Turning beads into things

Eighteen years I’ve been making beads. That’s ages. I was twenty-six when I started lampworking! At the beginning of this I was already making jewellery and the idea was to make my own beads to use in my own designs, and I did and I do, but the whole way along I’ve been thoroughly sidetracked by making and selling mostly just beads.

'Blue Confetti' bracelet

'Elephant' earrings

Oftentimes I'll have been making beads and thinking about how I would put them into jewellery and what other beads and components I'd put with them, always telling myself that I can make more of those beads and make that jewellery another time, but I never did. Turns out I don't even like doing bead remakes for myself!

'Lustre Dapple' earrings

'Pink Spotties' earrings

So I’m trying to steer it back to my original plan. I’ve been increasingly disillusioned with lampwork – not the actual act of it – but the constant trying to make something new and the feeling of pressure (from myself) to always be making what I think people will buy.Those are two really great ways to stress yourself out!

The other week I decided to make beads that I would like to turn into jewellery. The photo above of a little dish of beads from a few weeks back was the result and I turned pretty much all of them into wearable things, and I really enjoyed it, so that’s what I’m going to focus on doing for the time being. That’s not to say I won’t have any loose beads for sale – I’m sure I will – but there is going to be more jewellery than loose beads. For now. Until I have another beadmaking paradigm shift. Or retire. Who knows? I’m not a planner, I just do stuff.

'Wood Sprite' necklace

'Spotties' earrings

I've got a few pieces of jewellery in my shop now, including all of the pieces pictured throughout this post. I need to make some more bracelets and necklaces as I currently have only one of each for sale, so do stay tuned.

CiM Testing: Goji

Goji is the perfect name for this colour. It’s a goji berry orange-red that is not transparent enough to call transparent but also not fully opaque.

I didn’t strike the glass as such; I just made beads with it in my usual way so if there was any striking it would have happened while I was rounding up the beads and adding the spots.

These beads have a core of CiM Creamsicle encased with a thin layer of Goji. There are slight colour variations towards the holes where I moved the glass with a brass tool, and this normally occurs with reds, oranges and yellows, but they barely show. 

The glass was smooth to work with and it didn’t shock or bubble.

The spots on the beads are CiM Quetzal and the spacers are CiM Peacock Feather.

The beads were photographed outdoors on an overcast day.

CiM Testing: Pizzazz

I’d been trying to save this one because it’s purple and purple is my favourite colour and for some reason I’d decided I had to keep it until last as some kind of treat but then my friend Jelveh asked me if I’d tested it yet and so I caved. 

Pizzazz was an attempt to recreate Jacaranda which was a transparent purple that had a hint of mistiness about it. Pizzazz is mistier than Jacaranda.

I’ve gone around the house with the beads trying them under different lights to see if the glass shifts colour to a more blue tone but most lights we have are LED and they don’t induce the same colour shift thing as older style lighting and fluorescent lights do so I can’t give a definitive answer on that one.

The glass itself was fine to work with. No shocking or bubbling.

For these beads I used the Pizzazz as a thin encasing layer over a core of CiM Heffalump. Because of the slightly foggy quality of the Pizzazz I thought I would get some sort of stringer reaction happening so I opted for Effetre Light Turquoise 232 stringer to test this and NO! No dark reaction lines or feathering. I really heated the scroll bead seeing if I could get a reaction line (a darker line running through the centre of the applied stringer) to happen but nope, it stayed crisp and clean. Interesting.

The purple spacers here are plain Pizzazz.

The beads were photographed outdoors in between rain showers on this frankly miserably-weathered Saturday.

CiM Testing: Aquamarine Ice Milky & Misty

These icy blue opals are a re-engineering of CiM Poseidon. The photo above shows Aquamarine Ice Milky on the left and Aquamarine Ice Misty on the right. As the names suggest, both are translucent but the misty version is a bit  more transparent.

Aquamarine Ice Milky encased in clear, with white spots

Aquamarine Ice is a really lovely shade of blue and for for the milky version I encased it with a thin layer of Effetre 006 Super Clear and applied spots of Effetre White 204. The spacers are plain Aquamarine Ice Milky.

Aquamarine Ice Milky encased in clear, with white spots

I hardly ever encase the CiM opals and I don’t know why. I think it must stem from my beginner beadmaking days (before CiM was a thing) and it was an absolute no-no to consider encasing any of the Italian opalino and alabastro glass because it would crack, so I think I got it into my head that it would be the same with the CiM opals. However, on the few occasions that I have encased the CiM opals I’ve not had any troubles.

Aquamarine Ice Milky encased in clear, with white spots

This round of testing I decided that I was going to use the misty and milky opals for my more usual type of beads instead of plain hearts or un-encased rounds. I’ve added the thin layer of clear as a barrier so that any decoration stays neat and clean because the opals have a tendency to make stringer and spots feathery and wibbly. That’s fine because you can use it to your advantage, like I do for my ‘batik’ style beads, but more often than not I like my dots and lines to be as crisp as a Krisproll.

Aquamarine Ice Milky encased in clear, with white spots

When testing the Aquamarine Ice Misty I thought I’d put some beads with white spots in the kiln – as a sort of sister set to the Aquamarine Ice Milky ones – but no. Obviously some knobhead (that’s me) picked up a stringer of CiM Birchwood halfway through making them so some of the beads have white spots and some have ivory ones, and now I’ve ended up with two trios instead of the intended set.

Aquamarine Ice Misty, encased in clear, in the sunshine

Aquamarine Ice is a proper blue sky blue and when the sun shines through the misty version of it it’s very swimming pool on a summer’s day.

I didn’t find either version of this glass at all shocky and it wasn’t bubbly or scummy. Really fab.

Aquamarine Ice Misty encased in clear, with ivory spots

Both versions are lovely but Aquamarine Ice Misty is definitely going on my glass shopping list. Hopefully I’ll be able to nab some.

All photographs were taken outdoors in the shade unless otherwise stated.

CiM Testing: Douglas Aster

Douglas Aster may sound like a character from an Agatha Christie novel but it’s actually a little daisy-like flower that has pale purple petals.

Creation is Messy’s Douglas Aster is a very pretty opaque pale purple that has a tiny hint of translucency to it. Only a bit – enough that when you pull it into stringer it’s not quite fully opaque.

It melted with no troubles and for these beads I encased it with a thin layer of Effetre Super Clear 006 and added spots of CiM Lapis. The spacers are just plain Douglas Aster and Lapis.

The beads were photographed outdoors in daylight.