Galaxy beads

Galaxy beads are a favorite with lampwork bead artists because there is so much room for individuality, yet just about anything you do looks fabulous.  For these beads, demoed by Margo in her class at Spruill Center for the Arts, we started with a thin layer of clear glass, then wound a layer of transparent cobalt blue glass followed by threads of clear.  From here we  improvised.  I added silver foil.  I trapped some of it under clear, but left some to burn away.  I also added silver mesh and allowed it to burn into beads.  I added small pieces of dichroic to one of the beads.  I spread the burned off silver foil by gravity on another bead to create swirls.  Finally, I encased them with clear.  Below are the beads, three of which have been prepared for use as pendant with silver caps and silver wire bails:

Devardi blues

I mentioned buying an assortment of green glass rods from Devardi recently.  At the same time, I purchased an assortment of blue glass rods:

Most of them have a distinct turquoise hue.  I've been using them for larger hole beads, some for 2mm leather and some with big holes (greater than 4 mm):

It looks like these colors will expand my available colors in the turquoise range.

Transparent-opaque mixtures

One of the glass rods which I worked with in the "40 shades of blue" project at Spruill Arts Center last summer was a rod which looked like it was a mixture of opaque sky blue and transparent blue-grey.  It was labeled "Capri", but it wasn't the shade of aqua blue normally associated with that color.  That gave me the idea of mixing transparent and opaque glass.  I take two rods, tape them together and use them as one rod to layer glass on my mandrel.  This is the result:

I like the effect and I'll be using the beads in my jewelry.  Watch my Etsy site (www.etsy.com/shop/DeborahDRoss).