Trip to the BEACH- Baking Soda beads

Hello friends!

Ok well it's sort of a trip to the beach... from my studio table, that is! If you can't get to the beach, why not bring it to you? If you remember awhile back I made that super sweet "Tide Pool" focal for Barbara Bechtel for our swap. 

 

Here is Barbara's focal if you don't remember. 

So why the heck didn't you see any in the shop? Well just as inspiration comes it generally comes to me when I don't have all of the supplies to do it(FIGURES!). I got my glass order and got back on a roll making these "Tide Pool" focals. I gave one to Barbara, and one to Mom only leaving me with one.  So I just got back in the beachy groove again after seeing a treasure in which I was featured.  If you remember my last  blog post talking about inspiration you can see where the idea started.

So after making a few of these I had this idea for a bead on my walk back to the house. LUCKY ME, it actually worked out just as amazing as it looked in my head! So what happens when ideas work out? More ideas keep coming and you have to keep creating until no ideas remain or you make so many that you have fizzled out.

 

If you were on my facebook you might have seen some mobile uploads of my beads as they came out of the kiln. I was out snapping some photos for my listings tomorrow in the sun so I thought I would take some detailed shots. 

Here you can see the entire collection of beads I created. I will have a few up in the shop tomorrow for the listings, but I won't get all of them in the shop in one day.  

 

Here is a close-up of the focals. I just love that coral like texture the beads have. They are like little treasures found while combing the beach :)

 

Here are some glass headpins I made. I was super pleased with the results, but unfortunately it seems like there are many variables to getting the desired texture results I like best. See all of the more brown sandy bottomed pins? It took me that many just to try to get 2 the same texture :/ 

I think many things change how the baking soda works like: over heating, moisture in the air(ie humidity), fresh baking soda for every try, heating and cooling inbetween applications etc. 

 

Here are the spacers I tried. I really love the results of them. They are like beach glass and sand all mixed into one. I really would love to go back and make more of these, but would you believe I am OUT OF GLASS again?! Well of some of the colors I just used like Teal and Dark Ivory. I guess next time I order, I will just have to order pounds!

Well I just wanted to do a quick post about my latest fixation. I need to get some photos edited and work on my BSBP blog ;)

See you soon!

xo Genea