Dotty Pebbles!

I have been having a little fascination with these pebble beads recently. Ive made three different sets using the same technique and I don't think it's out of my system yet!

It's quite neat as you use 3 colours only (in this case Turquoise, Black and bright Red) Then you use them in rotation to make a set of encased beads. 

I love the way the ringed dots 'float' on the surface of the clear and give the bead more depth and shine.

Here's the whole set!

I loved the shape of this pendant. A lovely cylinder with curved edges!

 

Here's the brightly coloured chunky pendant. It looks stunning on the wrist!

This was the alternative pendant. A more characteristic pebble shape with a bit more texture on the outside!

This one was the one everyone fell in love with. The colours are Ivory, Stone and Ebony! It looks very classy on the wrist!

(close up)

And the other thing I did was to add a beaded extender - so it can be worn as a necklace! Clever eh?

The last one for today was made around the time that Princess Charlotte was born. This bracelet is made up with a pure sterling silver clasp and findings and it's good old patriotic Red, White and Blue!

Thank you for reading my blog - feel free to suggest more 'three colour options' for more sets like this!! I think I will be making more!!! ;-) xx

Bluebell Walk..

So just a few sunny days ago, I took the most glorious walk around the woodland trails at Cliveden which is a National Trust treasure of a place near me.

The woodland was full of these beauties. The air was so fragrant with their scent; it was quite magical!

I was captivated by the colour of the bluebells the mauve and blue tones merged almost imperceptibly but still I was aware of the two lovely colours and the many shades of those colours that made the bluebells so stunning.

Just had to try to capture the colour, depth and shading with the glass! I used layers of lilac, dark lavender, light blue transparent, intense blue transparent and touches of Thomson enamels, CIM jellyfish and crocus plus a bit of periwinkle opaque glass. I knew that in some frequencies of light the dark lavender and crocus changed the way it came across.

It sometimes looks mauve/pink and in other lights looks completely blue/grey.

This in the set under tungsten light. you can clearly see the gradation in the middle bead from lavender to pink, but in the next picture on the  the same bead looks completely lilac. It's the same bead..Funny isn't it?

I was very pleased with them - so much so, that these little ones are keepers!!!
I know...... naughty aren't I ;-) ?

Here are some more glossy photos. But in order to light them up properly I had to use my studio lights which meant that some of the pink tones were lost. Anyone who has some really good camera knowledge could maybe tell me how I could have done it better and managed to retain the pinker hue?

(Incidentally, I also tried to photograph them in sunlight and a more dull natural light, but the vivid pinky mauve only seems to be visible with a yellower tungsten bulb.. I don't really understand why...)

Here they are individually:

This one was pinky mauve on the inside with a tiny dusting of enamel on the surface and the bobbly one was pinker inside and blue on the outside to get the dual tone.

I love the sparkly one below. It also has two layers. You can see as the light passes through it that the pinker/mauve shines through.

..And here they all are on bracelet with the photo that inspired them:

 I hope you enjoyed reading the blog
Thank you x

Hot Hot Hot!

This is going to be a really quick and snappy one!

I just wanted to get these little beauties logged onto the blog. The photos came out so great and the colours really pop!

Recently I've been working on my pinks and purples for a project and just had to do a set of simple charm beads that used the entire colour range!

I just love them all....