Hello Hollow

After several weeks of cranking beadsets of various kinds I worked up the courage this week to try hollow beads... my favorite but most challenging bead form. But I figured that my lampworking skills have recovered sufficiently to give it a whirl. Voila! Many wonderful hollow beads have appeared - capri blue, topaz and grass green. Amazingly it is simpler than I ever remembered. Perhaps the time off let something gel with the technique process in my brain. The capri works most easily, nice and sticky and stays warm without slumping. Topaz pretty easy too. Will post some pics in a few days.

Flowers On My Mind

Even with the snowmass outside I having been squarely in springtime in the studio these past few weeks. I had long admired sculptural foral lampwork beads, but never mastered the flame control necessary to create them until now... and now that I have started it's pretty hard to stop! There are sooo... many color themes to explore and it's just fun to be looking at little flowers all day long during the dead of winter.

Here is one of the bead sets I have been working on: