More Encasing Fun

Yeah, it's been fun for sure.  The flowers are still a work in progress and I will continue to move forward with those but last week, I decided to try something I've wanted to do for a VERY long time - jellyfish beads.  A far cry from an encased flower bead that's for sure.  Still some of the elements/techniques are the same.  Layering, encasing, elements, dots, etc.  Still, ones an underwater scene and the other is a flower(s).  :)  Anyway, I ended up making 3 of them and two were done following a tutorial by Mary Lockwood whom you can find just below in my list of blogs at Something About Mary.  Her jellies tutorial, as all of her tutorials, is just wonderful !  

The first bead took 2 hours to make, the second one 90 minutes and the smallest one about an hour.  The prep time alone took roughly 90 minutes and that includes making all the canes, stringers and tentacles.  These are intensely time consuming beads to make.  Still, worth all the effort.  The pictures do the beads no justice at all simply because you just cannot see the depth in them.  The two biggest beads have no less than 4 or 5 layers of glass.  In each layer is a different element.  One layer is the start of the bead, the second layer is the sand on the sea bed, and so on.  Each layer is then encased in clear.  Depth.  I wish I could figure out how to get that to show in a photo.  sigh.  One of these days.     

The smallest bead was done completely different.  It doesn't have all the layers of encasing in it.  Only two layers total.  That said, you can still see a little depth to it.  I added nearly as many elements as the bigger ones but again because there is only two layers, it looks totally different.  Plus I added the jellies in a totally different way as well and they didnt' turn out as pretty as in the other two.  Still, some jellies are not all that perfect in shape anyway.  lol !  

Nevertheless, I enjoy all my jellies and am thrilled with how they turned out.  Not sure I'll make any more but hey, you never know.  :)  I do know that if I do continue to work on these, I'll have to figure out how to get all those layers in and still make them the size of the smallest one.  Those two on either side of the small one are HUGE !  My husband made the comment, " Those aren't beads - they're paperweights ! "  lol !  They ARE the biggest beads I've EVER made of this type even when I couldn't encase worth a darned  !   lol ! 

Thanks so much for coming by.  I hope you come back again soon.  Please feel free to leave a comment.  I love hearing what you have to say.  :)