I really wanted to show a St Patrick's Day green (& orange) themed bracelet, like the Valentine's version I featured for February, in keeping with finally doing something with all those monthly bead challenges that have been piling up, off and on, for the last decade or so. Alas, it's not done, so I have some other vintage beads to show instead:

5 raked disks in bullseye. I decided to have some fun with the background—since this is a putative St Patrick's Day post, I put in some lace and a dark green tile background so as to prop up the beads. They're shot with the E620, roughly f8 at 1/120sec with the flash set to quarter power.

I was inspired to make these the last time Kristina Logan taught in our area. Since that was in mid-2010, I'm guessing these beads were made then, or perhaps 2011.^[1] She has an hour long video from Corning Museum of glass documenting beautifully how to make this style of bead, if you would like to try it yourself. I recommend a soft base glass, like the ivory she prefers, for a first try. —Bullseye glass, besides its reputation for being stiffer, tends in its opaques to be more translucent, and here, in these beads, the various shades blended beautifully in a way that effetre just doesn't.

reverse. Beads range from 20–28 mm across and 5 to 7.5mm in thickness.

However, this is not a natural technique for me, and moreover, I had been hit by a car earlier that year, so these beads were difficult and painstaking to make. I liked them, but my joints simply didn't permit the ongoing exploration really required to master the technique. But besides this little series, which I quite liked, I was able to incorporate the ultra-fine raking technique in other beads, such as on the hearts of the valentine's day birdies.

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