Catastrophes

This has been a week of disappointments for us. Our first batch of glazed beads had such promise. It seemed like we did everything right...but when we pulled them out of the kiln approx. 200 beads or more had stuck to the wires. At this point there is nothing to do but to crush them off the wires and recoup our high fire wire. this was so frustrating to wait and wait, work and work and then only to find that you have to scrap so many beautiful beads.

We had just about recovered, licked our wounds and put things behind us. Right when we were getting ready to dive into loading the next batch of beads, our daughter called panicky and crying! She had fallen off her porch steps and after a long day at the emergency room the final diagnose was a broken shoulder and possibly a ripped rotator cuff. My poor darling. Only a mother can feel the pain and sorrow your child suffers. My baby. she had just got on her feet after an intensive hip surgery with a 4 month recovery time. Earlier that week my son had a dirt bike accident. Other riders didn't share the trail. He would never admit that, but a mother is also allowed to lay blame. With life's lessons we learn to just keep faith and plugging along. I am positive next week will be a lot better!!



Beads Being painted


Getting ready to load on special wires




5 hours of loading the kiln...oh my aching back!




All the beads going to the "scrap" pile

Pistachio ~ color Description

Pistachio~ A fun funky nutty flavor (oh whoops) color that is great to wear or great to give!!!!
Bright kiwi and sherbet greens are speckled with flecks of dark brown pistachio nuts. This exciting color adds pizazz to any outfit perfect in either casual silver or dress-me-up gold.

Shown here a coin shape in gold...

Moss Creek ~ Color Description

My Favorite. I just love the organic feel of this nature inspired color. Smooth woodland greens, soft sages, deep forest green all with bursts of flowing water colored blues, all fanning out to sandy beach brown edges.





Awesome Hoops...These are my Customers Favorites!!! We can not make these fast enough. We transformed heavy 14kt GF wire into hoop earrings and then hammered them flat, hammered texture onto them, polished and hammered again.








Shown below are rectangle shaped beads (we never mold, just hand shape and sand)...these show off the earthy brown edges. Fabulous!!!

Fudge marble ~ Color Description

Fudge Marble

Handmade porcelain beads covered with 3 coats of delicious creamy chocolate glaze. Chunks of deep dark fudge sneak in here and there while creamy whipped topping plays the occasional swirl.

This color is perfect to wear to the office or just everyday. Works well with Sterling silver or gold. All our earwires are Silver or 14kt GF. This jewelry is Very Distictive and Very Unique!! No two beads are alike!!!



Oh the fun!!! Chocolate lovers dream!!!! Great gift ideas!!!

Raspberry Ice ~ Color Description

Raspberry Ice ~ Perfect Casual Elegant!!


A beautiful deep burgandy ruby color with exotic splashes of black and the occasional swirl of white. Oh so perfect with Black Onyx, swarovski, silver or gold.

Oh so many lovers of this color. It is perfect for the office and then off to the dinner date. This color is very tempermental to make, but worth the effort!!

Firecracker color Description

Firecracker!!!!

aptly named ~ this color is full of bright and colorful explosions all revolving around red in a variety of hues.

Many of you already know that red is an extremely hard color to create with. Once perfected beads are choosen, we apply seven layers of glaze and crystal oxides to produce "Firecracker."

This is a very labor intense color. And we find that most people who love it like we do are just as intense. I am a believer in color psycology...and it shows. Our patrons who love this color are vibrant, lively, sometimes cool and hidden and other times very showy.

When you look at our "Firecracker" jewelry it is obvious all the attention that these beads recieved!!! The sparks combusted when we fired these!!

Blueberry Ice Color Description ~

Blueberry Ice ~ Our most Popular color.

Blueberry Ice is perfect for blue jeans or the little black dress and anything in between. It is a match for all hair colors and skin types. It's great to dress up with pearls, Swarovski or black onyx, and oh so much fun to play down with oxidized silver accents and splashes of deep blue Sodalite (semi-precious gem stone).

When we make our porcelain beads, we use secret techniques that enable the dramatic color schemes seen on our beads. Blueberry Ice combines a deep navy colbalt blue with splashes of black and swirls of cloudy white.

Clay Bead Making Tip - Never use the microwave to dry your beads!

Clay Bead making 101....never use the microwave to dry your beads!!! :D

Hey, you've got to live and learn. I was attempting to hurry the drying process and learned a huge lesson. First of all let me explain that after you make your beads from clay, they need to be dried into what is called the "leather hard" stage. Your beads will feel cool to the touch if they are not all the way dried into the leather hard stage. The next process for us is to sand. The beads must be completely dried.

