Beadwork
Magazine: December 2006/January 2007In the Dec 2006/Jan 2007 issue of Beadwork Magazine, you will find me challenging the editors with a special kit I created to see what fabulous creations they would come up with. The central theme for my challenge were to feature some of "my favorite things" . I thought that would be fun since this was a holiday issue. My favorite stone to use in my beadwork is watermelon tourmaline and since I was challenging Danielle, Dustin and Jamie, I wanted to challenge myself too in creating custom blended colors in borosilicate (aka pyrex) glass to mimic watermelon tourmaline. As those who work with glass knows, borosilicate colors are sometimes tricky to work with because what you see as you are making the bead is not necessarily what you get when the beads come out of the kiln. I actually had to make over 700 beads to create the right colors in the graduated strands of 45 beads. It was well worth it and many disk beads later, you can see the wonderful creations that were made by the talented Beadwork editors. I love what imagination and a challenge can do to our creativity. You'll be able to find borosilicate disk beads as part of my offerings at shows. To read more, pick up the December issue of Beadwork and you'll find the Challenge on pages 100 - 101.