crackle

Shop Update for Apr. 1st and 2nd

New work going up shortly in the shop:Surely I’m not the only one who loves the colors together in this trio? *slurp* These will be slightly discounted since the two smaller ones were chipped due to my aggressive cleaning..d’oh! Doesn’t affect the bead, just makes them less than perfect. Oh, oh- love the bead caps on this one and the crackling is superb. Had a hard time letting go of these capped and cored hollows, so luscious but hard to capture on camera.

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Big Daddy

The last few times at the torch I’ve been trying to work small, as you can see the smallest hollow bead is approx. 11x16mm. As customers keep asking if they could get smaller hollows, I thought it couldn’t be too hard to make them smaller…Yesterday, I couldn’t take it anymore and my hands decided to try and make the biggest hollow yet- it measures in at 37x49mm, which is nearly 2 inches across. And this made me think what else I could make bigger- smaller sculptural focals, perhaps? Who knows, the big daddy took me more than 30 minutes on my Minor torch and it was a decidely delicate dance keeping it warm enough. It’s always nice to feel my creativity start to percolate and see new possibilities.

More Work

Another BIG focal that has been cored w/ bead caps in Bronzclay. I had to grind on my Impress Bead Liner to get it to fit, lol. After about 30 minutes of futzing around and learning about carbide grinders, it finally fit *snugly* into the press.
The sterling silver cored big hole bead is up on Etsy. Love the colors! I’m crazy about the blue and mustard look together.

Etsy Update

Can’t believe it’s been more than a week since I’ve updated! This past weekend was crazy, yet wonderful since I got to see my Beady Gal friends up in San Fran on Sunday and they kindly let me try all the different coring tools for beads to see which one I like best. Jim Moore’s and the Impress Bead Liner was neck and neck, but there were positives and negatives for both. I’ll go into more detail tomorrow once I get some pics..

Here are the two things I plan to list on Etsy shortly, still not over my love for the crackle look.

I would have had tons more to list if my friends hadn’t descended upon my hollows like locusts and decimated my supplies Sunday, lol. It’s always nice to have people appreciate your work!

They also told me I was pricing my work way too low after they saw the size of each bead, hence the price increase. I realized I was barely covering cost pricing them so low- so those who got those first half a dozen sets, lucky you! 🙂