewelry pieces are something I struggle with. That is why I stick to creating beads for others to make gorgeous things with!

These earrings are by Erika Price, she made these using my pink and green watermelon wispy beads. Check 'em out here in her Etsy shop.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Crimson Path

One of my all time favorite colors glass colors is Moretti Transparent red. Depending on how you use it and the base color you can get all kinds of varying shades from deep burgandy to bright candy apple red! Here is the 411 on this bead...
Base glass is Moretti white with a thin linear casing layer of trans. red, flattened and lines of DH's Luna 2 and silvered ivory. I have had lots of lampworkers ask me how to get that "frazzled" look to the silvered ivory. Pretty simple, after you melt it in just hit it with a really quick reduction flame. The dots on this one are crystal clear and Psyche. This one is in my Etsy shop.

Recent Focal Beads...

I have finally gotten back to making focal beads again. I go in spurts as to what I like to make. I was doing nothing but bead sets for quite some time. I am really happy with the way both of these turned out. I have no secrets so here is the 411....


This focal bead was started with a long barrel of white. I then encased it in Vetrofond transparent brown. When encasing a large bead I almost alway use the linear method where you stripe on the encasement layer vertically. For me it is much easier that way. Anywhooo, after melting and shaping the encasing I used light Turquoise and Raku for the "stripes" and melted those in. I gave it a good heating and flattened. Added some dots of crystal clear and DH's Triton, gave it a good fire polish and into the kiln. Voila, there you have it. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&item=290284228575