Crystal Drop Earrings

A co-worker put in an order for 9 pairs of earrings last week for each of her bridesmaids. They're all the same style but all slightly different in bead color and findings. I used Swarovski crystals, Czech glass beads and stone beads for these. When I was done and lined them all up, I really thought they looked like candy!

glass fish

I just got done taking a series of glasswork classes with the wonderful Anne Ricketts. If you're in Austin and you're into flameworking/glass bead making try to take a class with her. She's great.

For my first fish ever, I think I did a good job! I was so nervous about the possibility of the fins cooling down too quickly and shattering one me, but it came out fine. I'm thinking this fish is a gal:



What should I name her?

little turtle bead

Some asked me to make her a simplified "smooth" turtle. This is what I came up with:



I like how the teal glass reacted with the black causing the metal pigments to swirl.
The little round tail at the end came out really precious:

New Bead

Lampworking is somewhat stressful due to having an open flame, but I gathered the courage to set up shop again in my garage a few weekends ago and made this lovely encased floral. There are 4 flowers total (2 pastel purple and 2 light lemon yellow). The core is black with dichroic chips. All of it is encased in clear. It's a largish bead and only took me 30 minutes to make on my "hothead" torch.



I may end up keeping this one for myself.

Freshwater Pearl bracelet and Purple pendant

I made the double row freshwater pearl bracelet this weekend. The clasp is sterling sliver and has a amethyst cab in the middle.

The freshwater pearl necklace was a gift from my mother and I added a pendant as an enhancer. The pendant consists of a handmade bead that took me 45 mintues to flame work. Ugh. It's not perfect either since I smeared the black when encasing it, but I still love it and it is one of the biggest beads I've made to date. The tassles are made out of seedbeads and austrian crystal. Now, where can I wear this????





The pearls don't quite match since the ones in the necklace are a little more rose colored are are more oblong than the ones in the bracelet, but I don't mind too much.

Crucifix

This is a crucifix I made for my friend's husband. The prayer beads are a dark green jade. The Hail Mary beads are bi-colored hand made glass in red and navy. The crucifix itself is made out of pewter. I linked everything together with 18 gague non-tarnishing sterling silver wire (the kind that Darice isn't making anynore...Whaaaa!)

Exploding bracelet... good intentions gone bad.

I wanted to make a charm bracelet out of a bunch of extra copper I had lying around and this is what happened:


This is a perfect example of "over-working" and "over-designing" in my opinion. Although one gets a nice rush of green and copper color, the individual bead charms get lost in the mess. Instead of showcasing a my varied wire work technique, this looks like a telephone company exploded or something. It looks even worse when I wear it. Ah well, back to the drawing board.