The Beading Gem

Irina Ivanitskaya's polymer clay snowflake earrings tutorial is not only lovely but a good one to demonstrate the millefiori cane technique. It's the same way they build up rock candy patterns. Both are based on the ancient glass millefiori (Italian:"mille" (thousand) and "fiori" (flowers)) technique.

Poinsettias, despite their bad rap, are actually only mildly toxic to pets, No treatment is necessary unless the symptoms are severe. My poinsettia is usually placed high up away from pets and small children. But if you rather not have them around, use the french bead and wire technique to make a poinsettia! This mini poinsettia tutorial (update : video no longer available) is by Fen of Bead Flora Jewels whose gorgeous bouquets are amazing.  I wrote about her work before.

The best thing as far as I am concerned about handmade jewelry is the freedom to do anything you want...within reason. So I like to make fun designs like vases of flowers. I've done this before. This time, I have adapted the tree of life design idea and made it into a wire vase of flowers pendant. Here is the basic tutorial.

Making real dandelion and flower resin jewelry is not technically difficult.  But as they say, one learns by doing. I was inspired to try by Shireen Nadir (The Blue Brick), a Canadian resin jewelry artist I featured before.   In the previous tutorial, I experimented with using silica gel - crystal cat litter - to dry dandelion clocks and flowers. The next stage is embedding the dandelion and flowers in resin and finally turning them into jewelry.

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The Little Windows' large cabochon mold (which I received for review) can be used to generate a whole bunch of round resin cabochons in different sizes.  I thought dried dandelion clocks and flowers embedded in these half spherical shapes will capture them in 3D fashion as opposed to flat pressed flower creations.