Barnacle Beads & Prototypes

I've been experimenting a little with the barnacle/fossil texture on small things in porcelain. The pots I made are in a rugged stoneware that works very diffrently form porcelain. You can see little tiny stress crackes in the bead's texture. The technique needs a bit of work.

I participate in a show called Llano Estacado Wine and Clay each June. Our clay guild organizes it and a local winery hosts the show. It's a fun show with wine tasting, cheese, and the works. For a while I've thought how cool would it be to make wine stoppers for the show. But I'd never been able to find nice stoppers at an affordable price. That's where serendipity and Sue comes in. Sue had up on her blog yesterday these really great pics of a canape set with her beautiful lamp work beads. She kindly shared her supplier for the findings, Karen Thomas. They've got really great things there that can be beaded, including very reasonably priced wine bottle stoppers.


So this biggy bead is a prototype for the wine stoppers I want to make. Now a more patient person would wait until she actually had the stopper in hand before heading off to make the parts for it. But patience is definitely not my middle name. The idea was there and I needed, really needed to do this right now. I did in fact make the 45 buttons that needed to be done. So I am feeling slightly virtuous.


By the way, patience is not in fact on the list of virtues. I don't actually remember what is on the list. But patience is not one of them and I am sooo relieved.


And I have to show you this pic of my babies. This is a rare occurence that they snuggle. Bob the old brown dog is not entirely happy that we got baby Alice when he was 8 years old. It's that only child syndrome. But I think he was just chilly enough to let sweet Alice curl up on him. It did not last long.

Happy weekend everyone! LeAnn