OK, here are some beads I made today. I was making a lot of green&black beads, and I needed to blow the dust out of my brain so I put together the dookiest color combinations I could think of. The one that is so dark you can't see detail on it is a pale seafoam-green transparent bead with layers of opaque gray and red dots - it sounded revolting to me so I had to try it, and it actually looks really cool.
Oh, and I'm just figuring out about the light tent and I think I need to add another light with a little more warmth so the colors look more vivid and true-to-life in the images. I'll get better at this, I hope.
My favorite of this group is the bead on the far left. It's an ivory core with dots in the middle of an intense yellow clear pyrex and a transparent cranberry glass dots on either side. The oxides in the cranberry glass react with the ivory glass and it starts turning black and having all kinds of oily swirls - that's why the glass melted in and made the yellow dots look more like little square windows in between the cranberry/ivory tug-of-war.
I made about 50 beads today, so I should probably make about 125 tomorrow and 125 on Monday. We'll see. So far I have lots of good pairs for earrings, and that's always a good start.
18 comments:
Those are amazing looking.
I like the two on the far right.
Wow, those are amazing! You are an artist.
That one second from the left looks like a bunch of fish eyes. At least that's the first thing I thought.
I like the really dark one though, the seafoam green with gray and red.
At first it made me hungry - thought it was different kinds of olives on a stick! Ha!
I suppose that's good work...I'll have to learn more about them to appreciate them fully.
hammer - you'd be amazed how tiny they are, too - just a little bigger in diameter than your average pea-- I really like those because I love that orange glass - it's such a hot color
barbara - you are too flattering - I'm just enjoying making them - it's great to be productive again, and at last it's cool enough to work on the torch without completely drenching myself with sweat
kelly - Yeah, it does look fish-eye-ish! In ancient China they made stacked dot beads like this and they called them "eye" beads. Funny, eh? Yeah, I really love that one - glad you like it, too.
mushy - *L* hungry? Olives on a stick would make me think of a martini. There are much better beads in the world than the ones I make, but mine are sufficiently wonky to fit in my wonky jewelry, so that's all I require.
Those are beautiful!
Those are great! Do you just make what moves you, or do you make custom beads,too?
ANd I agree with Mushy, the big orange one made me hungry. It looks like some delectable hors d'ourve created from a melon ball, green olives, and chocolate dots in cream. It may not sound tasty, but it sure looks pretty!
Alien eyeballs, that's what they are. But purty ones.
Phlegmy, you are really good. I've only seen glass beads made once, and I must say it looked very intense - she was doing the silver-inside stuff, but huge ones - 1 inch diameter or more. I'd imagine there's a heck of a lot of chemical reaction happening with molten glass, it almost sounds like pottery. Glad I don't have as much unpredictable stuff happening in weaving, though I guess you get to learn and predict to a certain. Thanks so much for sharing this picture. You do realize that once you've finished your orders, you'll have to post pictures of your jewelry also!
Me, I love the red ones and the cranberry is beautiful. I can see the grays and greens, too. And I'm a complete sucker for bumpy beads. And hey, listen, if you ever figure out how to light stuff like this, do me a favor?
Email me and let me know? I just about go nuts trying to get the colors without so much refracted light that it's one giant blur.
My solution, so far, has been to make a professional photographer richer. PF, I should be spending that money on shoes, you know.
That girl got TALENT! Those are really freakin' cool Phlegm! Wow. Send me a link, I'll sell them some bitches all day on my website!
bj blonde - aw shucks!
holly b - I do custom, up to a point - I had one person ask me to make a heart with nails sticking out of it and penis beads, and I sorta dodged that commission. I mean. ew. The heart with nails might be ok, but I draw the line at rendering genitalia. And yeah, that bumpy bead could be a chocolate and spun-sugar creation. Glad you liked 'em, hon!
myron - one day I'll do an "alien eyeball" series of beads in your honor!
meg - you're very complimentary. It is an intense process - and you have to be so geared for working on micro scale. Fortunately, I have very good eyesight and excellent manual dexterity. I probably get the good hands thing from my dad (although my mom is a superb seamstress) who has this great spatial sense with incredible grace, strength and lightning reflexes. And yeah, you do fall in love with the process, because so much of how things turn out with glass rely on chemical processes like where in the flame you worked the glass and how different colors react together. But I'm sure in weaving you DO have a similar effect - I know I've looked many times at a cloth and only on the millionth viewing did I notice the weave included a tiny thread of an odd color I couldn't see in the overall color scheme. It's mesmerizing to think how color affects us, isn't it?
lj - Glad you liked it. I'll let you know if I ever make progress with the lighting, but I think your beadwork has always been beautifully lit when I've seen it on your bead blog. Yes, indeed, we need to keep the photography money at home so we can buy those shoes from the upcoming Christian Lacroix Spring collection that we've been lusting after
tony - YAY! I've got a new product Rep. Now, what's your cut-- 15%?
Dookiest or not, I love the textures!
Whoa! Those are fabulous!
How the hell do you keep coming up with new ideas for beads?
nugget - thanks, honey!
blog whore - thanks, honey!
fathairybastard - there's no end to the way you can stack dots and combine colors. I rarely plan what I'm going to do, except the gold leaf beads with the transparent colors, which are big sellers for me, so they are in permanent production. I like lots of color, and I like putting together colors that aren't necessarily thought of as matching - my goal is that the eyes buzz with a vain attempt to focus when they look at some of my beads. Sometimes I crave order and harmony, and my beads will reflect that. However, sometimes I just want stuff that looks non-machine-made, and I'm particularly adept at achieving same. Tee hee. So, it's not an idea thing so much as you start playing with the glass and things sort of evolve.
They are beautiful.
Have you ever checked out Trollbeads?
thanks, heather b - I've seen trollbeads - husband's aunt has some gorgeous jewelry from them - very pretty.
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