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

Twinkles like the winter sky

black and white necklace with earrings

Black and white beads set each other off; the white ones twinkling like the stars in the winter sky.  Here I have the necklace I created a few weeks back with new matching earrings.  I added a third row of beads on the necklace as well.  Looping and branching as you work is a nice change from beads strung in single file.  Click on the photo for a close up view.

There are three handmade Aura Sun Arts beads in the set, the large black and white beads.  They have traces of goldstone and bluestone glitter jazzing them up.

Speaking of the night sky, Venus makes an appearance in the early morning hours.  Check with Astronomy Magazine for the best viewing in your locale.