bowl with wide lip

I've been having trouble with the blogger website.  If I try to move my picture to the left and write next to it, as I usually do, I can't get a cursor, so I'll just do it this way.
    I've been wanting to try using 4mm glass beads (druk beads) to do some of the things I've been doing with 4 mm gemstone beads.  Turns out they're much easier to work with.  Mostly it's because the hole is a bit bigger, and because since the bead is translucent, you can see the direction of the channel through it much more easily. 
  I've been thinking about making a vessal form.  Originally when I decided to play around with beads, I thought I'd make vessal forms.  But a bowl or basket form is necessarily a relatively big project, and you learn more quickly by trying lots of smaller projects and seeing which ones work for you.  So I started making jewelry instead.  Now I find I like jewelry (and I like wearing my jewelry), but I still want to do an occasional bowl or vase  or other form that's just sculptural.  I knew I wanted to keep this one relatively flat, bacause I've found that as a vessal's sides get high, the weight starts to squish it down. It's a bit hard to see in the picture, but the center part is the bowl, which is about 4.5" in diameter and 2" high.  The darker rim makes the whole thing just under 7" in diameter.  I think that, given the width, it needs a bit more height, so I'll probably go back and addsome sort of base onto the bottom.  Also that will make it more stable.
   This is pretty weird--I've just realized that I've misspelled vessel all the way through this post, but the only thing I can get the cursor to do is add more on the end.  So please ignore any misspellings, typos and such.  I wish I knew what the problem is.

There's a better picture of my fullerene necklace on my etsy site at http://www.etsy.com/listing/64265906/red-and-green-tubes-necklace. I meant to put it in the blog, but discovered I hadn't saved it properly at the time I did the earlier blog post.

ping pong ball necklace

I've had a fun day. A few weeks ago Florida Craftsmen sent out a call to artists for an Art to Wear show with a theme of unusual materials. Seemed like time to break out the ping pong balls. Most of the pieces I've made so far have been just 1 bead/ball thick, because otherwise the size seemed overwhelming. But that has meant that they were verging on not being firm enough. I did make one basket form that was thicker (made from ball tetrahedrons) and I thought it was a bit too thick for its overall size. I don't think it's on this blog, but if you want to take a look it's in my etsy shop--eporiginals.etsy.com. Now I'm rethinking and I plan trying to add on to the outside to make the overall size more in line with the thickness.
Anyway, for the necklace, I knew I wanted it to be an actual 3-dimensional structure. I started making a string of RAW cubes, but that was really too big, so I switched to triangular sections, and liked that better. I tried other types of line, looking for something with a bit more bling, to make it seem like jewelry. Ultimately, I went back to the rug wool, though. It's really ideal, as it has enough cross section to fill up the holes in the balls (I drill 7/64" holes through the balls on a drill press) and yet it will compress to let me get multiple passes through a ball to create the structures. Also it's hairy enough that it creates friction so the thing doesn't loosen up if I don't keep it under tension.
After I got the main oval done I spent a long time figuring out now to embellish it on the bottom to make it more jewelry-ish. I tried adding some sparkly eyelash type thread, but they didn't fit with the scale. Then I tried it again with other colors of wool and still wasn't happy. Finally I came up with the dangly structure hanging from the center, and I really liked that. It's so very jewelry-ish to have a dangly thing hanging down, and yet the scale matches the rest of the necklace.
Anyway, I submitted it, and I really like it, although once again my family thinks I've lost my mind. I should mention that in the prospectus they had a great picture of a necklace made out of lego blocks, so I'm not totally out of their realm. And it was great fun, whether I get in the show or not.