I'm heating the studio with two powerful space heaters and sometimes, even that isn't enough to keep the studio warm (may have something to do with no insulation?!). The cold doesn't dampen the creative spirit, though. I went out to the studio to continue working on the pendants with crystals on 2mm mandrels but my creative muse had other ideas! I picked up the 3.5mm mandrels and started making large hollow beads with Czech glass! The Czech glass has a different "flow" in the flame than the Italian glass, it's "thicker" and flows slower. Perfect for large hollow beads! I haven't made many of them because when I tried a year or so ago, I couldn't clean mine. To this day they have bead release rolling around inside! Well, this morning, I figured out how to clean them - I fill the hollow bead with water, cover the holes with my fingers and shake to break up the bead release and then blow very hard through the bead hole. All the bead release comes out! Clean as a whistle as my father would say.
I've posted pictures of the pendant beads, though because I've been promising pictures of the various styles I've been working on, the hollow bead pictures will come in a few days. I took the simple notion of a crystal plunged into a floral bead and simplified it. The attraction is the crystal only and the metallic finish of the rondelle bead that the disk is suspended from. Here and there, I've varied it a bit - no crystal but a twist of the metallic rondelle, or plain rondelle with a crystal. I'm still playing around with variations. I like these simple, uncomplicated pendants. I'm going to post a few for auction on Justbeads.com in the next day or two. But if you see one you like, please make a comment or drop me an email, I'm happy to sell it to you!
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