BOC January Challenge

The Beads of Clay (www.beads-of-clay.org) group I'm a member of has monthly challenges designed to take us out of our comfort zone and experiment with techniques we might have otherwise not tried on our own.

January's challenge was to carve flowers from our beads and this is what I came up with. I love daisies, thus I carved four daisies. My fingers were numb and cramped by the time I finished carving. This took about an hour. I glazed it with Series glaze 2200 and glazed the petals with a matte coral that I particulary enjoy. Then I took a bumpy doodle black and dotted the middle. I had hoped it would stand up a bit more than it does, but the effect of the black with the blackish speckles in the body of the glaze worked even better than I envisioned.

Website Work

In the mornings, I've been re-working the website, trying to add individual beads and catalog everything. I'm trying not to get swamped with the details. I had no idea I had so many beads.

I did get the Series 500 page up. Go Here to view it..

Also new is the side bar. I have added another artist who is using some of my beads in her work. She produces one of a kind original designs with vintage and handmade charms. View her lovely jewelry at: Floradora Charm Bracelets

Also new in my studio: a dehydrator. This will help to dry those beads out faster so that I can get more done at a time. Also in the thrift store where I bought the dehydrator was a very cool pasta machine for a mere $20. So I brought it home and decided to play around with some paper clay I had made up a few weeks back. It took forever to figure out just the right amount of baby powder and olive oil -- but it worked. Makin' Macaronii! Fun times.

Just Beads

This is a set of beads, 10mm (10 in all) that I'm currently offering over at justbeads.com.

To view the item description and to bid, take the following link:

CLICK HERE

While you are at justbeads.com, take a look at some of the other ceramic beads offered. Many of the ones offered are in the Beads of Clay (BOC) organization I'm also a member of. These are quality artists with quality beads.

For more information on other ceramic bead artists please visit www.beads-of-clay.org.

New Style

This is the new batch that came out of the kiln. As promised, if I liked how they came out, I would post pictures. So here are the pictures.













This is one of my favorites out of the entire batch. Throughout 2006 I will be making this style.