Rachelle Keller

Hey, I made a set! This is perfect for when my muse has ADD! I let my creativity run free making different sizes, shapes and textures. I limit myself to "colors" only, otherwise my beads would NEVER match! These beads are made from Moretti/Effetre light pastel pink, light red, and mmmmmm, rubino oro. I felt like a dork when I made these. They will work great as a bracelet set. I was thinking as far as wirework was concerned, if I were doing these up as a piece of jewelry and using wire wrapping, I would use at least as large as 16-gauge wire for the base. But in hindsight, I had used a 1/16" mandrel and the resulting bead, when finished, has a hole large enough for only an 18-gauge wire, or 1 milimeter. What WAS I thinking? In the future my sets should have holes big enough for 16-gauge wire. Sheesh. Anyway, this lovely set has a new home along with a set of my sweet little itty-bitty beads in a pretty translucent pink. I have mixed feelings about these little pink bead...

Not only do I love being crafty, I love playing with "dangerous" things (well, to a point). I just got a big ol' bottle of acid etch for my glass beads and I must say, that stuff is expensive! It's probably a couple of bucks worth of ammonium biflouride, which sounds dangerous but is not as caustic as hydrofluoric acid. Therefore it goes without saying that the first warning on the label says "avoid contact with eyes and skin" (common sense, it's a caustic compound). Second warning on the label, "Do not taste..." I'm thrilled to find that it comes in a 10-lb. bucket—just in case I get hungry! It's pretty expensive. I'm assuming that the cost of liability insurance is built right in. What's really cool is that it makes shiny glass look like beach glass in about 5 minutes.

Last night I finally had enough beadies made to fill the kiln for a batch anneal: From this point on I will probably be annealing my beads as they are made. I have been falling in love with certain colors of striking glass in luscious pinks (like rubino oro), and cooling them, to cold and reheating them just takes all of that delicious color away. In fact, a whole bunch of those teeny beads in there are made from Moretti/Effetre dark pink, which I only had a little bit of from an assortment of shorts. It was a nice pastel pink, more light than dark, but still pretty. I went to put it on my wishlist and I thought there had been some mistake...this dark pink was $39.00 a pound! The same as rubino oro. By contrast, light pink is just $13.00 per pound. I understand that the more expensive colors are more difficult to produce and do warrant the higher price. However, once the beadies were taken from the cooled kiln this morning, my lovely dark pink beads had turned into light pink beads, bu...