Not knowing what to make last night, I decided to practice stringer work. Thin pieces of glass are called stringer. Some people can use a stringer like it’s a pencil. They use hair-fine stringers and their work is amazing. Mine, not so much. They are what I’d learn in a Stringer 101 class.
Course I couldn’t help doing a few dots too.
My aunt’s friend wants a kokeshi doll necklace. It’s been a while since I made one. These are ones I made over the weekend.
The last two, I picked up the wrong color for the face. I like the lighter faces, or at least a lighter face on the ivory bead. Looks like she has a suntan. Now I have to make them up into necklaces. Stay tuned…..
I’m calling this choker the Prima Donna Choker because Donna Conklin made the beads. She has a choker just like it and I wanted to copy. She had the leather and I attached the flower to the leather using wire head pins. It’s really cute.
I’m taking a glass class this weekend with Kimberly Affleck. It’s a fun class. She does more organic or free form beads. I rarely make them because I can’t seem to slap stuff on and get it to turn out looking good. Kimberly knows about glass!!
These are the beads we made the first day.
The first one we made is on the right. The big ivory egg. Mine looks like an egg because I didn’t shaped it well. Kimberly was showing us how to form a bead without using tools and also how to get the striations in ivory. The next bead we made is the bottom one with the black lines in it. Mine would look better if I put end caps on it but I ran out of room on my mandrel. The last one is the flower bead. By then I was getting tired. We use different COE glass to make the flowers to get the intense color. I could have made a bigger bead but I ran out of steam.
Yes!! Finally something new!! These are the first two bottle cap beads I made. I don’t have a very good selection of bottle caps yet so I used what I had which was some craft bottle caps and a virgin olive oil cap.
This is one side of them.
Another view. They don’t look as scratched up or dented in person. It’s hard to see the tiny blemishes.
And of course, more push pins!!
More push pins!! I tried a few new designs this time. A cherry, apple and pear. Not sure how popular fruit is so I probably won’t be making a lot of them. Just getting tired of doing the same designs over and over. I’ve been working on the turtle and I still don’t like it but other people do so I’ll probably make a few more turtles. 
You guessed it!! More push pins. I did try a new design. The turtle. It still need work. Might make it like the smaller one but a little bigger. The big on is too big. Need to try to ladybug in another red color too. This one looks too orange.
The fundraiser was a success!! I sold all the push pins. I got an order for more too. Here’s the results.
The buyers wanted blue ones.
I’m trying to come up with some new designs. I tried a ladybug. It still needs some work but I think this will be a keeper.
Lastly, some push pins all made up into sets.
I think I’m going to be making push pins for a while. It looks like they are going to be a good seller for me this year.
I put the push pins into corks that I sanded the bottoms off so they wouldn’t roll around. Here’s a bad picture. Guess I should have cleaned off my table before taking a picture.
Here’s a few more that didn’t fit into the box:
I made some different ones, a couple of pigs and a cow. Not sure about the cow. Still needs some work. Still trying to come up with animal faces that fit into a round domed piece of glass.
I finally have enough to donate to the Beads Of Courage fundraiser.
Mewkittie Creations 