The lazy days of summer

August has been spectacular, but the long summer days are getting a bit shorter and it was nice to get a bit of badly needed rain.  Some weeks were too warm for working on beads, and some new perennial garden additions came my way, so creating new flowerbeds for those took some time, but their flowers will reward me for years to come.

I made a string of black beads with starry white flashes to honor the Perseid meteor shower, which makes its annual appearance around August 12th.  One of them promptly split in two, but that makes a cabochon pair for earrings.  If a bead splits it usually means it was not cooled down slowly.  They usually break right away if they are going to, but now and then one surprises me and breaks long after being made.  At the end of the season the year’s crop goes into the oven for the annealing process, a heat treatment that strengthens and tempers the glass.

starry night

Garden delights

Spring has eased into summer and the garden is in bloom and producing a few edibles.  The steady supply of strawberries are yielding to raspberries.

The bead studio has been cleaned and activated, but only a few sessions have resulted so far.  As usual, it is blues and greens that are chosen first for warming up.

The cats and spring flowers are featured here.

salt and pepper cats outside the kitchen

volunteer flowers springing from the walk

Mo guarding the porch

I noticed one shrub had badly eaten leaves, the poor plant looked like Swiss cheese.  While examining the plant I saw a leaf cutter bee in action.  They are solitary bees so I hope with plenty of water and fertilizer the plant can stay ahead of the bee.  Check the above link to Wikipedia for an article on the bees with a photo.

leaf cutter bee damage

Mo beads – black with hints of yellow

Mr Mo, my black cat, has golden yellow eyes that are quite striking in contrast with his velvety black fur.  Last summer I made a series of pet beads in colors of several animal friends, and the Mo series were mostly black with hints of gold and yellow, with clear encasing.

Here are three Mo beads mounted up as a necklace and earrings, with black seed beads providing dangling accents.  It is always fun to have part of any jewelry be in motion when the wearer is.

Black bead dangles

Click on the photo for a close up of the earring and pendant set.

Below is a shot of the champion snoozer Mr Slikypants Mo, sound asleep with his feet in the air.

Mo snooze

Northwest berries

The Pacific Northwest is blessed with an abundance of berry varieties.  Some might say that the non-native Himalayan Blackberry (Rubus armeniacus) is the kudzu of the Northwest.  The roots shoot out the giant primocane, a thick arching stem that can reach up to 20 feet in length during the first year of growth, and a mass of branching and fruiting floricanes on the second year.

I found a use for those long thorny primocanes one year when I had damage to my fence from people leaning or sitting on it.  I stapled a length of blackberry primocane along the upper edge of the fence.   Voila, organic natural barbed wire that worked like a charm and cost nothing.

My favorite flavor are the more tart pinkish berries on the cusp of ripeness.  Here are a series of handmade Aura Sun Arts beads with the hobnail texture of blackberries and the range of colors.    The Wikipedia article I linked to above has a nice photo showing this range of colors as the fruit ripens.  It goes from dark green to pale green to pink to dark pink to a very deep inky purple.

ripening berries

Lovely larimar

Larimar is a beautiful blue semi-precious stone mined in the Dominican Republic.  The blue colors are like ocean colors in the Caribbean and the stone is popular on many islands in the area.  On a trip to the Virgin Islands I picked up a specimen of larimar cut like a small marble and a card indicating what stones came from each part of the world.

Here I tried mixing various blues and stirring the colors with a metal rod to create a marbled effect.  These beads do not have the usual clear coat of glass called encasing, so the color is right at the surface of the bead.  It was an interesting challenge to try to match the color.  First I made a core bead and then layered more colors on the surface and stirred those together by hand, being careful to just heat the outside of the bead and not get the entire bead molten.

Stir it up!  Click on the photo for an enlarged view.

larimar marble and beads

September ending

Summer has continued through September in Seattle with hardly any rain, which we badly need.  The warm weather allows me to continue beading.  The shorter days mean that if it gets dark while I am at the torch, an assortment of insects such as those giant crane flies might get in and buzz around me.  If they are drawn to the flame they are toast.

red white and blue

Here are a couple new rows of handmade beads:  The ever popular red and black, colors that are just made for each other.  Of course they have tiny hints of gold.  Click on the photo for a closer view.

