Adventures with Glass and Fire

One of my favorite sets and my very first goddess bead are both closing today. The set incorporates a lot of twisted cane and careful dot work, two things that I do not use very often. After how nice this set turned out, however, I’ll probably be doing a lot more with them in the future. Eve is the first goddess I created and it turned out so nice I’m sorry to see it go.

Bittersweet

Goddess Eve

Just one new auction today, I’ll be putting up a variety of focals tomorrow I believe, so faithful watchers aren’t missing anything. This set is based on the myth of Arachne, that audacious Greek weaver who challenged Athena herself to a contest. Though myths vary on who won the contest, the ending is always the same - Athena shames Arachne, who hangs herself; feeling sorry for the mortal, Athena then restores her to life as a spider.

Arachne

I particularly like the way the goldstone and intense black contrasted so strongly with the base color of the beads. There’s a lot of webbing and really shiny streaks throughout these beads, giving them a great sense of depth and detail. The natural forms of the beads are very attractive to me, as well. They remind me of stones, polished and carved with the spidery images.

Two more auctions closing today:

Spring Blast

This set was really fun to make - the twisted cane has a lot of color to it, and the interaction of the green and coral produced some pretty cool border reactions.

Biorchanic II

I really liked how this bead turned out; it was the first biorchanic bead I did that was not pressed or otherwise formed, but grew organically from the underlying design at the core of the bead. This bead has a very layered feel to it - the core has a lot of organic reactions, layered with transparent glass, with patches of metallic, reduced glass, and even more layers of clear and twisted stringer.

Some cool new beads up for auction now. First up:

Heart Pools

A few months back I did a series of beads called Tidal Pools that turned out quite well and were very well-received. When I was thinking about the kinds of beads to make, my wife suggested I try a version of tidal pools incorporating some valentine themes. Though it’s hard to see in this picture, there is a lot of sparkle in the central ‘red spot’ of each bead. Trapped silver under a variety of transparent red colors creates a really rich, ruby glow.

Birth Goddess

I never thought I’d be a big fan of making goddess beads, but recently I’ve been very intrigued by the concept of different sorts of goddesses, most of a dark or angry bent. The Aztec patroness of death in childbirth was the inspiration for this focal; she was known as the snake-woman and helped to create the world of this era from the bones and blood of men and gods from the previous era. I like the darker, more aggressive look of this bead and will probably be making some more in this vein.