Beads Revealed

How better to procrastinate this weekend (I should be cutting up dichroic glass and cullet for a fusing project, among other things) than to post to the wee bead blog. First, let's look at the batch I sent my partner--now unscrambled for your viewing pleasure:

A nice batch of purples and blues. I was inspired in part by a "winged" challenge we had a couple of years ago in the Art Charms group. Those colors were iridescent green and violet. I found the dragonfly focal and clasp first, and built the soup around that. I had the freshwater pearls and the green/blue lampwork from Gem and Mineral. The asymmetrical blue iris crystal hopped into my shopping cart at Mani Om Beads. The matte lucite flowers also came out of my stash, after much soul searching--but I thought they would adapt well to the antique gold findings. They're very classy with filigree bead caps. I'm not a fan of plastic, but I love those lucite flowers.

And then there's the mix--cut glass light green and lavender beads from Gem and Mineral, along with flourite rounds, dyed jasper ovals and rounds, moss agate and other green agate cubes (also from G&M,) some purple crystal rondells and turquoise-dyed howlite beads. The turquoise picks up the inclusions in the lampwork beads nicely. So there are a few directions you can go with this--at least I hope so!

Soup's On!

 
Here are two teaser photos of the soup I sent out...more to follow soon!

An Art Charm Retrospective...

I've belonged to Peg Krzyzewski's and Chris Hansen's Yahoo Art Charms group since 2010. It's a sleepy, rainy day in Tucson, and seemed like an excellent time to look back at some of the charms I've made for them.

Peg and Chris wrote Making Mixed Media Art Charms and Jewelry. They have an extremely friendly group of swappers, and are very encouraging of newbies. Looking back, I realize I wouldn't have had the impetus to learn resin, or become such a good wire-wrapper, without participating in so many swaps there.

This is not every swap I've participated in (I do a lot of bead dangles--they are bead-dangle-friendly there) but definitely include the ones that made me work outside of my box.

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