See? No red!
Hang on a minute - there seems to be a bit of a red thing happening on this here blog! (Note to self : Next photo post must be of something not red.)
Gorgeously glossy little red heart-shaped beads. These were shaped by hand. Well, not literally with my bare hands. That would be both dangerous and very silly. What I mean is that I didn't use a bead press or a mould.
After reading my sock knitting book about nine and a half times I decided it was time to take the plunge and get knitting. I went to Masons in Abingdon yesterday and bought myself a set of double pointed needles and some gorgeous red yarn.
Glossy jet black beads with white polka dots strung with spacers in a deep cherry red. Simple but striking, methinks!
There is an increasing number of magical silver-rich glasses available that produce beautiful multi-coloured, variegated and metallic effects. I buy the odd rod of silver-rich glass every now and again and I have a play and then I get bored with it quite quickly. I think it's because it has a bit of a mind of its own and therefore I can't have total control over what it does. You never quite know exactly what colour will develop and where. I'm such a control freak when it comes to glass!
It's been a fab Tuesday. Last night Nicky travelled up from Southampton and we spent the evening (and early hours of the morning) having a good old natter. She brought all her wonderful silver jewellery with her for me to have a look at and to ooh-and-aah over. Such prettiness!
Then after a couple of hours mooching around the shops we went to the Thorntons Café where Nicky had the slice of rather naughty-looking chocolate gateau at the top of this post and I had a piece of chocolate caramel shortbread. And a hot chocolate. With whipped cream. And they gave us each a chocolate truffle too. Cocoa overload! Nicky snapped this shot of me licking melted chocolate off my fingers.
Hmmm. I wanted these beads to be a soft, pale yellow. I'm all out of the pale yellow I would have normally used so I used a Vetrofond oddlot one that I've had for years. The first bead did indeed start off looking pale yellow, just like I intended, but there must have been some strange glass chemistry happening between the oddlot and the base colour because the more I worked on the bead the darker it got. It ended up this stone-like khaki colour which I actually quite like so I just went with what the glass wanted to do, kept on making beads and now I have this set of un-yellow lentils!
My youngest sister Emily lives in Bournemouth and today we had a bit of a family get together down at the seafront. It was a lovely January morning - fresh and sunny. It was a bit blowy but at least it wasn't raining. This photo is of me, Emily and our niece Robyn. I don't know what I was laughing at. It was most probably something Robyn said or did. That child has me in stitches!
After the walk along the seafront we went for lunch at Pizza Hut where I had a lush pudding - hot cookie dough with ice-cream. Oh my, it was good! And Chris, if you're reading this, yes, I did have a definite case of 'pudding face' going on!
Aw - I'm upset. I just read on the news that Tony Hart has died. That man was one of my heroes. He gave us Take Hart, Hartbeat and of course, the wonderful Morph. As a child I loved watching his art programmes and I would spent endless hours drawing and painting trying to make pictures just like Tony did. He was fabulous!
This is my three hundredth post. Yes, I've published three whole hundred posts full of beads and waffle. Yay me! I'm celebrating with a cup of tea and one (or two) of these homemade oat biscuits. They're like flapjacks in crunchy cookie form. Yum!
These ultra-shiny olive-shaped beads have such a depth to them and at the ends of each one there are little vortices of colour.
Yes, yes, more of these. What can I say - I like making them! But if you're bored of seeing them, fear not - I have different beads to clean and photograph for sale later. Check back tonight for photos .....
I'm really enjoying Glass Melting Wednesdays! Yesterday my student was Kathy who is a silversmith and she had never made a glass bead before yesterday. The photo above is of some of the excellent beads that Kathy created during her lesson. I'm showing you these ones in particular as they are good examples of what I like my students to achieve. The beads are even and round and they have the all-important neat and tidy, slightly dimpled area around the bead holes. Kathy turned the deep pink frit bead on the left into a fabulous chunky tab. 
I think I had grey on the brain when I made these. While I was looking at glass colours last night I was repeatedly drawn to shades of grey. I reckon it was the train journey home from Cambridge yesterday that was responsible for my colour choice, or lack thereof. It was a dismal day and the sky was full of rainclouds. It was pretty much the same today. Grey is nice for beads, though - a subtle hue that looks fab with silver and can be worn with anything.
I was in Cambridge at the weekend and when I got home today I switched on my computer to find a huge wodge of emails, some bead-related and some not. There was also an absolute shedload of spam. Emails from banks where I don't even hold an account and super-duper deals from Vista Flippin' Print along with offers aplenty of cheap bead imports, medicine, hot girls that are ready to chat to me now and patches that will do miraculously wondrous things to pieces of anatomy that I don't even possess. I love the internet, I really do, but I hate spam!
These lentil lovelies are such a vibrant shade of blue. I kind of stumbled upon this particular colour by accident. I like it when that happens!
Yesterday was my first beadmaking lesson of the year and it was brilliant. My student was Joy who is a Senior Certified Art Clay Instructor. You can take a look at her wonderful website by clicking here. Joy also makes beautiful enamelled jewellery but she'd never had a go at glass beadmaking before.
This little fella is Bertrand the blackbird. For the last few days he's been visiting the back garden to grab the occasional snack. Sometimes he brings his wife, Bertina. She's a bit camera-shy, though .....
These are like the 'Neptune' ones in the last post but in purple and pink. Prettiness!
I wish you could see these for real - the colours are just yum! These cased lentils contain swathes of light blue and a luscious kingfisher blue. Each bead has a smattering of blue-green enamel which I've left ever so slightly raised for a touchable texture.
I just had to tell you about these little chocolatey pieces of loveliness. Chris got me a bag of Hotel Chocolat 'Gemstones' for Christmas and oh my, they are so freakin' good! I urge fellow chocolate fiends to buy some and taste their deliciousness. I'm going to have to get myself some more .....
Hmmm. 'Fruity Nuggets' sounds like some new brand of breakfast cereal. I admit, it's a lame name but it describes these glass gems nicely. They're fruity-coloured beads shaped into tactile nugget shapes. See? The name works. I spent a while flame polishing each bead which has given them the most incredible glossy shine. Gleamy!