2nd Saturday State of Your Studio/3rd Friday Cone 5/6 Glaze Tests

Some sweet tiny heart beads for a special order

Every 2nd Saturday, and every 3rd Friday Marsha Neal Studio sets up  linking blog posts on BeadsofClay  for us to post to and catch up on other studios in the bead and handmade world.  Anyone can participate who wants to share their studio happenings or glaze tests.  You don't have to be a ceramic bead artist to participate.  I hope you will join in on the fun. And you have a month to link up your post.  I thought I would share some recent glaze tests  and a few beads since I am sort of bridging the time between these two linky posts on BOC.

The tiny hearts in a bigger heart!!

Coyote Cone 5/6 Glaze  Layered Black with Really Red on top

Coyote 5/6 Glaze Cedar Shino

Coyote 5/6 Glaze layered with Gun Metal Green then with Archie's Base on Top

Coyote 5/6 Glaze Pistachio Shino

Coyote 5/6 Glaze layered with Black, then Shino, then Archie's Base

My friend Cait, the BarefootWeaver's buttons using some of these test strip combos.

I hope you enjoyed this color treat today.  These are indeed amazing glazes!!

Art Bead Scene May A Simple Garland

Here is how I came to make this necklace.

 

I really love the colors in this month's Art Bead Scene challenge painting Hide and Seek by Berthe Marisot.  I made this large donut pendant last month to reflect my favorite color combination of ochre and a red brown.  I felt that it also worked for the painting Hide and Seek. 

I have been wanting to try Heather Power's Bird Nest Bail tutorial for some time and I decided to try it with this pendant.  I found that it worked very well.  I used an antiqued copper wire in gauge 22 because that is what I had.  But I do love this color and gauge for this pendant.  I added three of my light red round ceramic beads to bring out the color of the cherries in the the painting and the similar color in the pendant.  The black flower is a vintaj charm.

The two simple leaves are stoneware ceramic pieces that I made recently. They are attached with my copper ball head head pins.  The cord is one I felted from Moreno wool and includes all the darker colors in the painting. I love it with the pendant.  The copper clasp is one I made based on Cindy Wimmer"s Spiral Clasp tutorial.

I loved putting all these handmade components together into my Simple Garland Necklace.   I am so pleased to have been able to make a submission for the May ArtBeadScene Challenge.  Thank you for stopping by and looking.

Bead Table Wednesday 5-18-11

It's  Bead Table  Wednesday.  I am showing my recent firing of stoneware and porcelain beads with some new glaze colors.  I am very excited about how black the black beads turned out.  And that I only had to fire them one time at cone5 to get this fabulous color.  I can't wait to make them into a necklace along with some other black beads I made from a different clay body and stain.

To follow up on last week's BTW, I have put in the above photo.  I want to thank all of you for your encouraging comments about my beads which in the end I really liked so much that I finished the necklace I had started.  I find this BTW so inspiring and motivating.  I hope you will click on my BTW button on the sidebar and get over and look at all the other inspiring bead tables.  Its always a great experience.

Celebrating Beads 2011

Today is a Celebration of  Beads 2011:
Now that all of my beads that are in Beads 2011 are back home with me I thought I would share a group shot of the ones that were published in the magazine.

In case you don't know there is a fabulous Giveaway going on over at the  Art Bead Scene in celebration of Beads 2011.  You won't want to miss this one.  Here is the link.

And my personal note to Stringing Mag:


I want to thank Danielle Fox and Stringing Magazine for such kind and gentle treatment of my "lovelies". You photographed them so well and placed them in such fun groupings. And you packaged them up so carefully so that they would came home safely to me. I love it that I can always trust Stringing to take such good care of my work. And most of all I thank you for publishing them in Beads 2011. I love the whole issue. It is so great to have this magazine with all the creative energies in the bead world packaged together in one readable place!!

Satellite Beach Express... Miss Ficklemedia to Mary Harding

Just this week I received a wonderful necklace that Shannon LeVart, aka Miss Ficklemedia, made to celebrate the upcoming publication of her work using one of my pendants in the Summer issue of Belle Armoire Jewelry. Shannon wanted me to actually see and touch how well my ceramic pieces go with her textured chain.

Now I want to share at least these photos of the stunning piece she created. And I can tell you that her chain, color drenched in the exact color of teal as in the background of this pendant, is such a treat to see and wear. It is light weight, flexible and holds its shape beautifully. It is the perfect amount of rustic for my ceramic art. I have worn it out already and loved the way it made me look and feel, and of course I was heady from the compliments I received.

If you are a ceramic bead artist or a jewelry designer, I encourage you to try out her chain. It comes in so many colors and in two textures. I already purchased ( and the package is on its way) some of her teal, paprika orange, and saffron yellow chain for some projects I have in mind.
You can find a pendant similar to this one in my Etsy Shop and the chain in Miss Ficklemedia's Etsy Shop.

Bead Table Wednesday 5-11-11

I was so disappointed when I opened up the kiln last night and took out these beads.  Especially with the brown ones.  I was trying out some new glazes and had high hopes for these two colors, the red brown and the blue brown.  I was ok with the blue brown, but not the red brown.

When I got up this morning I was feeling a little better about them.  They looked a little better in the sunny light of early morning.  I was getting ready to rush out to my studio and make more beads so I could try some other combinations to improve the color.  And then I thought what if.....?  I went to my wire box and got out some new to me antiqued copper wire from Kabela Design that I had picked up at a bead show last month.  And I started wire wrapping the beads and putting them together and all of a sudden I was feeling really happy, excited and delighted with my new beads and new colors. 

The moral of this story for me is never judge a bead out of context.  I should know this by now but I am forever forgetting this wonderful quality of beads--the way they change color depending on what they are next to.

Enjoy everyone's Bead Table Wednesday by clicking on the BTW button on the side bar.

Thank you for stopping and have a great day.  We have SUN today in the Northeast.  Yeah!!

Happy Mother's Day!!!

Happy Mother's  Day to all!!  The picture above is the bracelet I made for my daughter-in-law for Mother's Day.  I wanted to honor her because she is such a great mother to our grandchildren.   I have stamped the initials of my two grandsons on the bead caps, one for each boy.  I have also stamped Mom on one of the bead caps and on the dapped charm.  And those green beads (green is her favorite color) are those beads from my BTW post last week.

Happy Mother's Day to all of you!!  I believe all women are mothers.  Mothers to children, or another person, or a pet or a creative spirit.  Whomever we mother gives us joy and reminds us that it is never easy to be a mother but always worth the unconditional love we put forth.

Bead Table Wednesday

This picture most acurately shows the green color of the beads interrupted.

This pic is interesting to me because the butterfly  is fired at low fire cone 06 with a high fire glaze cone6.  The gold color is from some Gilder's Paste that  I got at a bead show recently.  It is able to be polished  when it dries.  The gray color is a glaze that would have fired a nice blue if fired high enough.  But the gray is sort of  cool.

Green stoneware beads firing interrupted by power outage a few days ago.  So the green may just be this color one time!!  I am using them to make a bracelet for my daughter-in law-for Mother's Day.  She is the best Mom ever!!  Some clasps some ear wires and bead caps I made also in the photo.  Two of them say MOM.


Posted from My Droid phone.  Not very true to color.  But such technology is always fun to use.