When I retired, I started my new passionate hobby of designing and creating fashion jewelry designs that are “outside the box”, and I found that I really loved working with Lucite flower beads. They are so versatile and offer endless opportunities for expressing one’s creativity. This pair is a great example. The flower blooms started out as frosted white. I have developed my own versions of inks and my own method of application so that the finished product is a lovely palette of “marbling veins” in various layers and complementary colors. When dry, a sealer is applied so the colors will remain bright and lovely for the owner’s wearing pleasure for many years to come.

After applying multiple layers of plum, cranberry, eggplant and watermelon colored inks and enamels of my own blends, these lovely deep red and magenta blooms have emerged. I never really know what the end result will be, and I couldn’t duplicate them if I tried. Each pair is a labor of love and artistic creativity, as I add beads or pearls or crystals to complete the effect. Here, I added 8MM beads made of marble because the colors in them were perfectly coordinated to the flower beads. Bright magenta 4MM bicones were added to complete my design. Overall length is approx 3 inches and diameter is approx. 3/4 inch.