Etsy has something called Alchemy, in which folks put in requests of things they'd like to see. My biggest sale in etsy came out of trolling thru the posts with ‘bead’ in them, so I've continued to look thru this, looking for good matches. One rather open-ended one was, simply, for an ‘unusual bead’. Well, people have been making beads for 30,000 years or more, so it's hard to come up with something that's truly unusual.

(mostly) dottie style holepops made into "mouth" beads. Largest, 15x18mm, most roughly 13mm (1/2") hole to hole.

I've said before that I've always appreciated Jennifer Geldard's comment that "only your mistakes are your own". Another way of putting that is that I think new ideas come out of old experiences looked at in a different way. Take these beads, which most people would simply throw out as flawed because the walls thinned to the point that air pressure caused a third hole to form. As a beadmaker, I was frustrated, but as a stringer, I saw opportunities.

turquoise, 25x32mm; green and orange 23x30mm; red, about 23mm. Smaller beads are in the 13mm-1/2" range.

Since the point of handmade is to have something with the hand of the maker, as opposed to machine mass-produced, I'm all about getting people to change their perceptions: straight lines and square corners are easy for machines, and they certainly appeal to our sense of order, but they're not really natural. I love attempting to make the "perfect" bead, but also deeply appreciate the texture and quirks coming out beads that would never be mistaken for machine made. Thus for me, these are very special beads, because up to now, only one other person besides me has seen that they're unusual, rather than unusable.

I'd love to change that.

photo, file 11nov08.

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.