Flower Child

Spring must be drawing nigh, because I just keep making these flower beadcaps...I have fuchsias on the brain!

With swirling berry lampwork from BeingBeads:

Berry Blossoms

With icy blue Czech orbs and pearls:

Ice Blossoms

With minty aventurine and Czech glass in "prairie green":

Minty Blossoms

With Czech glass in semi-mirrored copper, with copper pearls:

New Penny Blossoms

With more lampwork by BeingBeads in delicious cobalt and kelly green:

Cobalt Blossoms

With big fat roundels of glowing, milky opalite!

Glowing Blossoms

I have some flower caps in gunmetal-finish nickel ready to go too...Maybe tonight! "Rustic Blossoms."

Some Earrings

I decided the weekend would be for earrings. I made five pair, and one more pair is half done.

This pair features little orange-red seed beads from my Bead Soup from Donna Millard, tiny green turquoise heishi, large blue magnesite discs, pewter heart charms, and ruffly sterling silver beadcaps. The magnesite and heart charms are from Happy Mango Beads.

This pair is based around some "oil slick" lampwork beads from BeadAbundant (Etsy). They have such a lovely antiqued brass shimmer, I had to combine them with brass. I added garnets and pale purple seed beads to bring out the plum tones.

I started with Karen Totten's ceramic leaf charms for this pair, and added some verdigris patina discs from Shannon LeVart, pewter birch leaf charms, and little seed beads in periwinkle. Sterling silver earwires. Birch  leaf charms from Happy Mango Beads.

This pair is a little plain, but I really love these beads. The olive green is sort of glassy and rich. I like how the ivory base has some buttery golden patches, like a perfectly toasted marshmallow.

This pair below is my favorite new design. I wanted to try them first with just a smooth copper cap, but I think I would prefer them to be textured. They remind me of a fuchsia blossom--that's what I was going for with the little "stamens" dangling from the bottom. This pair sports a pair of lampwork beads from BeingBeads. I have another pair half done with green aventurine roundels and little Czech glass stamens in prairie green.

Lune Grows Up

With its own little website!

I recently had a piece accepted for publication, and wanted to have a website link that could be included in the magazine (I didn't have one last time, which is why, I suspect, I got almost zero traffic from the article). I had an old domain name at GoDaddy I'd been hanging onto forever, and decided to activate it. I used Wix.com to design the site, and boy was it ever easy!!! You can design the whole site before spending a dime--so you know whether you want to spend the money--and the fees for a basic service are very reasonable. I highly recommend it! (I do NOT, however, recommend Website Tonight at GoDaddy--non-functional piece of junk.) This site was based on a pre-fab template, but you can change all the colors, backgrounds and photos to make it completely your own, and adding/subtracting elements is easier than falling off a log.

Here it is: www.lunestudio.com

Bead Soup Booty!

I got my Bead Soup package on Monday from my partner, Donna Millard. She very kindly sent me a set of lampwork I had admired in her shop (YES!!) They are the large tablets above in the wonderful patterns and colors--there were some coordinating spacers as well! I love this color combination. Donna also sent an assortment of lucite flowers, all in colors that coordinate with the lampwork, as well as an antique brass finish clasp, some of her vintage "cosmos" connectors and discs, handcut vintage beadcaps in the same retro floral pattern, and some copper finish beads. It was all very charmingly wrapped!

I have some ideas already, and I think I shall probably be making at least a few different items with my new stash!

And here is a picture of the collection I sent to Donna (which she has received so there's no spoiling the surprise):

Double flower clasp, flower connector, beadcaps, textured washer, and (although you can't really see it there at the back) a length of olive green leather lace with textured/riveted ribbon ends, all handmade by me from raw copper; rhyolite and ice flake quartz nuggets (in olive green); dark green and copper pearls; a couple of seed pod-like copper beads; Czech faceted glass in copper mirror finish; and a couple feet of rectangular rolo-type chain. Not a great picture but I had already put it all in baggies when I realized I had forgotten to photograph it and I was too tired (i.e., lazy) to take them all out again. Maybe Donna will have a better picture!