Saturday 10 October 2015

My Favourite Autumnal Palette

I have found this year, that I have a favourite Autumnal palette. Orange, purple, turquoise and a sort of mossy green. Here are some of the things I've made over the years in these tones:








You can see from these that I sometimes the turquoise veers towards the cobalt blue, and that I like to add in a bronzy gold/brown too, but this is definitely a palette which I return to again and again, particularly during this time of year. Rich, Autumnal tones, but with the vibrancy that I crave when I look at your more typical earthy Autumnal palettes. 

I returned to this palette again last weekend:


Sometimes, beads arrive and you just fall in love with them. Sometimes they speak to you straight away and say - use me now! This was the case with these gorgeous lampwork dahlias from Pasion de Vidrio. Ronald makes the most gorgeous lampwork beads, although he's currently taking a break from his art. Thankfully, I stocked up a bit first. (Yes, I bet you were worried that I would run out of beads. To quote my friend Keirsten, I needed fresh beads. My other ones had gone briefly stale.) Simply pairing them with Humblebeads' gorgeous disc beads (they fell together on my work top - I'd love to say that it was my intuitive way of working that brought them together but alas, I fear it was just my messiness and lack of organisation!) meant that I had a pair of earrings in my favourite Autumnal tones:




Friday 9 October 2015

Jana Filípková's Astonishing Beads

I told you the other day that I had to share some of the most especially awesome beads that I've bought over the past few months with you - some lampwork glass from Jana Filípková. 


This set, specifically. Aren't they amazing? The detailing, the depth of pattern and colour. I recently made my first lampwork beads and honestly, I can't quite fathom these at all. They are simply astonishing.


I snagged this set a few months ago, and I couldn't believe them when they arrived. Jana describes her work as 'painted' with glass stringer, which of course they are (painted with MOLTEN GLASS) but what I love about the butterflies (see?!) in both of these sets is that they have such an illustrative quality to them. Really, it would be amazing to even be able to 'draw' a crude butterfly with little or no style with 0.5mm molten glass stringer, but to be able to create a drawing with such style and character - well, my mind is blown. I've used 2 of the large petalled vocals, but I haven't quite worked up to any of the butterflies from either set yet. Bead intimidation...



This set is on its way to me. Just look at those colours....throw in a little turquoise and I'm in Autumnal-platte heaven. I'll let you know when they arrive!

Oh, and by the way, whilst writing this post I realised that Jana also has an etsy shop! I know that Facebook auctions are 'the thing' these days, but I love an online shop. Nice to have fixed prices and be able to stroll through sold items too. 

Wednesday 7 October 2015

Black, gold and green - and a little softness too




When I posted a picture of this bracelet, one of my good friends (Claire) said 'super colour combo - one of those unexpected ones that you do so well' which was of course, an enormous compliment coming from someone who kind of knows what she's doing with colour and components herself, ahem! I almost feel like I'm cheating when I accept compliments like that though - I'm so led by what's in front of me. This bracelet was actually a reworking of one from a couple of years ago (not sure I ever took a photo of the original, sorry) which for some reason I made for an approximately 12" wrist (not quite, but you get the picture!) and had needed re-doing for some time. It was sitting on my work tray, along with a new set of astonishing lampwork beads from Jana Filípková (I must show you the rest of the set sometime soon - really and truly, astounding), and somehow the fun spottiness of the vintage black acrylic, and the playful shimmering sparkliness of Jana's glitter ball seemed like they wanted to go together. It also helped to balance the bracelet nicely too - those large acrylic beads are actually very light, and the smoky frosted sea-glass-esque rounds on the other side are on the heavy side by comparison. The large glitter ball did the trick, weight-wise. (And psst - there's another butterfly on this bracelet too...!)

I had some of the acrylic rounds left over from shortening my canklet-style bracelet, and so decided to turn them into some simple earrings. I don't often work with black - I'm not entirely sure why, I do wear black both in my clothes and make-up, but somehow I really don't like it in home decor or beads. Too harsh; too stark. I knew these beads needed softening for them to work for me, but as these rounds are on the large side, I felt that adding beads onto them wasn't the thing to do here, despite this post. I tried flattening out a couple of etched brass bead caps but they didn't look right, and then I remembered Lorelei Eurto's vintage tin bead caps that I splurged on a while back. Still have a small cache of them left over, pleasingly! These lovely floral ones - pinks, peaches, greens and cornflower blooms on a yellow base - gave the black acrylic just the right feel, and tapped into their vintage feel. I also had exactly the right weenie lampwork beads from Julie Wong Sontag in a soft, etched lemon yellow, to decorate the earwires. 


