All Kinds 'a Flowers

Yes, it's flowers week at my house and I'm enjoying it even though I can't breath.  Sigh.  Allergies are still really doing it's thing on my nose and head and something moving on down into my chest so I'll be calling doc - again.  Anyway........onto more fun stuff..............

Flowers have been the theme this week at the torch !  Yay !  I was able to get on my torch and melt some glass into some flowers of some sort.  lol !  The photo's below only show a few I made.  There are more that are waiting to be cleaned so will show those next time around.   I was a little shaky with the first one, which was the red rose but got right back into it.  lol !  The thing about making these types of flowers is there are extra steps while assembling them in the flame.  The petals are made first and kept warm on a portable burner.  Then comes the stamen or the part to attach the petals to which is made seperate on the mandrel.  While adding the petals one must remember to keep all parts warm or cracks make an appearance !  Not good.  :(   Once all together, pop into the kiln.  :)  Sometimes those cracks won't show up til after they come out of the kiln which is just a bummer.  lol !  It happens.  If all goes well though the flowers will be pretty cool in the bouquet that comes together.  Speaking of which, I am offering those bouquets once again in my Etsy shop.  You can see samples of some of the bouquets I've made in that listing.  Check it out.  :)

I was cleaning up my work space where I put jewelry together and discovered a little something I just never thought about before.  There are some that use the bell flowers for making jewelry with and they have wondered if there were any bead caps that were small enough to fit on the tops of the flowers.  Well, quite by accident, I found some that work perfectly.  They are pictured below.  Tiny, yes but they work beautifully.  The red bell flower is the 20mm size and the pink is the 14mm size.  I don't have the 12mm size but if the bead caps fit the bigger sizes they'll fit the smallest size.  :)  Yay !  These are not sterling silver but silver plated and come in 3 colors - silver, gold and copper in one bag and are available at Fire Mountain.  I bought them a long time ago and just forgot about them until the other day.  lol !  So if you need some bead caps for your bell flowers or whatever, check out Fire Mountain.

Thanks so much for coming by !  I hope you come back again soon !

Please check out my Facebook page that has OPB's (other peoples beads) For Sale.  Just click this link  https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100005964946289