Kaizen Update

This was a tube bead made for a class on mirror finishing. I inserted a ball of wet felted wool made by my friend Jacqui, needle felted a small blue detail, sewed on a single matte pink bead and hung it on a piece of 14 gauge wire that I forged and soldered.  I then decided to forge the edges of the bead to add a bit more interest and texture.

My Kaizen Project is going really well.  I've made headway with my bits and pieces almost every day.  Some days I finish and fire greenware, and some days I make actual jewelry. Imagine that! 

This project is letting me be creative with materials that are already in my environment, forcing me to problem solve and allowing me to complete work that is a bit more straight forward than I might otherwise have designed.

These were two tiny beads made using a toothpick as a place holder, then embellished by water etching a scroll design onto the dry greenware.  I caught a fleeting glance of a great pair of earrings in the movie "The Duchess" and used them as my inspiration.  A single length of wire was inserted into the bead and bent until the ends met the holes in the lemon quartz beads.  A wire was then riveted to hold the assembly together.  Posts are soldered onto the back of the beads.  

~ Now available for sale in my Etsy Shop ~

I've made a Flickr folder for those of you who would like to follow along.  I fully intend to embrace the philosophy of making simple changes, completing small tasks, moving forward step by step until the project reaches a natural end.