Both of these sold the same day I shared them, so perhaps I should work with black more often....!

Monday 5 October 2015

Butterflies

Why did the butterfly flutter...oh, you know the rest! These past 2 weeks, I seem to have developed a real thing for butterflies. Don't know why - yes, I am often drawn to 'things with wings' but butterflies can sometimes be a little saccharine - a bit 'wee girly' and sugary for me. Certainly to be the focus of a piece. But somehow, they've ended up in my designs again and again, whether I like it or not recently. I've also seem to lost all ability to make anything other than earrings. Whatever - I'm going with it. Often, I find my earrings can be cute but a little pedestrian, so I'm quite enjoying creating slightly more exuberant earrings for once. Let's see where this takes me.



Here in Butterfly Dance, I've stacked a whole heap of elements together. Pressed glass, recycled glass, Fallen Angel Brass, Vintaj Brass, Gunmetal caps, more pressed glass, copper hoops, vintage brass butterfly charms, handmade lampwork rondelles (some of Julie Wong Sontag's infamous 'weenies'), and my own oxidised silver earwires. I love how the butterflies are framed by those copper rings - and I love the real mix of metals. Even the brasses - the three varieties here are each so different, and each a naturally developed patina. Brass really is a beautiful and under-appreciated metal. I'm also usually not particularly keen on brass and copper - something about the yellow and orange tones being too close to one another - but the 3-tone brass, the gunmetal, the oxidised silver - I think it's safe to add the copper in there too, it only adds to the multi-mixed-metal-ness. You can find these for sale in the shop




Admiral are a pair I am particularly pleased with. I received these gorgeous wooden buttons as a lovely little gift from Claire who owns Smitten Beads, as part of a challenge she offered up in her shop. They really are rather special, don't you think? Now, as I said before, sometimes my earrings can be a little, well, safe. Simple. Pedestrian if I'm being particularly hard on myself! When I have a long craft fair, or a short deadline, then I definitely go into earring-making machine mode. I don't make earrings that I don't like or wouldn't wear, but I don't make earrings like these or these or these. Also, I don't/can't call my earrings things like I Rose From Marsh Mud. I would really like to, but I call my earrings things like Butterfly Dance. You see - 'safe'! I am just not edgy [nor do I know enough about poetry!] I guess - *sigh*

Anyway, I digress. Quite often my earrings have 2 or 3 parts to them. And they are simply stacked. Here's a good example:


Don't get me wrong. I like these. I like the colours, shapes and contrasting textures; I like their neatness. They're some of my favourites from my Summer earrings haul. But they are simply stacked - there's no engineering, so to speak, to them. And quite often when I try to wrangle a non-beady/round element into a pair of earrings, which of course have to hang 'just so', they droop limply and unconvincingly and simply don't work. 


But here, as you can hopefully see, the buttons hang just as I wanted them too. And the slim chains swoop down below, the leaves don't tip as they could, but hang down nicely - all in all, I'm rather pleased with these. More cute lampwork from Julie Wong Sontag, by the way. 




This last pair for this post are a pair which I *think* I may have to keep for myself. There's something about this combination of turquoise, darkly textural brass, this particular shade of red and the polka dots that I find hard to resist. I love that the holes in the centre of Helen Chalmers' discs have plenty of room for several slim-gauge wire wraps. I've used 0.6mm wire here and as you can see, they comfortably allow 4 passes at least per disc. This allows me to suspend them facing outwards, which, as Helen's beads really do stand looking at front-ways (sideways?) on, is a lovely bonus. These earrings also have a little touch that I've been adding to quite a few pairs recently - the embellished earwires. I used to do this relatively often but sort of fell out of the habit - I've been stalking reading a favourite blog recently, right from the beginning (a trick I picked up from Julie), and was reminded just how much I like decorating earwires - and so have resolved to do it more often. Julie's tiny lampwork beads are just the perfect size for this. If I do decide to sell these, I'll pop a link back here, but in all honesty, I think they'll be staying with me! 


