NEW focal and Bardara Bechtel bead swap REVEAL!

Hello friends!!

It has been so hard keeping my mouth shut and pics off the net about this NEW focal I created especially for Barbara Bechtel of Floritidy and Second Surf! It all started with our bead swap.(yep! Another swap, I sure am a LUCKY girl indeed!!) I kind of knew what Barbara wanted, but I got a few more quick ideas from her before beginning on her piece. 

One of the things she wanted was some wing dings. So I thought to myself what colors would I use for ocean water? I pulled out rods and rods of color. I had so many in opaques, opals and transparents.

 

So here are my oceany colored wing dings! Wonderful aquas, teals, sea foam, and turquoise!

I knew Barbara really loved my "Desert Serpent" style focals. She said to me that they reminded her of tide pools.

 

Here is an image of one of my Ancient Tablet series called "Desert Serpent Corazon".

So I sat down at my bead table and pulled out all of my goodies for this style focal except I wanted to create more of a sea themed bead. I wanted a really amazing "tide pool" look to it. I worked and worked and added glass, pressed, twisted, raked. I made cane and added sparkle. I finished and I just about cried! OMG look at this AMAZING BEAD! My God I hope it makes it in the kiln. I always have this fear when putting a bead with lots of layers of different glasses in the kiln that somehow it might come out broken. 

The annealing cycle was done. I RAN to my kiln and anxiously opened the door. I flipped on a light and brought the bead into it's glow....

 

This might be the most AMAZING bead I have made yet! I turned it's every angle and inspected it carefully. I was amazed by all of the little details, color and sparkle!

 

Here is the back side.

I LOVE the way the dichro glitters through the layers, the spots of rainbow raku, the little barnicles, the starfish, the look of sand from the silver leaf, the amazing webbing of dark ivory glass!

 

Some more shots of the angles.

I needed to make another! After making the first I had to try another one right after with some slightly different colors....

 

OMG another amazing bead! Look at all that shimmer!

Just like the glittery ocean!

Then spacers, yes, SPACERS!....

 

Two different styles. One to match Barbara's focal and then some slightly different ones to match the other focal. If you click on this photo to enlarge it you can see these amazing spots under the layer of tealy water colored glass. It is such an amazing effect!

 

AND look at THESE! OMG, watery and amazing on a wonderful sandy ivory base with gorgeous dark webbing!

I must make ANOTHER!

 

This time with some wonderful lighter seafoamy opal and glitter!

 

I just LOVE how this looks with the webbed ivory and the glittery opal glass half and half like that. I accidentally did that on Barbara's focal and had to mimic the effect on this one. This time I added a few little ivory shells to the bottom of this one as if they were gently layed there by a gentle wave from the sea to the shore. Lovely treasures washed up for the beach comber to find :D

It was such a pleasure to create such wonderful beads for Barbara! I was so excited to be so inspired by this new style. I hope you enjoyed seeing the beads I sent her for our swap and the inspiration that was born from it!

Thanks for stopping in again this week!

Have a wonderful weekend!

xoxo Genea