beads

November 18, 2010

As any lampworker will attest to, getting new tools rivals Christmas morning! I just made the plunge and bought 3 Beadrollers from Donna Felkner at CGBeads. I’ve only worked with them for a couple of days, but I love them already and I think the new shapes are going to be very popular!

I got the Garden Variety Pandora Style, the Quad Squad Pandora Style, and the brand new Ribbed Quints. (which is for smaller holed beads, but still very cool!)

Ribbed:

For the large hole beads, the first two tools add 4 new shapes to my bracelet sized bead repertoire: barrel, disc, stubby bicone, and round. I love the way the barrel shape looks with sterling caps!

barrel:disc:

stubby bicone: round:

Round beads (on large hole mandrels) are actually hard to shape by hand. I usually just use gravity to shape my beads, and they are usually donut shaped. For bigger focals I can now make bicones and ovals. The nice thing about these tools is that they help you keep bead sizes consistent-great for earrings. I am really looking forward to playing more with these cool tools!

The Focal Collection

October 26, 2010

These big beads make great pendants, but they also look good on the bangle bracelet. Here are several focal beads that I’ve made in the past (and have sold). I just listed a new one on Etsy today that is available for purchase.

The neat thing about these beads is that I can customize the sterling silver caps. I have several different metal stamp alphabets and numerous symbols like hearts, swirls, birds, peace signs, stars, etc. These make great Mother’s and Grandmother’s gifts (up to four names, depending on the length), graduation, birthday and anniversary gifts.

If you would like to customize a bead for a special person, just let me know and we can work out the details!