Works in progress

I have about 60 yellow porcelain beads made and another 40 or so ready to be decorated. There are about 160 turquoise porcelain beads in bisqued bowls sitting on my work table waiting for the yellow to be finished so that I can fire them.

I was asked the other day why I hand-color porcelain in such small batches. The answer is that a 4-5 ounce ball of clay fits nicely in my hands and is easy for me to work with. No matter how well I work the clay, there will be natural variations in the coloration. I like these, but want to have a bit of control over them. I've also found that a 4-5 ounce batch makes between 80 and 100 beads depending on the style of bead that I'm working on. It just works well with the way that I work.

I spent some time last night temporarily stringing some of my porcelain cameo drops in sets of 5 and 10. I used some inexpensive glass seed beads and bugle beads as spacers. I really think that having them spaced out the way that they are now illustrates the possiblities of them. I need to get more of the glass beads to use as spacers because the ones that I'm using now are leftover from a project a couple of years ago.

I took the blue and green porcelain beads to Kim the other day to be fired. I'm looking forward to stringing the leaves in the same way that I've done the cameo drops. Well, I should be working instead of writing about working.

Filed in: Colored_Porcelain