Saturday 3 October 2015

Rustic Autumn


A few weeks ago, I added these to my etsy shop. I also wrote about them here, over on Art Bead Scene. I thought you might like to read about them too, and get a peek into the creative process behind them. 

Thursday 1 October 2015

Pinch, punch - it's a Sale at Songbead!


Pinch, punch - it's the first of the month! There's nothing that spurs me on to make than sending lots of lovely jewellery out into the world - so help me out! I'm having a sale today and tomorrow - you can take 20% off everything in the shop right now with coupon code PINCH20. Just enter it at checkout (any problems, just let me know). Enjoy!


Wednesday 30 September 2015

It's a wrap for the wraps

Frequent readers will know that earlier this year, I was struck down with an addiction to making wrap bracelets. This actually culminated with being featured on the front cover of October's issue of Beads and Beyond:


Pretty much my own personal wrap de resistance.  I was given the words 'Ode to Autumn' to work with (a Keats poem, I was ashamed to not know, although I did recognise it when the penny finally dropped) and certainly, that idea of an Ode or Song was my inspiration here - the idea of a wrap bracelet (which can be worn as a necklace too) seemed the perfect response to this idea. I hunter-gathered as many Autumn art beads as I could, co-ordinating accompanying beads (ceramics, copper and my favourite Czech pressed glass) and spun this wrap together. I'm not sure I have anywhere to go from here, so my wrap-making compulsion seems to have ground to a halt. 

I did however have one left in me for the West End Fair, and here it is. One of my current favourite colour-combinations at the moment, royal blue, sky blue and sunny yellow. A dash of orange in this one too, thanks to the awesomely ridiculous hands of Mindy Moogin MacGregor


Beautiful lapis coins echoing Mindy's amazing lentil, wooden teeth, Peruvian opal discs (more lentil-echoing there) and some sunny, pressed glass rounds. It's a fairly happy piece, I'd say!

You can find Aztec for sale here

Monday 28 September 2015

Forest Walk

I'm not quite sure how I find myself year - here, at the end of September. Surely it was only just the beginning of June a couple of days ago? Or at least, that's how it feels. You've heard it all before - I've certainly written it before - but there's truth and importance to be taken from this sensation. Sometimes time seems to pass so quickly, I feel like I'm not quite present in the moment - what happened to June, to July? I know August was a craft fair....but it's good to take a moment to be here, in this crystalline droplet of time. To breathe. To BE. (You can take this also as a warning to myself, because once we get into October, we're galloping towards November and craft fair season, leading up to Christmas...Oy.)

I've been feeling a real urge to submerge myself in the creative process right now. To dive in, headfirst; to shut off from the click-click, beep-bleep and blink of electronica and social media and general everyday distraction. But somehow, I haven't been able too. It's terribly frustrating when your  heart and soul knows what it needs, but your head cannot give you the space. And of course, there are so many jobs and tasks that need to be done before you can even allow yourself to *think* about turning to making. Messages to be answered, orders to be packed, bunnies to be hung out with. Maybe it's the time of year - having been in full-time education until 24, and then spent the following 8 years teaching in schools, it's hard to throw off that 'new school year' feeling. It's a feeling that I like, actually - turning over a new leaf, a real sense of something new. Being open to possibility and change. . Or even just the possibility of the possibility of change. The chance to try new things; new techniques and media. It's exciting! And therefore doubly frustrating that I haven't quite synced my body with this feeling. Not least because I burned my hand badly enough to have to go to hospital last week, and have been hampered with the use of only one hand this week. Thankfully, my right hand was the sole functioning one (I am VERY right-handed, despite always having a secret desire to be a leftie. Is that just me?), and so things haven't been quite as difficult as they could have been. But I'm glad that, as of last night, my left hand really is feeling very useable. 



One thing I did manage a few days ago was this bracelet. Simple stringing, and plier-use aided by a glove protecting my sore hand, was manageable at least. I received some beautiful bonus beads (the best kind!) from the lovely Sally of Soul Silver with my most recent order from her (the red ones in the bracelet below). I was immediately struck my their rich, glowing quality - the depth and luminosity of their colours. They draw you in. Goodness, I do love colour! Their richness and depth also spoke to me of the season. I reached for other beads - a toning handwoven glass round from myself, a selection of Czech glass in equally rich tones, and a beautiful, speckled ceramic round from Bo Hulley - and combined these with contrasting brass and bronze. Originally, this bracelet was charm-free, but I felt it needed *something* and the Fallen Angel Brass feathers were just the ticket. 


