Inspiration...

More inspiration from nature...two hydrangea bushes in front of my house are in bloom and the colours are so beautiful, I had to try and make a bead in the same colours! Half the fun of creating a bead is looking at all my glass rods and deciding which ones to use. For the base of the bead, I used this gorgeous semi-transparent mauve and I think it's worked perfectly, along with the swirls of blue, pink and lilac.

I have just listed the bead, along with some others, on ebay, but I'm so tempted to keep it! Chris (hubby) says, "You can always make another one..." and technically I can...but the wonderful - and sometimes frustrating - thing about beadmaking is that you can rarely make two beads exactly the same. Which is great for anyone who buys one, because you know that your bead will be truly individual!

Broke

Not me, but these two lovely beads!

Every now and then it happens - you're taking the bead off the mandrel, cleaning it or even just looking at it and suddenly it's in pieces. I've been very lucky up until this point, in that it's only ever happened to beads I don't care about. Unfortunately, I love these two! The first broke in three pieces and the second has a chip out of the top. Why did it happen? Sometimes it can be down to different glasses being incompatible with each other or there too much silver on the bead, it may be pressed too thin or waved around in the cold air for too long when you take it out of the flame.

Whatever the reason, I'm not happy about it. I'm really enjoying making spacey beads and I particularly love these - I can spend ages looking at them and I see something new every time. They are made with a black glass that reacts with silver, pure silver foil and silver rich glass - Aurae (again!) and another one called Triton.

Still, nothing a bit of glue won't fix, and now I'm just going to have to keep them both...hee hee!

More beads on the 'Bay

Pink is my favourite colour. Not girlie pastels, but lovely hot magenta and fuchsia...so I was really pleased with this pink set. Musn't keep it, though! It can be hard sometimes to let go of certain beads, but there are only a couple I've regretted selling. Usually I know straightaway when a bead is a 'keeper'.

I love this etched moon bead, too. I've used a new olive green glass, which is just lovely for organic beads like this one. The bottom bead different for me, I'm not normally a brown sort of person, but I really like this transparent sepia and I think it looks even better with the Aurae. I just can't stop using this glass...

All are up on ebay right now!

Feeling summery!

My beadmaking definitely seems to be affected by the weather - which, living in England means I make a lot of grey, stormy beads covered in raindrops! We've had quite a few sunny days lately, though, so I've made some more cheerful beads, including this bright, sunny set and the blue, cloudy sky beads. Oh, and the inevitable rainbow...

I make a lot of these coloured nugget beads; they are some of my favourites. I love experimenting with swirling different colours together and it always looks completely different once it is encased in clear glass. I think another reason why I adore these beads is because I am a huge fan of gemstones and they remind me so much of little sparkling gems.

I have listed these beads and several more on ebay so pop over and have a look if you're interested.

Shiny, sparkly, bling!

I have just got some gorgeous new glass called Aurae. It has lots of silver in it, which means it does all sort of lovely things - it turns gold, metallic and sometimes even goes different colours. Thing is, you never know exactly what it's going to do, so it's no good if you like your glass to be predictable...I like to be surprised!

So that's the shine; I have also been using goldstone for that lovely, golden sparkle that combined with the Aurae, makes for some really 'bling' beads. You can find the moon bead and the cool blue bead on ebay now.

Today I have been recycling - not bottles and cardboard and boring stuff like that (although I do that as well!), but silver. My aunt gave me some old sterling silver napkin rings and spoons, so I have been sawing them up to turn into lovely pieces of jewellery. Unfortunately, I haven't managed to finish them, because I broke my drill bit attempting to drill some nickel silver (who knew it was so tough!), but watch this space and I'll post pics as soon as I finish them.