Remember these?

My 'Plume' beads. These are the beads that I've been trying to recreate on and off for over two years now. I've finally rediscovered how I made them ..... but is that a good thing?

These are fickle. And fussy. I think the reason I couldn't quite recall how I made them was because my mind had blanked out their annoying aspects!

Sure, they're pretty and effective and all that but my goodness, one bit of glass out of place or just using the wrong colour glass means the whole bead is doomed.

Recreating this design has been both an interesting and frustrating exercise but don't expect sets of these beads for sale. Why? Because for every decent one there are about eight failed attempts and that is NOT a good beadmaking ratio.

And this is why, lovely customers, I don't do commissions or remakes. Sometimes you just can't go back and simply remake something. I've spent two days on this design and those three beads up there are all I have to show for it. Time to draw a line under the Plume beads, methinks .....

When beads go good!

I have a grin on my face. These beads are so lovely and bright and vibrant! I opened the kiln and this time I had little 'Ooooh!' to myself as opposed to an 'Aaagghh!'.

Orange and Ink Blue - such a zingy colour combo. I like. I like a lot.

I'm off out tonight to see 'An Audience With Marian Keyes' at the Chichester Literary Festival so these Plume beads will be for sale on my website tomorrow evening.

Have a nice night!

Plume Beads

Yep. That's what I'm calling them.

I tried to think of a name last night. I think that the design is feathery and Dad said it reminded him of waterfalls. I emailed my boyfriend last night and asked his excellent bead-naming advice (Chris has named several of my bead sets) but I couldn't get the feathery thing out of my head.

I said to Dad this afternoon that I thought the word 'plume' pretty much described the design and ten minutes later I received a list of name suggestions from Chris. The first name on his list was 'Plume'. Spooky!

So that's what they'll now be known as - my Plume Beads.