Just look at how glowing Sally's lampwork beads are here. Even more so in real life. I've also used a magnetic clasp, from The Bead Shop Scotland. I've always been a little suspicious of magnetic clasps, not trusting them to stand up to what they should. But I bought a few of these due to the recommendations I read, and their uncommon prettiness (you can see there are several different designs and sizes on their site) and boy, am I pleased that I did. I was able to satisfy more than one customer during the West End Fair by switching clasp on a bracelet they liked but struggling to fasten themselves. And really, they are so lovely that I have decided to use one from the outset here. Super-strong too. 

I love designing bracelets - I love their linear qualities. I love to take the eye on a walk along them, to have interest all around - and so 'Forest Walk' seemed an apt title for this piece, given the association with the seasons which Sally's beads invoke for me. Also, a nod to a recent walk we took here in the Lothians. 


Saturday 12 September 2015

Songbead - Free Shipping this weekend!


Hey, so you know how I said that my shop is stuffed to the gunnels full of tasty jewellery? Well, guess what? You can get free shipping today and tomorrow! Whether you're along the road in Edinburgh, across in France or on the other side of the world in Australia, you can bag yourself some beautiful handmade jewellery, delivered straight to your door free of charge! Yay! Just use coupon code 15FREE at the checkout.


Wednesday 9 September 2015

Massive Songbead Update!




Yep, these are all the things which are heading, or have already landed, in my etsy shop, post-West End Fair. Phew! Are you in need of earrings? I've got ALL THE EARRINGS. Seriously - just look at that collage - I felt slightly gluttonous compiling it, somehow. Several bracelets also, and well, necklaces...ok, not so many there, but they were really very popular at the fair, I'm extremely grateful to say. And of course, earrings are quicker to make and refill spaces :-) 

Head over there now to find the perfect piece for you!

Friday 4 September 2015

Creating on the fly

I'm currently winding down from my epic craft fair (23 days and counting!) and my 3 week intense dive back into the world of professional classical music with Re:Sound - singing and playing and acting and performing...the whole shebang. We're up north (in Scotland), travelling around in a hired camper van. Roomy enough for a lap tray, and a bunch of new beads to organise - lay out, pick up, move around.....to ruminate over. You've got to do that when you get new supplies, right?


Some of the new beads are from the awesome Julie Wong Sontag - my precious Uglibeads. No, I know - they are not ugly in any way, are they?!


These are 'weenies' (I think the name says it all!) and very special ones too - extra teeny weenies. 


*This* weeny. Pretty awesome, huh? One of the reasons I adore beads so much is their size. Bigger may be better but tiny is the best, almost every time for me. I am enjoying these tiny little pops of colour's scale and teensy stature immensely. 

Watch this space to see what they become...

Friday 14 August 2015

FLASH sale at The Curious Bead Shop!

I'm finally back home after several weeks working away - and so to celebrate, I'm having a wee sale! Head over to The Curious Bead Shop and snag a lovely 15% off today. Yippee!


Sunday 2 August 2015

New quote for my Inspiration page


“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up & get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part & a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you.”
~ Chuck Close
I've posted this onto my Inspiration page to keep this - long neglected, so a new resolution is to try and add to it when I read something good and worth holding onto - more often than once every three years at any rate! 


Friday 31 July 2015

AJE Component of the Month - Niky Sayers

I was lucky enough to be a recipient once again over on Art Jewelry Elements with their component of the month. This time around it was Niky Sayers who was giving away lovely components - and I was super excited to get this gorgeous clasp (yes, that's not just an old penny - it's a clasp!) to work with. Look at the fat wee wren! 


Also (and I'm so impressed I remembered to snap this), just look at this gorgeous tin that it arrived in!  How cute is that? 



I decided to keep things sweet and simple and reached into my ever-expanding stash of glass flower beads, and came up with this piece. I took my colour cue from the lovely lampwork flowers from Linda Newnham, which seemed to go perfectly with the lovely patina that Niky has brought out in the clasp.



Now go see what everyone else made!


Guest bloggers

Wednesday 15 July 2015

From trash to treasure: Big Sky {Tapestry}

Ok, so you've probably clicked on this post and are now thinking 'where's the trash?!' At least, I kind of hope that's what you were thinking. Not that kind of trash. 

