'Starburst' Beads

I love enamels. I love stars. I'm learning to love lentil beads.

Does it show?!

Playing with Palladium

I have a new bead obsession - palladium leaf. When treated in a particular way it yields metallic pinks, plums and greens. Just gorgeous!

These are some lentils in a new design I'm calling 'Starburst'. What do you think?

Lenticular Learning Curve

These were the result of a self-taught 'how-to-make-a-difficult-to-make-bead-an-even-more-difficult-to-make-bead' lesson. A whole day's beadmaking and not many decent beads to show for it. (Lots of bad ones but they're all dead - I murdered them in my water jug. I'm a cold blooded bead killer!)

These are my 'Fusion' beads in a lentil shape. Now, you may be thinking 'So, you just squashed the bead?'. Yes and no. For a start I had to apply the enamel, murrini and stringerwork to a totally different-shaped base bead than normal. My ususal beads are kind of a fat donut (using the American spelling of 'Donut' instead of our stuffy 'Doughnut') shape. I normally make the bead, apply the components and whack it in the kiln. But with these you have to make an olive-shaped bead and get the amount of glass just right. Not too hard when you're making a relatively plain lentil but with these I have to allow for adding the stringer and murrini. Then squashing it is the nervewracking bit. It's the moment where all the hard work you've just done can be ruined in an instant.

I think I've mastered the non-ruining squashing technique - for this design, anyway.

So why the lentils? Mainly because I've had a few requests for them recently and the deciding factor was my friend Nicky coming round yesterday and telling me to 'make flat beads!' on more than one occasion. So I took her advice and here they are. First of many, probably!

Pastel 'Spangle' Beads

Pretty beads sprinkled with frit, cased in clear and decorated with fine silver trails.

Mmmmmm, chocolate!

More fusion beads, this time in a very chocolatey colour combination. They're even more chocolatey than the cocoa ones from last week!

Talking of chocolate, I visited 'Hotel Chocolat' in Cambridge on Saturday. In case you haven't heard of 'Hotel Chocolat' it's a very-naughty-but-oh-so-nice chocolate shop. If you haven't got one near you then do take a look at their website. I'm not sure if me going in there was a good idea or not, really. I mean I get their catalogue through the post regularly and I've eaten many a Hotel Chocolat chocolate that I've been given as gifts but actually going into the shop was a bit different. Chris has done a pretty good job of keeping me out of the shop in the past but I wanted to get a box of chocolates for a friend so I had a dang good excuse to go in there. And yes, of course I got myself chocolate. But the problem now is that I keep thinking of those slabs of chocolate, pink champagne truffles and cute little bags of chocolate drops . . . . . . . . .