Fresh Hot Ceramic Beads

Here are my new beads that just came out of the kiln. This load has a nice selection of pendants as well. I made several Tiki Head beads that I want to make into pendants with sterling silver bails. I think those came out nice

In the photo above are a few of the pendants; hearts and odd shapes that I made. The circular one at the top is going to be filled with crushed glass and then fired again. I want to see how that comes out.
There are a nice selection of blue beads; a little irregularly shaped, but I like that. Too much uniformity makes me think it looks manufactured. I guess it's just a personal preference.

The Tiki Head beads were a lot of fun. I could make these all day long. The shino glazes that break along the high areas add so much too the look of these beads.I use a clay sculpting tool to press in the eyes and patterns into the clay.
Lots of great texture on these tube beads. I like the way the glaze broke and all the different colors that you see when you look closely; blues, lavender, brown, turquoise.

These are two large lentil beads that Imade from taking two of my pendants and pressing them together. It was a challenge to keep them from getting indented and firing was tough. I had to string the smaller one onto high temp wire because it wouldn't fit onto the mandrel. The large bead is massive, isn't it? I think someone will be excited by it. These were textured with a piece of cloth and until I saw them out of the kiln, I wasn't sure if I would like them. I think they are among my favorites. It's so cool to open the kiln and see what happened.

The green beads have some intense breaking and running of color. I pushed an X shape into the sides, but you can barely tell I did here. It gave the glaze a place to puddle, and that made it really look cool.

This is my workspace. What a mess! Check out the TV on the table. I could sit there for hours just making beads and watching Law and Order. Seriously, I think Law and Order is on 24 hours a day. If you look for it on your TV, I'm sure you'll find it.Finished pendants and beads. There are so many and I don't have a good system for storing them. Mostly, they sit here and I go through them and decide what to list on our etsy shop. Lots of these will be sorked up into finished jewelry.