A while back, I was lucky enough to score a MEGA destash bundle from one of my favourite jewellery designers, Eve Smith of Silver Meadows. Eve used to work with (and had an eye for) some really special lampwork glass beads, but since moving on to working with silver (and if you take a look, you'll see she's really found a beautiful and unique voice!) doesn't work with them to the same extent. 

However, this all worked very much to my advantage when I purchased her destash at the end of 2014. Seriously good stuff - fellow art bead-enthusiasts, you would be sick to the back teeth at the goodies I  scored! SERIOUSLY GOOD STUFF. 

Because of one thing and another (essentially, 2015 being a bit of a bugger of a year for us), it's taken me a while to dip my toe into the wonder that is my destash wonder-haul. But recently, I've managed just that. Perhaps even a couple of toes, or even a whole foot. 

One of my favourite things about this type of purchase is that (although Eve furnished me with a full round of pictures), you somehow don't really know what you're getting. Eve had beads from so many lampwork artists - some of which were familiar to me, and some of which were unknowns. Some of these artists don't even make beads anymore, which makes this finds extra special, somehow. 


That was the case with the bead artist here - on double-checking with Eve, Beverley Hicklin. These beads were ones that particularly leapt out at me when I took a good look through my stash again a few weeks ago. They have amazing depth and layers of colour, almost like a slice of rock or agate.



I knew I wanted to do something that just show-cased their astonishing beauty, but that they needed something special as their surroundings....and so I immediately thought '{song}beads'. It took me a while to find the right colours to complement the lampwork, but I remembered I had a tube of slightly odd-coloured beads - beads which had been described as 'Coated White Opaque Lila Gold Lustre'. Sounds gorgeous, right? All shimmery, with maybe a hint of purple, Lila being the German for purple? 


Nope. Kind of oatmeal with a light Picasso. Not what I was hoping for at the time, so they just got tossed into my bag of tubes and boxes of seed beads. But when my mind started whirring with what to do with Beverley's beads, I remembered and thought that perhaps that oatmeal would be just the ticket - and what do you know, it was. A touch of blueberry Picasso in the mix to bring out those blue layers in the lampwork, and this bracelet almost stitched itself. (It didn't though. These handwoven glass bad boys take around half an hour each - ouch!). 


I'm pleased with the finished result - and although I've entitled it Big Sky, which seems apt given the landscape quality which the lampwork beads have, in my head I've also called it 'Tapestry'. Something about the layers within the lampwork glass being paired with the woven nature of my own beads. 

You can find Big Sky {Tapestry} in my shop here



Tuesday 14 July 2015

Songbead Sale!


Hey everyone! I'm having a wee sale from today through until Thursday. You can take a whopping 25% off all jewellery until then with coupon code JULY25. Just type the code in at the checkout (click on 'Apply Shop Coupon Code') and Etsy will recalculate the total. Loads of new pretties waiting to fly out to their new homes! Hop over now. 

Monday 13 July 2015

Sweet Child of Mine

I wrote the other day about the challenge of necklaces. My own personal challenge it seems - many designers I know seem to think necklace first and bracelet very much later. My brain is funny like that. 

I also promised that I would share my other necklaces from that particular necklace-making session. Those sessions tend to only happen when I have stern words with myself, and epic events on the horizon....! It began with my wheeling myself off to a cafe (my travelling beads have reached such proportions that I use a mini wheelie suitcase right now - not my usual but it does tend to happen with a big event around the corner....I am *not* one for travelling light, it seems), ordering some tea, resisting cake with the mental promise of hot chocolate further down the line, and pawing through my bead boxes. 

And this is what happened:


In all honesty, I'm not totally sure how it did. These designs usually come about because I am drawn to a particular art bead in my stash - something that gets up and shouts 'pick me, pick me!'. I've had the gorgeous puffed ceramic heart from the hands of Nancy Schindler-Adams for a while now, over a year in fact, but somehow (although I love it), it never quite made itself heard. Something about that particular shade of yellow - I'm never too good with the greener yellows. And then the grey-black wash over it too....I just wasn't sure how to use it in a way that was both the heart, but also 'me', if you know what I mean. 

I think it actually began with the pressed glass - the grungy, rough-cut black/bronze faceted rounds, and the bonnie turquoise poppies. And then it sort of fell together and flowed from there....

