A Few Hours Playing

Rob Time.

   When your working long hours and when most of your days are planned out, Mondays is focals day, Tues is seaglass day etc etc, it's always nice to just take a few hours out, give yourself some time to play around with glass, try out new things, ideas that have crossed your mind, colours that haven't yet been explored and believe me it helps you forget any problems your facing for a while too, I guess it's one of the few ways I relax.

   While spending some time sorting through glass Tuesday I found a few colours that, well to be honest I had not ever used. This may sound silly to most of you but these rods were obtained over two years ago and had never even seen the flame let alone produced any finished beads. So they were placed on my work bench ready to try out, four colours in all, a deep green, light purple opaque and two different coral colours, both quite bright shades. For the first hour I just tried out the colours separately  to see how the finished colour was, when I do this I make a beads of spacer size then hold it infront of a fan cooling the glass so I get to see how the glass will look when cold. All the colours seemed ok but the green wasn't anything to write home about so I decided to see if it would work alongside some silver glass, there were a few types I felt might help it show off so I started playing.

   As you can see in the picture above they worked very well or at least I think they did, I love the colours that the mix produced and the full encasing helps show off every detail, there is something really magical about these beads, one of my favourite sets in the past few months. Some of you will say they are nothing special, maybe not flash enough, no goldstone swirls inside or raised mirror effects on the surface or he could have placed some silver or copper mesh inside, but hey, there are hundreds of beadmakers making just that type of bead so I'm sure you could go find pleanty to look at, I want to see how the glass looks and works in a more natural way.
   Sometimes I see beads that may be simple to make and not have all the fancy effects on them but they can look bloody classy, maybe just the finish does it or it may be that the colours work really well together, whatever it is sometimes it's just better and with the beads in the picture thats how I feel, there is just something special about them and tho I can't put my finger on it, I'm sure others may see it too.
   I have a full day ahead of me making beads to list in my etsy shop www.etsy.com/shop/pebbledreams including some large sets of spacers, just a few sets of say 20 beads made from some natural colours, sets that maybe can be used to make one piece of jewellery without the addition of bigger beads, I'm sure I'll have fun coming up with something. I hope to list more new focal beads in the ebay shop this evening www.stores.ebay.co.uk/Beads-Of-Glass
   The rain has just started falling here in the fens, heavy drops dancing on the surface of the pond and putting that little chill in the air, but I know one little boy who will be sitting at his torch watching it fall !