Caladium

"Caladium"

Working with greens I started with the more subdued shades – naturally ;o)
When the person I am working on these for saw some of my other beads, he honed in on a tiny lime green gaffer bead with their wonderful lime green aventurine & accents of the gaffer gold pink & heliotrope – saying that he would like something along those lines….. but bigger. So I have been pushing my inherent ‘subdued’ inclinations & working with those colours – a lot!

A couple of days ago a few came out of the kiln that I thought would fit the bill.
This bead was one of them – when I saw it the name was a natural! Straight off the veining in the colours reminded me of the Caladium genus of plants – then the fact that a good chunk of that species is exceptionally brightly coloured, seemed to cinch it.

Sometimes I tend to forget that natural colours are those found in nature - & in some instances they can be just as bright, if not brighter, than anything cteated by man.

Later I checked in on Angelina’s blog & looked at the photo’s of her recently finished sitting garden project – there in the corner was a fabulous bright green & pink Caladium – I really sometimes have to marvel at the way things come about.

S'hard Days Night

"Picaro"

It’s official – I suck at shards. OK – I hear you say “but you’re meant to blow shards” & I do. But even when I blow I suck! Believe me on this!

For those of you not into playing with the awesome combination of fire & glass (are there any such people out there?) who are unfamiliar with what shards are – they are …well what the name indicates, shards of glass. These are used to decorate the beads, sculptures & fused glass work.

In this instance, flameworked beads, the shards are created by forming a hollow ball on the end of a stainless steel tube & then gently blowing down the tube to expand that ball, resulting (if you are extremely lucky & the moon is in the right phase & the great deity of glass is looking upon you favorably) in a thin walled glass ball about the size of an orange. This is them smashed into smaller pieces, which of course makes the fact that I can’t get it up in the first place, even more unpalatable.

I fluked it once – there were no deities, moons or four leaf clovers in sight – so I know it was a fluke. The problem is I like the results I got from this particular silver glass in shard form – so much so that I have now wasted an entire rod trying to make more shards.

Today was another unsuccessful shard day…. & evening. Fortunately I moved on & played with some of the fabulous gaffer glasses instead - in green of course.

I rather like this & any sympathy I may have had for Kermit is quickly fading – maybe he would have felt better about green if he had accessorized with purple – a bit feminine perhaps …but better ;o)

This advertisement below almost accurately describes the least of what I was saying after each shard attempt. Click on the link if you want to see....

"Bugger"