Lovelies Going into the Shop

In the midst of working egg orders, I have pulled out my 3/32nd mandrels to make nuggets or some raku rounds.  It has helped break up a rigorous egg making schedule over the last three months, but have also allowed me to continue melting glass after I have used up all of my 1/16th mandrels for the eggs.

These will all be going in the beads shop later today/tonight.

I also made two new pairs of earrings after filling a custom order of earrings in another shade.  These will also be entering my jewelry shop later today.

I made 14 new egg beads last night.  There was one casualty before even getting in the kiln and another during the cleaning process.  Down with bead casualties!  Good news is two more names are off the wait list as of today.  Woot!

Weekend Beads

I made fewer than 30 beads this weekend.  Not the same rockin & rollin weekend I had a week ago when I made almost 90.  I had the time, but I was dizzy and fighting off a little head cold turning sinus infection.

So here you go.  A dozen little raku rounds that Lorelei asked me to make similar to the raku eggs I've made in the past.  I got these done first.

Then I wanted to see what the raku would look like swirled in other colors and tried teal, purple, topaz, pale aqua and grassy green.  I think the green is my favorite and I want to make more of those.  But for now, I'll just list these together as a mixed set within the next day or two.

I think I like the raku swirled to the exteriors on half and the transparent glass on the other half, like in my Gemini cubes.  Those are definitely on my mental To Do list to make more.

Thanks to the folks who asked questions and left comments on the last couple of posts.  I'm working on getting those set up for you guys.  So be on the lookout for posts on how I decide what beads to make and color selection, what the glass looks like and how I work it, as well as one very gratuitous Dylan post (Melissa, I took my camera with me on our walk today to get extra pics of Little Horse!)

Tide Pools

I have these beads sitting on my desk and I can't stop looking at them. I love the bright pops of blue around the edges of these earthy swirls.

I want to make more of these using various base colors. I'm in love with the blues!

Today is the last day to enter my naming contest for these beads & win a dozen free beads.

Rings of Saturn

These beads are similar to my Glacial Belt beads, but this time I used a dark topaz around the ivory instead of teal.

I like how these turned out. Very earthy.

Creamy Raku Eggs

Creamy, golden swirls of raku in these eggs. Not much in the way of purples or blues this time because my flame was really hot when I first melted it in with the clear.

I like how they turned out, but I want to make more using a cooler flame to get the darker colors. Maybe next weekend.

This week is busy for me as I'm spending hours outside of the normal 8-5 prepping for a daytrip I'm taking on Thursday for work. I'll be in Orlando for the day....really looking forward to my customer meeting. It will be the first time I get to meet my contacts face-to-face, which is always something I really enjoy.

Maybe Friday night I will get on the torch, but definitely over the weekend I'll be making more beads. Woot!

Deliciousness

They're not really teardrop beads. More like eggs. But how appetizing is that? Thinking Raku Eggs may not be the catchiest name, but I just love these little beads.

Scrumptious, aren't they?

Underneath the fingerprints, they're scrumptious. Geez. Nothing like having a good camera to point out clumsy handling. Note to self: Buff the beads in your t-shirt immediately prior to the photoshoot.

So after I get new pics taken, these little babies will be in my shop.

This Weekend

Here are two sets of beads I have been busy making for Kat.  I love the look of raku on black, especially when it is etched.  I varied my technique a little this time and ended up with more blues :)

Kat also wanted the raku on beige.  What do you think...does this qualify as beige?

I LOVE this purple frit from Val Cox and melted it into clear rods to wrap around the light sky blue beads.  This was a color combination request from Chloe this past week...

More of Val's purple frit, but melted on top of white frit before swirling through clear beads.

And then silver melted on top of a Vetrofond Strawberry glass.  Quite a reaction happened between the silver and the glass, which you can see in the dark lines connecting the dots where the silver wire melted in.  This was a practice round at re-familiarizing myself with melting silver wire in the flame before I make a set for Cristi.  Hoping to get time on the torch to do that this week before we leave for Phoenix on the 14th (can't wait!)

We had temps in the high 60s with sun most of the weekend (cept for when I took pics this afternoon!  grrrr), but I took advantage of the warmer weather to 1. open the windows in the house and 2. take pics of beads to list in Etsy this week.