Lilies and Petals, Planets and Implosion

Bead of the Day: "Planetary"

Yesterday was spent developing this new design. These beads are tricky to photograph, because there is so much going on inside - they are the ones for "gazing into", if you know what I mean. There are bubbles around the top and the bottom (you can't see those in this pic), there is a core with a lovely "lily" design and a band of silvered ivory and goldstone around the encased "petals".

Ah, this "lily" design... I literally spent days mastering it. The thing was, I bought this book by Karen J Leonardo, I suppose with the main purpose to check out the competition. And there it was, I think she called it "lilypad" or something like that. I'd seen beads with this design before, and if I remember correctly, Sally Carver won a competition with them recently. So all summer I tried and tried and tried, with various degree of success, but the beads produced by me using this "imposion" technique, were far from the image I had in my head. I found this technique extremely difficult.

One day I sat there, all upset, thinking hard about how I could achieve the look of the lilies I wanted. And I thought that it would be impossible for anybody, ANYBODY, to have temperature control that perfect, to get the lovely petals around and along the mandrel by only relying on the flame. But of course, silly me!, it's a different technique altogether: this one involves layers and layers of dots being covered with bands of large amounts of clear glass, heating and waiting for the dots to get elongated!

"Yellow Waterlilies" bead set, currently for sale on ebay

Guys, I don't know about you, but here it was a real revelation. So many people use this simple design in their work, and it looks gorgeous. Well, simple I say, of course I had to practise, but I also came up with some lovely colour combinations, and I have to write another blog on that.

Coming back to the "Planetary" design, I did use a little of the "implosion" technique here: I made a core of ivory, then created a disc out of clear on one of the core's ends. Then I used Double Helix Ekho for the dots to go onto the disc and melted them: Ekho on ivory here gives this great organic palette that I like so much, and you don't have to spend time reducing it either. Encased, put some goldstone and silvered ivory around with dots of Double Helix Calipso on each end, made indentations for future bubbles, encased again. Every technique comes handy!

Making a Rosary and Jane's Blog Prize Draw

"Rosary" was a new word for me this morning when I asked Rod what it was in English. My brother had asked me some time ago to make him some beads for a rosary (he reads about meditation, numerology and things like that). It was a challenge to come up with a design which would be simple yet effective; I really wanted something quite special. His birthday was approaching too, so this was going to be my present. Where there is a will, there is always a way. It so happened that I started working with Double Helix Ekho, and I have to say, I love this glass. I couldn't get enought of it, I tried lots of things with it. But wrapping it around a black base covered in strips of silver leaf and then encasing it did the trick! The beads come out looking so warm and shiny, with lots of colour inside. They remind me of honey and warm summer days!

This is it - you know what I mean! They look gorgeous no matter what lighting you are using: the photo on the left was taken with the weak January sun out, the photo on the right - just in daylight. So simple, yet so beautiful!

I have made forty of them, that's what I was asked. Then I started reading about how to make a rosary, and I realised that I needed one special bead, maybe, a little bigger in size. So I thought I was going to make one with my "Angel" design, but this time not on the ivory base, but possibly also with Double Helix and encased, with the figure of the Angel coming up only at a certain angle of lighting. I'm still thinking about it though. Nothing is ever simple.

I've entered a prize draw on Jane Tyrrell's blog:

http://jane-janesjournal.blogspot.com/2011/01/new-year-and-my-1st-giveaway.html so I'm sitting here getting excited - you never know, I might just win! Those of you who haven't yet entered still have some time to do it!