Santa Rosa Beads is coming!!!!

We're so happy to announce that our new etsy shop, Santa Rosa Beads, is slated to open in the next two weeks!

We've had so much wonderful feedback from our customers about our pendants and pottery, that we wanted to offer some supplies and handmade beads with our Fireluster Pottery style.

We're busy creating loads of handmade beads and components. I'm going to start listing on Etsy sometime in the next week. I have a lot of work to do; make a banner, write listings, pricing, etc. We did secure our url, though, so hopefully, we'll have a website developed soon, too.

At Santa Rosa Beads, we'll have handmade sterling silver findings, too. Handforged earwires, eyepins and clasps are some of the cool things you'll find for your jewelry making. I love making silver clasps and components and you'll be sure that you're getting only the highest quality handmade findings available.

Keep your eyes open for the debut of Santa Rosa Beads. I think we'll be running a fun little contest for our grand opening. I'm still thinking of what to have as the prize.

Thanks to everyone who purchased from us. We have the nicest customers! We'll continue to have Fireluster Pottery as our shop to sell finished handpainted ceramic jewelry and one of a kind pottery and ceramic work. Santa Rosa Beads will be your place to buy handmade porcelain and ceramic beads and sterling silver jewelry findings for your original designs!

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.