Unpredictable Coral and Sale Preview

Due to weather, I had to call off my shift as a video relay interpreter (VI) yesterday. I took advantage of the time to continue to organize for the clearance/seconds sale on Saturday.

I've got so many handmade beads, I've decided to organize and sell the majority of them by color. Here are a few small bead sets I had left over from shows. They're matched up for earring pairs.




The Orange/Coral glass color is varied and striated as you can see from the pictures of the glass rods below. When you make beads from the same glass rod, the beads will sometimes be slightly different in color. I like that, makes someone look twice and adds to the richness.





See what I mean? Love the coral, it ranges from pinky to orangey - very unpredictable! Do you have a material you work with that you consider unpredictable?

Sitting on my workbench....

Last fall, I was on JustBeads.com and saw these Navaho Red Square Beads made by artist Mary Harding. I fell in love with them and bought them the minute I saw them. I knew the "red" matched the "coral" colored glass I have stashed away. Coral isn't an easy color to match it Mary's beads were perfect.

So I made the coral colored glass bling links especially for Mary's beads. They look great together don't they?



I'm working on a design and they're laid out on my workbench. How to connect them - wire? chain? I'm not sure yet.

Any ideas?

Believe it or not.....

...these are all classified as the same color, "coral."

Glass is the same as dye lots in other arts, fabrics, seed beads, etc. The "dye lot" phenomenon causes hoarding among glass beadmakers - wanting to make sure you have enough of that color so you don't run out. But there's a down side to hoarding, end of the year inventory otherwise known as counting all of the extra pounds of glass you've bought.

With that in mind, I'm going to start selling off some of my extra glass. I really really really don't want to count some 6,000 rods of glass again this December.

But first, I've got that Open Studio coming up this Sunday, better get back to work putting price tags on my beads!