My story began when I wanted to hurry the process. We've been making beads for days and I was anxious to start sanidng. The beads were almost dry... and I thought, well, I've put them in the oven before, why not the microwave??? Maybe I'll just try for 2 minutes. 2 minutes is always a good trial time...don't you think? The beads begged to differ...I walked away and POOF!!! Snap crackle and pop! Smokey dust was pouring out of the microwave door (and we are talking maybe 30 seconds) By the time I got there (which was fast) there was major explosions going on in that little white box!!! I learned fast that microwaves ar not air tight! Most of the beads were savageable, but 25% were gonners. What a devastating 45 seconds of my life. All that work literally "up in smoke." If there is anything that I can teach you about bead making, let the record state...NEVER, NEVER try to dry your beads (even thought they maybe almost done) in a microwave.

Save that machine for warming your coffee!!
which sounds real good about now

Happy Easter!!!

Happy Easter What a wonderful Easter day we're having. Ohio has seen 3 days of recording breaking temperatures (warmer than usually). Flowers are blooming and the birds are singing. Momma robin is busy, keeping her little ones fed. We can't help ourselves. We have to get outside and work in the yard. I love my flowers and can't wait to get my hands in the dirt. my nails are paying dearly for it though. My hands are suffering not only from the gardens, but from our bath remodel and finally....getting back into making porcelain beads. In future posts I will have a brag page about the Tuscany finished bathroom. Turned out marvelous!!

We are working hard on step one. First you have to slice approx. 1/2" slabs of clay off the blocks, roll them out to an even consistency. the next step is rather tedious which is cutting the shapes out. We stand so long at this, we bought foam pads to stand on. Ken does most of the cutting, and I put the holes in the beads. It doesn't seem like it's a hard process, but if your mind isn't on task, you cut crooked and run the holes in the beads at a slant. Either way, the bead just becomes scrap. We've been at it for 4 days now. We've made about 600 beads. Doing the math, you can see that creating precise beads takes dedication. 2 of us, putting in 9 hours a day. that's an average of 75 beads a day. And....the worst part is yet to come.....sanding!!! that is one job I really don't like. I'd much rather be in the gardens.

Spring is 18 days away. I can't hardly believe that in a few months I will be basking in the summer rays. until then I've got to get busy, busy, busy!!! We divide our studio time into sections, we would go nuts if we didn't. The early parts of winter are dedicated to metalsmithing, classes, experiments, etc. Early spring total dedication to making porcelain beads. We want to add a new color to our line up this spring. Black with purple explosions. It's going to take a lot of time and testing to get those colors right. But I'm sure it will be worth it.

Beadmaking is classed as the oldest form of art. Beads were used not only as decoration but as monetary substitution and for bartering. Beadmaking can be simple to elaborate. Made from Gemstones, metals, clay and glass, beads can be void of details or extremely elaborate. For example, our porcelain red beads take 7 coats of glaze and are kiln fired 3 times separately from all other colors. Red is an extremely hard color to create not only in pottery buy also in glass making.



Lampworking is a form of glass beadmaking, I'd love to know how the process, but I've got my fingers in too many pies as it is, so I'll leave that process up to other artists and simple enjoy their work! Yesterday I was poking around on Etsy and came accross a great lampwork artist. "Bobbie Pene" Amazing quality and attention to detail is evident in her work. check her out at www.BobbiePene.Etsy.com


You can see examples of our red beads at www.daywaltsstudio.etsy.com and go to the section titled "Bon Fires"


Check out our metalsmith jewelry at www.dancingleafdesigns.etsy.com

Making Clay Beads Part I

Do you know the difference between hand formed clay beads vs molded clay beads? The difference is Huge! After years of trial and error, we have perfected our process.

We begin with huge heavy blocks of clay and slice, dice, roll and smoosh the clay into all kinds of shapes and sizes. We love to use organic materials, ie, leaves, grasses and twigs to make impressions.



The next step is the hole making process, by taking a few extra steps and a lot more time we make tiny precise centered holes ~ A distinct difference between our beads and mass produced beads.



In the leather hard stage we dry sand ~ this perfects the ends of the beads resulting in nice flat ends so designs and beads lay together smoothly. Moving on to the wet sanding ~ this adds a nice smooth rounded edge which gives glaze a unique faded look.

Then all the beads go into my Paragon kiln and are fired to temperatures close to 2000 degrees for up to 14 hours.

That is the beginning of our bead process! If I was molding the beads…. I would simple pour liquid clay into a prefabricated mold, wait about a ½ hour, and take them out. They would be thin, fragile and have a big unsightly hole. Definitely not unique!!

Stay Tuned ~ We'll Share a few of our glazing secrets in Part II....