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.

Turquoise and enamel

I've already done quite a bit of experimenting with enamels on glass and below is a combination that I like:

Thompson Enamel transparent beryl green (9443) on top of light turquoise (Effetre), with and without melted silver wire.  I like the ocean waves effect.  Look for these soon in my Etsy shop:  www.etsy.com/shop/DeborahDRoss

On the beach

After a brief vacation to visit my daughter over the Easter weekend, I'm back in Georgia, experimenting with stripped beads reminiscent of a beach landscape.  Here are some of the combinations I've come up with:

The small beads are made as described in the previous post:  a single color with a stripe of silvered ivory around the equator, accented with silver wire.  The larger beads made with stripes of various Effetre colors laid over Seashell Swirl (Vetrofond 955):  light turquoise, Nile green opalino, transparent teal and light lapis with a stripe of silvered ivory and a twist with a cubic zirconium in the middle.   The larger bead on the left has been fitted with sterling silver bead caps and a bail made from silver wire fitted with a silver bead.  As usual, similar beads will soon be on sale in m Etsy shop (etsy.com/shop/DeborahDRoss).

Primitives

I love copper!  It's such a warm color.  And it reminds me of the sandstone cliffs of the Grand Canyon and Sedona as well as autumn leaves.  So I've been experimenting with beads that will go with copper findings.  Here are some of the beads that I've come up with:

Top left is Reichenbach Multicolor (RL6209) with Double Helix Triton frit;  top right is a bead made with the same glass, but reduced.  Second row left is Dark Violet (Effetre 274) with a twist of intense black and white swirled around the equator of the bead and heated so that the intense black begins to fragment.  Right is Fossil (Effetre 683) with shards of Italian Marble (Avenue Beads).  Third row right is Brown Rock (Effetre 654) with a stripe of Dark Turquoise (Effetre 236).  Third row middle is Pink Stripe (Effetre 253)---it's much darker than the illustration at Frantz glass.  Third row right is Sedona (Effetre 257) with a thin stripe of copper foil wrapped around the equator and burned off.  Fourth row are beads made of Opal Yellow (Effetre 266) with moss green (9350),  grey-green (9320) and aquamarine (9550) Thompson enamels accented with silver wire.

Right now I'm working on cooper bead caps for these beads and soon they'll turn up as earrings on the Etsy site:  www.etsy.com/shop/DeborahDRoss.

Bead exchange

Last weekend was the last lampwork beadmaking class of the summer, and as agreed, we all brought beads to trade.  My contribution was shown last week.  Below are all of the contributions:

What looks like a line across the top is a mandrel that I used to prop up the beads to display the donut beads.  I love the flamingo, and the shells and the donut beads, but my favorite is the bead in the middle by Lynn.  The olive green in the background is light aqua which reacts with ivory to produce the green tones.  Lynn then added stripes of pea green over the aqua.  It reminds me of the wind blowing through oat grass on the Florida Panhandle coast!

The bracelet that I made out of the beads is shown below, using Swarovski crystal beads as spacers:

Since I have a lot of T-shirts that are turquoise or coral, I'll get a lot of wear out of it.   Thanks everyone for sharing your creations!

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).

More silvered ivory

I've been playing around with silvered ivory, this time with light ivory and turquoise.  In a well known reaction, light ivory forms a black line when it meets turquoise, which can be used in designs.  I thought it would be interesting to see what effect this reactions would have been silvered ivory was laid on top of the intersection point.  As you can see in the photograph, it darkens the junction, thus accentuating it:

I've raked across the junction in one or two places, then made a twist and added a cubic zirconium.  The middle bead is made with Nile green, which undergoes the same reaction with ivory.  Expect to see these soon in my Etsy shop:  etsy.com/shop/DeborahDRoss