What's this then?

I don't know what this is but a few weeks ago, the tree at the end of our garden dropped all of its leaves (seemed like a funny time of year for it, but there you are) and then bloomed. Amazing, big, red waxy flowers. This is quite a deceptive picture actually, because I must have taken it on the only day in the past 6 weeks when the sun was shining; otherwise it's been rainy and cloudy.

More tortoiseshell...

This is similar to the previous tortoiseshell beads, but with a nice whirlpool in the middle of the beads. These beads, are rolled in silver foil, then half-rolled in frit before being pressed into a lentil shape, or 'oblate spheroid' as my friend Steve would have it. They are then heated in the middle and the swirl created. I love mixing glass with silver because you never know what will happen. Here the frit has pushed the silver to the edges, which has created a lovely silvery rim around the frit. This frit mix is actually a pinky-purple.... but when you add silver in, this is what you get!

Beads available from Etsy if you would like them - http://www.etsy.com/shop/JoopyAndSmith

Tortoiseshell or peacock, or something like that...

I really like these. Mixing silver and glass, you're never quite sure what you're going to get. These are made of pink glass wrapped in silver foil, then rolled in a frit mix from Val Cox. It's created this amazing tortoiseshell effect, with added blues and pinks. The frit has pushed the silver foil aside so there's also a really cool mosaic effect. I really like these...and I'm offering a set of seven (5 tortoishell plus two co-0rdinating golden lentils, also wrapped in silver foil) over in my Etsy shop - http://www.etsy.com/shop/JoopyAndSmith . Loads of scope for all sorts of jewellery; I can see the large one (3cm in size) as a pendant, and the two little ones would make really nice earrings.

Beads versus jewellery...

I tussled with this one for a long time; whether to make jewellery from my own beads and sell that or whether to just sell beads. The thing is, more people want to buy beads than jewellery, I think, and once people start muttering that they want to buy your necklaces just to 'get at' the beads, one has to bow to the inevitable, I feel...! So here are a few of my offerings, available via Etsy at the moment and we'll just see how it goes. I will be keeping the beads I use for my own jewellery different from those I sell.