Southwest frit

After having spent a month touring the national parks of Arizona and Utah, I feel inspired to make beads and jewelry with a southwestern motif.  I've attempted to recreate the scenery of the winter landscape:  sagebrush and juniper against a background of red sandstone mesas.  I made my own frit mixture from commando (CIM 475), shrubbery (CIM 410), muskmelon (CIM426), pine tree (Effetre 344), light brown (Effetre 0444, spanish leather (Effetre 423), and brown rock (Effetre 654).  Here's what the frit mixture looks like:

Here are some of the beads I've made from it:

The three beads on the left were made by adding the frit to a base beads of commando, canyon de chelly (CIM 722) and stone ground (CIM 351), respectively plus periwinkle (Effetre 220) for the sky.  I melted in silver wire on the second bead from the left.  The bead on the right was made by adding frit to a base bead of red roof tile.

As usual, it's highly likely that these beads or ones like them will end up on my Etsy site:  etsy.com/shop/DeborahDRoss

Sedona stripes

A few years ago, my husband and I took a road trip to Sedona to visit my step-daughter.  I fell in love with the landscape, the red rocks, the pine trees, the sunsets.  These beads are a homage to Sedona:

I start the bead with a base layer of red roof tile (440), then add stripes of yellow ochre (460), EDP (254), light turquoise (232) and Vetrofond tangerine (944).  I place a layer of silvered ivory between the turquoise and the EDP, and wrap a few inches of fine silver wire (26 gauge) over the silvered ivory and burn it off, forming beads of silver.  Before I place the bead in the kiln for annealing, I heat in the hottest part of the flame to remove the white deposits which form on the EDP.  When the beads are cool, they are ready form make into jewelry which I sell in my Etsy shop (etsy.com/shop/DeborahDRoss).