Sometimes it's like that. You get to the end of something and are never quite sure how it happened, even though you are rather glad it did!

Some more grungy, rough-cut frosted grey/black faceted glass beads - these are 'English Cuts' although I'm never quite sure what makes them English - one of my favourite pewter Green Girl Studio keys (my stash is very, very low of these, I must remedy that as soon as I have the pennies!) and a couple of my 'end-of-day' handwoven glass {song}beads. Somehow, it balanced itself out, all by itself. 

Black and green-yellow - two colours (yes, I know that's technically incorrect, but never mind!) I rarely work with. Yet here, they both leapt to the forefront of my designer/maker brain. I'm glad they did. 

And, for those children of the eighties like me, here's a bit of nostalgia that (of course) inspired the title. I couldn't quite bring myself to drop the F from of, but Guns n' Roses had no issues there. A real classic - when size truly mattered in a man - hair size, that is. And also, I feel in the shoulder department - check out Axel's from 0.26"! Worthy of Dallas, I'm sure. 

Saturday 11 July 2015

Summer Lovin', and the challenge of necklaces

Us jewellery designers, we all have our comfort spots. Things that flow easily from our hands and minds, pieces that we can make almost in our sleep. Pieces that almost feel like they design themselves. 

For me, it's bracelets that tend to fall into that category. Somehow, when I get new art beads, they often tend to become bracelets in my mind before anything else. I can see how they would sit, what could sit around them; bracelet composition seems to be what my mind first leaps to. (Of course, now I've said that, there will be no bracelets coming from here this week...!). 

But not everyone wants to wear just bracelets. They want earrings, and necklaces too. And sometimes even rings (more about those in a later post). Earrings, generally, are fine and enjoyable. Sometimes I struggle to create more elaborate earrings (ironic, as those are the ones I'm drawn to wear) but generally, I can whip up a bunch of earrings easily in one sitting. 

But necklaces.....oh necklaces, sometimes you feel like my nemesis! I really have to steel myself for them, 92% of the time. The other 8%, something random happens in my mind and I thank all the stars for that, but the rest of the time, they do feel more of a challenge. I guess perhaps because there's so much of them, and because they frame the face, and because I don't really like to wear them myself, and, and and....just *because*. They are my nemesis, and they always have been, since I began this jewellery designer/maker business.

However, sometimes a bead lands on your doormat that really demands to be a necklace. Nothing else will do. Size and heft have a lot to do with that, but sometimes it's not even that - they just have a necklace *quality* to them. All of these things were true with this glorious handmade lampwork glass heart that arrived at the beginning of this week:

From the outrageously talented hands of Sally Soul Silver, it flew across to me from the other side of Scotland, Renfrewshire to Edinburgh, and it was mega-love at first touch. Of course, I'd bought the thing, so you'd hope I'd love it(!) but it really is something special to behold. 

And of course, I knew it would have to be part of a necklace. Sometimes that can make me a little sad, because I know of my tendency to shy away from necklaces at times, and I think that the beautiful bead which I am holding won't be able to fulfil its true destiny for a good while. 

(Yes, I know - I'm a bit odd.)

But with this one, I just knew that it had to become something wonderful, or as wonderful as I could muster, sooner rather than later. Might have something to do with the rather epic craft fair just around the corner, and (as you'd imagine from someone who has tendencies to avoid necklaces when possible) the lack of necklaces in my current stock load. 

Anyway, I sat down the day after this glorious hunk of glass arrived (all 26mm of it) and thought: NECKLACE. In fact, I thought NECKLACES, and I'll share the other two pieces I created that day in another post. 

And here's what happened:


Handmade lampwork glass, Czech pressed glass, Indonesian lampwork glass, recycled glass, handwoven glass....it's a whole lot of glassy loveliness. 

I made my own antiqued copper rose bail for Sally's heart.

I've been working on a new pattern for 15mm handwoven glass {song}beads, and so the violet opal one here is one of those new chunky monkeys, alongside another gorgeous piece of handmade lampwork glass from Sally.


Oh, and those tiny purple spacers? They're dyed nut beads. Pretty cool! They have a lovely, organic look and feel to them. 

It's a lovely, long, easy-to-wear, perfectly summery, Scottish sea and heather glassy fest, and I'm pretty pleased with it.





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