f2tE wanted hir very own dead mouse, so I had hir pick out a bead—a black 1.5” floral lentil (ze really wanted red, but—ack—I don't seem to work with this color much), which I then strung up. The color balance is a bit off: that ‘turquoise’ bead is actually periwinkle blue, to match the petals of the blue flowers, but my efforts to rebalance it failed miserably. Much of the rest isn't bad.

black lentil keychain charm. The focal was made with a 1.5” zoozi press, to give an idea of scale. Glass, sterling, semi-precious (amethyst, peach moonstone) .024 beadalon. Sept., 2012

I made the hollow lampwork beads, but can't speak to the provenance of the spacers, since I scavenged them from somewhere (probably unclaimed leftovers from a sample strand project...) In fact most of the beads were sort of laying around, I was trying to tidy up my desk.

Obverse. This side is signed with a ‘* N’ (star-N, i.e., STarn) murrina. Since I can write backwards pretty easily, I don't worry if it's reversed, as in this case:)

I'd like to sell these things, but I need to come up with a better name than ‘dead mouse’ and figure out a way for them to hold up to heavy use. Coming up with a catchy marketing name is not an insuperable problem, but the durability issue may mean they never really get released into the wild: one reason friends and family have been getting them for the asking is because they're serving as guinea pigs for product testing.

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