More Aurae Photography

This set Modern Metallics, gave me such a headache! I tried photographing it in my usual studio lighting and the beads just looked icky. I tried outdoor lighting in the shade....yuck. I then tried natural daylight but indoors. I went from room to room in our house photographing these beads and facing all different directions and I was ready to just drop it all together. Then I tried photographing them in the bathroom and...success! I think the diffuse lighting coming from the frosted privacy windows did the trick. The photograph looks just like the beads look in person. Only took me a couple hours...

Photographing Aurae

Jeez Louise. Aurae is so hard to photograph it's frustrating. I've tried studio lighting, natural indoor lighting and direct sunlight. Sunlight is too harsh. Studio lighting shows the colors the best but you can't see the luster at all. Natural lighting shows the luster but the colors are muted. Wally suggested I try using a black background instead of the gradient background so I tried that last night with my studio lighting. It's actually MUCH better (he's right once in a great while) and the luster even shows up a little too. Anyway, these are my Punk Rock Diva nuggets on eBay right now. There's also a set of chunky discs that match, Rivers of Gold.

Praying Mantis Baby

Wally is always finding all kinds of critters in the yard. Today he brought me this teeny, tiny praying mantis. Yes, that's his wedding ring in the picture.

Olympia Rain

These Firefly beads up on eBay were made with a new version of Olympia Rain. I did a lot of comparison beads for Jed using the original OR and this new version and I like the new version encased better. The nuggets are lightly reduced and encased and the discs are heavily reduced and encased.

June POTM

The Beeswax June project of the month is up on our website here. It's an easy pop-up garden party invitation. You can also take the stamps in the project and make a birthday card or get well card instead.

Encased Aurae

I've been having a blast encasing Aurae lately. So much so that I have five matching auctions of encased Aurae up on eBay right now. I named them all "Ethereal" because of the dreamy, mystic look this glass has when it's encased. There's a lot of luster and iridescence that just doesn't show in the photographs though. I must have photographed each bead set three different times. I haven't seen anyone else get the gold webbing from Aurae either.....and I'm not telling how I did it!

Arizona

Here's another fabulous piece of art from Diana of AZ. She used our Large Desert Road 555m and the Back of Stagecoach 1073I. Both of those can be found on our Desert & Southwest page. If I remember correctly, she said the building were from Stamp Out.