Hag-stone for luck and zebras cos I like them

When we were on holiday, we bought a book entitled "Walks on the Northumberland Coast" by David Haffey. One of the walks he details in his book, entitled Newton-by-the-Sea and Football Hole we did on the Thursday. One of the quotes from his narrative on the walk is "The boulder-beach is worth checking for lucky hag-stones (rocks with holes worn through them: a twist of wire through the hole turns a stone into a protection against witches)."

I was absolutely gobsmacked when I found one! As you can see, I have put a twist of wire through the hole ... just in case!
I will NEVER sell this (even though I could turn it into a pendant) as I want to remain lucky and witch-free! However, it did inspire me to make the beads which I picture here with it. They are a mixture of two shades of grey opaque glass which I just mish-mashed together in the flame and pulled out into a thick stringer. I then made the beads with this which gave a marbled grey bead and then I applied dots of ivory which had been rolled in silver leaf, the whole thing was melted and then some extreme gravity swirling. I was wearing a pair of faded black denim jeans this afternoon when I was photographing them and they go perfectly! I might etch these tomorrow before they become jewellery to give an even more organic look.

Here are some Zebra striped beads which I made after becoming inspired by some similar ones in the book I read on holiday about the history of glass beads. I love all animal prints so I couldn't fail to like these:

Last of the photographs taken today are three beads that I will probably go into production with shortly as I was pleased with them: I will be taking photographs tomorrow of the jewellery I made with the green shoots beads from yesterday. They look really good teamed with some labradorite chunks and bali silver bead caps.

Second series

This will never do! Remember how pleased I was when I discovered Anthony Head was in Jonathan Creek? I just started watching the second series and he's been replaced by someone else (who seems fine) but I would prefer AH! Huh!

Green shoots

I made oodles of these beads yesterday. They are very simple but I needed simple yesterday - just a very light coloured aqua glass with green silver-rich frit melted in and then reduced to give the shiney irridescence which the photograph doesn't quite capture but you get a bit of an idea how pretty they are. Something made me mad yesterday morning, I haven't been as angry as that for a l-o-o-ng time and when I went out into the studio, my hands were shaking and I just felt cross all over. I couldn't make anything until after I'd written a letter absolutely laying into the offending party (not a member of my family and not likely to be anyone who reads this). I won't go into all the boring details as it'll take far too long. Just someone being extremely thoughtless and in the big scheme of things the problem they created will just go away in the course of the next few days.

When I get like that, it completely blocks my creative abilities and so I needed something that I could mindlessly get on with. DH gets annoyed that I let something like that interfere with my work but I'm a sensitive little soul! Once I'd written the letter, I calmed down quite a bit as I felt like I'd dealt with it. But I still had a total blockage on all the lovely new ideas I had woken up with that I was going to try. Hence simple beads, repetitive making over 30 of them but it enabled me to get my inner calm back. They are going to make some really smashing jewellery, sometimes it's quite difficult to fit complicated art beads into jewellery designs. However, the jewellery has to wait today, because the weather is nice for the first time this week, I'm going to get all my gardening duties out of the way.

The letter has been posted today but I cut it down dramatically into something a lot more professional and matter of fact - rising above it all! The good news is I am back to myself now. I've had a lovely morning trying lots of new things out on beads that are presently annealing in my kiln so hopefully I will have more interesting beads to show off tomorrow!

Back to work

I have been away for the last week in Northumberland, we stayed in a self-catering cottage called The Haven in Bamburgh. We have stayed there before several times and it's very aptly named. The weather was amazingly good it was dry ALL week and sunny a lot of the time! Lucky, lucky us! We did lots of walking, eating and relaxing. No work, no internet connection, no mobile phones.

Missy our dog had a lovely time too - she has been in a sulk since we got back cos she isn't getting as much attention as she did when we were away! She is missing all the lovely long walks in scenery like this:
It was my birthday whilst we were there and I got loads of super presents from my family. One of which was a book on the history of Middle Eastern and Venetian glass beads. I have finished reading it and it has tons of illustrations. I have several ancient-bead-inspired ideas which I jotted down in a notebook and I'm going to get started very very soon!

I also read Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer (the third book in her Twilight series) whilst we were there and also finished off two pairs of socks! I was really pleased with the design that emerged from this Fortissimo sock yarn - isn't it jazzy?!

Windy

I have been trying to take photographs of my Pandora beads but the weather has thwarted me. On Wednesday and Thursday it was really overcast and I like natural light for my jewellery and bead photography. This afternoon it was bright enough but windy. I take the photographs outside on a sheet of A4 photocopying paper but keeping it held down was a nightmare! Photography is something I do under suffrance, I have to do it in order to market my wares but I would rather be beadmaking or jewellery making!

I took these photographs of new products added to the website today and then gave up - I will try again with the Pandora beads next week.