Wednesday, April 29, 2009

New Beads Today

This morning I managed to get a reasonable start on my day - beads are cleaned and wired into sets, breakfast is finished, bills are paid - yay!  Now I must package up my "Divers" felted vessel and ship it off to its new owner.  Yes, a long-time cyber friend of mine purchased this beauty yesterday so I'll have to say good-bye.  But I'm so happy that it's going to a good home!  Here's the vessel again - thanks Pam for your inspiration!  



And now for some beady things... I've been making leaf beads for about 4 years now - who knew they'd be so popular?!  I hadn't planned on making a career out of leaf beads, but there is such a demand for my leaves that I just can't let it go.  Besides, I really love making them!  Having grown up and lived in New England until the tender age of 22, I still miss the landscape there.  We don't have nearly as many trees here in the San Francisco Bay Area, so I populate my life with leaves of glass.  One would think that after 4 years of leaves I'd be tired of them.  But with all the glass colors available to me, it'll be a very long time before I'm done experimenting with various combinations and techniques.  It's fun getting creative with my leaf colors - who says they have to be the same colors as you'd find in your back yard?

Here are my latest leaf sets - these will be coming with me to the Bead & Button Show in Milwaukee.  First are my "Mardi Gras" leaves.  These happened by accident a few years ago.  I thought I was picking up a rod of amber glass but it turned out to be bright yellow.  When I finished the leaf I realized I had made a blunder, so I only made one.  When it came out of the kiln the next morning I was pleasantly surprised and decided to make more.  They have become one of the most popular color combos I've ever done - go figure!




The next batch has a very autumn feeling.  These are very time consuming to make.  I use 8 different colors in each leaf, so they turn out a bit larger than some of my other leaves.  Here are my "Harvest" leaves.



And now it's time to pack and ship my vessel, then head back to the torch.  So many leaves, so little time...  Have yourselves a happy and creative day!

1 comment:

rosebud101 said...

Shirley, I'll look you up at the B & B Show. I'm not selling, but I'm going for fun!

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