Experimenting With Ceramic Beads

I have been experimenting with ceramic beads this week. My kiln is very old I really. It is a hand-me-down, from a friend who started china painting in the late 50’s. When she passed on to her reward, her kiln came to me. It has not one scintilla of controls on it so I have to fly by the “seat of my pants” so I fired one bead for one and a half house. All of the decals were fired off “nada”. So I fire the next ones one hour and 15 minutes. Some of the decals survived. So, I had saved the best to last. I fired those fifty minutes, just right. Like “Little Red Riding Hood” I am going to use one of the beads with some of the beads I received from Jennifer Pride.




As it turns out I used some of the square lampwork with enclosed rose beads that came in the five pounds of lampwork beads that I got from Ebay.
Here are some of the experiment









Be Blessed to be a blessing

SUMMER SALE

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20% off SALE On all Jewelry in both my on-line
ETSY SHOPS



MagpieTreasureTrove.etsy.com
If you did not find something in MagpieTreasure Trove you may want to look in CopperCandyJules


CopperCandyJules.etsy.com
There are some really nice designs in both shops So take a peek.
Be Blessed

TALKING BACK

I have a feeling you all have had the experience of trying at least to talk back to a computer. That is what I have been doing the better part of this week. I was trying to set up a new Etsy Shop just to list my copper jewelry Well they won’t put two accounts on the same email. Well on and on. At last I made in late Monday evening, much too tired to post anything as yet but my new Etsy Shop will be http://coppercandyjules.etsy.com.
I have been doing some experiments with my little 60 year old hand-me-down kiln . I just fly by the seat of my pants. First I was trying to expand on something I noticed. Copper does not melt. So I made charms of glass with copper wire designs inside. A success!



Another experiment was slumping glass. I know that porcelain melts at a much higher temperature than glass. I wanted to slump a piece of glass to decorate a bracelet. So I built a base in the bottom of a small porcelain cup and a piece of resist paper and laid the glass on the top and let it slump. A success!



Be Blessed

Copper May Be The New Gold

Hey Hey I have been busy designing copper jewelry this week. I am very pleased with the results. I have been back to the Ace Hardware three times for the #8 copper wire. I am so impressed with it. I also think if we take another look at copper as a purchasing public, copper will become a shining star in the costume jewelry world. What with gold approaching $2.000 per oz., and silver rising to an astounding $30. Per oz. Copper, looks really good to me. I will have to rest from working with #8 gage wire for a while because I am suffering an attack of arthritis in my hand. Heck fire.









Anyway I have also been making Fimo clay. I used my cut crystal for impressions. Well you have to use crystal for something! Right ? Lori Anderson put me to thinking about Lapis. I put gold leaf in the clay to reflect the look of real lapis




I mixed blue and white to marble the turquoise look. I am pleased with the results.




Planning a spring bracelet







This week-end we took a two hour trip to Graham to visit friends. The drive was delightful. The weather was beautiful. Just before the first winter snow and ice storm.


Be Blessed

Wonderful Indian Summer

What can I say I have nothing to say except we are having a lovely Indian Summer. Our fuju persimmons are becoming ripe and should be ready to harvest in about 3 or 4 weeks. Makes me wonder if they will stop the traffic again this fall.
We are having a craft sale at the Senior Center soon and I have been making the most fun jewelry with seeds and fake berries.
We have new neighbors. I took them a picture of lemon tea on moving day. They brought the picture and ice bucket back last night. they sat down and talked for a while, come to find out they are from Chicago but were born in Xalappa Mexico, one of our favorite places in Mexico. It was fun reminiscing about our favorite places in Mexico. I think they are going to be good neighbors. Be Blessed

I Love Jewlry in July

Found it. I had miss placed my word processor. I found it by going to “MY COMPUTER” and clicking on program files and on and on. Computers give me a pain in the puttootie!
I have been busy making lovely jewelry. I made beaded necklaces ear rings and bracelets to match., from the beads that my daughter and I found at the bead marker. . One is aqua crystals with paraidot (sp) and gold crystals as accents another was two tone blue one light bead another dark very shiny with Chinese porcelain beads as accents. Another was turquoise ogee beads with lappis 6 mm beads as accent. This set I made bracelet, ear rings, and ring to match very stunning









A friend gave me some little abalone shell oblong pieces, apparently they had been a watch band for a man because there were so many of them. They were graduated in size. I had some copper foil tape from years ago when I was into stained glass work. I made the decision to wrap the pieces in copper. I joined the pieces together with a piece of plastic egg carton and 6000 glue I just happened to have some very heavy copper wire scrapes so I used it to make a cuff bracelet and a wire bridge to suspend the abalone copper wrapped pieces from. So I had enough abalone copper wrap pieces to make ear rings a cuff bracelet and a designer necklace. I had some turquoise giblet beads left over from my acorn bead days. I took some round flat beads that in their former life were the legs and arms of a bead doll. I strung them turquoise small wooden bead large wooden bead small wooden bead then turquoise giblets, until got half-way then I strung the wooden beads graduating to make a ball then more giblets ,then a large turquoise bead in the very middle. I made ear rings to match. Pretty good for a week’s work/playing, if I do say so myself and I do >