The dark blue beads were made on 9-11, the 11th anniversary of the attacks on our country.  They have a black core, layered with translucent red which is nearly invisible against the black.  Above that float specks of blue and periwinkle, with hints of white or white specks of sand and clear encasing.  They are a subtle red, white and blue but the colors themselves can represent mourning, fire, police, firemen, lost souls.  With hints of green and purple the sorrow is the color of a bruise.

A mourning cloak butterfly stopped by, a rich deep brown with yellow accents.

mourning cloak

Mr Mo stopped to check out another project in the works.

what's that Mo?

Summer crop of beads

summer beads 2012

This summer I have been mixing some custom colors by blending and stirring several colors together.  Browns can be especially tricky so by making several custom shades and blending them I have come up with some beads that resemble wood grain.

Another challenge was trying to match the color and shape of some green beads that were missing on a necklace a friend hoped I could repair.  I did not get an exact match but the unusual shape was fun to experiment with.

Here is a photo of some of the recent beads.  The round ones have touches of a bright greenish yellow called Uranium Green.

Click on the photo for a closer view.

Another glorious sign of summer are the crop of sunflowers.

summer sunflower

Playing with fire

Bead making season is underway at last.  The optimum temperature range for  lamp working glass is between 65 and 80 degrees F, below that range and the glass is too chilled to melt properly, and above that range the artist tends to melt.

Spring and warmer weather arrived long ago but playing in the garden won out, the lawn needed mowing and the vegetable garden had to be planted.  Now with summer here I can finally make time for playing with fire.

Below are a few photos of bead making in progress:  you wrap an initial core of glass onto the steel rod and marver that into a cylinder, then add additional colors on top.  Here I am using a technique to capture a small bubble of air by making a dent in the glass with a sharp steel tool, and then covering the dent with clear glass.

Seattle has a new glass museum, the Chihuly Glasshouse and garden will be an inspiring place to visit.

adding molten glass to the bead

poking dents into the glass

cooling the bead away from the flame

Snowy sunrise

Winter is just around the corner now, and Mount Rainier is wearing the winter robes of white, looking especially chilly in the dawn light.

Mt Rainier sunrise

Bead making season wound to an end with the warm weather and a series of warm to hot pink beads.  I have some special rods of pink glass that is called “Striking Pink.”  Before you heat the glass it looks clear, but once it has been heated, or “struck” then it changes color dramatically.

These were hot pink with touches of amber or uranium green, making them a bit warmer.

bubblegum pinks

Beads make wonderful gifts, as do handpainted silk scarves.  Check out my friend Lisa Chitwood’s artwork at India Denali Designs on Facebook.

Pet beads

Mandy Hula blue merle beads

I have been working on a series of pet beads.  Some were inspired by the unfortunate passing of some dearly beloved pets.  I made one series with blacks, grays and hints of brown and blue to honor a blue merle Australian Shepherd, she of the dancing hairy skirts known as Mandy Hula.

Sambeaux tortoiseshell beads

Another series was made to honor a very pretty tortoiseshell long haired cat named Sambeaux.  I had a nice time snuggling with Sambeaux, scratching under her chin while she purred nonstop.  I will miss both of those dear friends and I know their owner is missing them mightily.

Jasper orange tabby beads

A third series were in the colors of an orange and white tabby, our friendly neighbor cat Jasper.  I had not seen him for several weeks and feared the worst, but he showed up with a freshly shaved neck which tells me he must have spent some time at the vet’s.  That series was an extra challenge as the opalino cream colored glass has a lower melting point than the clear and amber encasing.

Click on any of the photos to see the entire row of beads in each series.  I think Aura Sun Arts will be specializing in these pet beads for many a furry friend.  Custom requests are always accepted.