Spruill Center for the Arts Jewelry Market

I'm a little early this week, but I will be a participant in the Spruill Center for the Arts Jewelry Market, which will be held tomorrow (February 22) from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm, at Spruill Center for the Arts, 5339 Chamblee Dunwoody Road.  if you live in Atlanta, stop by and see what my fellow students and I have for sale.  Below are some of the new bracelets I have made, featuring shell beads that I have reported on in this blog over the past few months:

My Etsy shop (etsy.com/shop/DeborahDRoss) is closed temporarily, but items I don't sell tomorrow will be on sale starting Monday.

Hollow beads

A couple of weeks ago, I took a workshop at Flametree Glass in Roswell, GA on how to use a puffy mandrel to make hollow beads.  Puffy mandrels are hollow tubes with a hole about two inches from one end of the tube.  When you dip them in bead release, you close off the end of the tube with your finger and blow through the tube.  The release will be blown out of the hole.  You add two discs of glass on either side of the hole, gradually tapering the glass until it meets in the middle.  Then you heat until the bead is a uniform temperature and gradually puff through the hole until the beads expands to the desired size.  Sound easy?  It takes practice, practice, practice.  Here are the beads I made in the workshop:

These need to be mounted as pendants, but you can expect to see these and other like them in my Etsy shop soon. (etsy.com/shop/DeborahDRoss).

New inspirations

Well, I have to apologize for being remiss with my posts, but for an excuse, I have been inspired by recent workshops and have been busy experimenting with new techniques.  Two weeks ago, I attended two workshops sponsored by Southern Flames.  one was a workshop given by Brad Shute on how to work with his own handmade silver glass and the second was one by Marcy Lamberson on how to combine basic shapes into new combinations.  Both them have inspired me to extend my horizons.

Brad showed us how to get color combinations with his glass, especially purples and blues:

I love the blues that come out on repeated striking.  And I learned something important about the striking sequence.  I used to quit when I got a dark brown color---I thought that I had gone beyond the point of no return.  But I leaned that that color is the starting point of the striking sequence!  So instead of stopping, I should have kept going.

In Marcy's class, we combined old shapes in new ways:

The bead on the upper right is reminiscent of a house, and gives me an idea for a line of landscape beads.  Who knows what I'll come up with!

Spring colors

Even though we haven't made it through winter yet, I'm thinking ahead to the spring.  The Pantone colors for spring, 2015 remind be of a Caribbean vacation, aquamarines, classic blue, mint green, orange, yellow, rose pink.  To get ready for the season, I prepared two frit blends incorporating these colors.  The first one is made up of cool colors and reminds me of the Caribbean ocean:

It's a mixture of Effetre colors, including light and dark turquoise, dark aqua (transparent, and nile green opalino.  I've made two beads with the frit layer on clear and then encased in clear, with a strand of fine silver (28 gauge) melted around the equator.

The second blend reminds me of a colorful beach cabana:

It's made with light and dark turquoise, tangerine (Effetre 591412) and a yellow glass that I can't positively identify.  Unfortunately, some of the labels on my glass were lost in the move to Georgia.
Beads made using this frit with the same technique as described above are also shown in the photograph.

As usual, expect to see beads made with these blends in my Etsy shop (etsy.com/shop/DeborahDRoss).

Christmas is closer

More Christmas earrings.  This time, I decided to try my hand at frit.  I collected various shades of green and red, heated the tip of the rod and mashed it then put it in cold water.  The tip fractures into small pieces which I collected.  The result is a mixture of Christmas colors.  To make the earrings shown below:

I made a lentil shaped bead out of green nile opalino (Effetre 516), as in the previous post, rolled it in frit, melted the frit down and repressed the bead, then added a wreath of green aventurine which I accented with a twist.  Earrings made from thes;e beads are for sale in my Etsy shop:  Etsy.com/shop/DeborahDRoss.

Christmas is coming

I heard my first Salvation Army bell ringer of the season last Friday, so that's my sign that I should start thinking about Christmas beads.  I love the smell of pine bough wreaths, so here's my first design:  shards of green mosaic glass (Effetre 023) on green nile opalino (Effetre 516) with accents of medium red (Effetre 432).

These beads will be made into earrings and maybe a bracelet, and will be posted to my Etsy shop (etsy.com/shop/DeborahDRoss) in time for Thanksgiving weekend.

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.