Old Year's Day offerings

About 22 years ago, we spent "Old Year's Day" in St. Thomas. It was the year before I became pregnant and my husband had surprised me with the trip. We went on a side trip that day to Mountaintop, the highest point on the island, and there, it was explained to us that while we celebrate "New Year's Day", on St. Thomas, they celebrate "Old Year's Day" and use it as a day to reflect on the past year.

I have two sets of lentil beads, fresh from my torch/kiln this last day of 2007. The first, I call "Mirror Islands" because of the mirrored finish on these beads. The reactions I am getting from regular old Morette and Vetrofond and a little bit of silver is just knocking my sox off! This is my favorite of the two:
The second set is called "Craters of the Moon". It is probably lighter than it appears in the photo and Tina was totally enamored of this one.
I have had a number of requests for this type of bead and will be offering them unstrung or strung as the buyer wishes...

I can't wait to see what 2008 holds. My fascination with these organic beads seems to only get stronger. It's kind of amazing since when I started working with glass, I wasn't really attracted to them and wanted to only work with bright patterns and crisp lines and dots... I'm sure the tide will turn again though.

Violet Storm

It took a little longer than I had planned, but here's the purple organic that I feel I may have overdone. It's called Violet Storm: I just love the pale, pale lavender that I used for the tiny dots and couldn't seem to stop following the swirls around the bead! I love seeing the tiny silver dots and swirls in the closeup: I suspect I'll have to actually make something with it before I can really tell if it is overdone.

Something new for me

Oooh! I'm really excited about these. I decided to just play with an organic look yesterday. I didn't make many, but each one took quite a while.

The first one is called "Rootbeer Cosmos". The silvered Ivory really sparkles and looks like a million stars in the backround as the "rootbeer" flows through it with little silvery bubbles following the stream.

I think it's probably just the monitor on my laptop, but the colors don't seem to be as vibrant on these pictures as they are in real life.

But... the dots! They went on so beautifully and I knew where I was putting them. I know it's strange for me to be so excited about that. but it still amazes me what a huge difference wearing a different lens prescription makes.

I guess ever since I took part in the pendant swap I've been concentrating more on larger beads rather than sets.

To the right is "Grape Peacock". It looks like a silvery peacock melted into a bead and the grapes floated to the top... Strange, I know, but that's what I see.

These were just fun to work with and then when I pulled them out of the kiln and they looked good ... well! I love it when a plan comes together.

These two are the best that came out of the kiln and I guess I'll be trying a few more soon.