An eclipse and the Hilltop Street Fair!

 One hundred years or so ago, Venetian glass chevron beads were really expensive (and good ones still are!), so clever people came up with ways of making beads that looked somewhat similar.  Methods include glazed clay, painted clay and painted wood.

This past winter I found some wooden beads in my stash and painted them with Golden acrylic paints in a "chevron" style.  This is a pretty feeble first attempt but I'll try it again.

 There is a type of glass bead called "cornaline d'Aleppo" (named after the city in Syria).  This is my polymer clay take.  I've been making these beads since the war started there.

The cores are a whitish waste clay and the orange-red surface is polymer clay tinted with alcohol inks.  I really like them - they turned out well.

When you need large coconut disks for a custom project and you can't find any (!) what do you do?

You're right - you make your own!  These are polymer clay, rolled cut, cured, pierced, and polished on the buffing wheel.

There is a lovely, lovely German brand of polymer clay called "Pardo".  I've never seen it in shops in the US so I splurged and ordered some via the Internet. 

These are my first beads made with Pardo.  They just gleam.  I can imagine making round ones and calling them "Moonstone".

These fun polymer clay beads started out as a way to use up bits and pieces of uncured clay but they turned out so well, and turned some heads, that I'm making more. 

They are a bit "free form" with the dots and squiggles places almost randomly. 

Some have a matte look while others were glazed with a special polymer clay glaze.

I have experimented with black clay in many different ways... all black, black with translucent clay, black with a tiny bit of black opalescent clay.  It's interesting to see how many "blacks" there really can be!

This 2.5" pin is based on an African shield design.  I made the black shape first, cured it, carved it, and then infilled the cut away areas with a creamy white/tan paint.