Because they’re handsome and handmade, glazed and glamorous, these new ceramic raku-style beads & pendants are the stuff I’m thankful for.
Here’s the top 4 reasons these beads have me fired up:
Multicolored glossy glaze
Renaissance-faire dragons
Corks, i.e. "more cute bottle pendants!"
Holiday beads
Footnote:
Click here to see even more raku beads...!
My 5 favorite new things that’re great for the holidays:
1:
Penguin Santa brings beads & things...
2:
...like these, to customize the stockings...
3:
...and stuff...
4:
...while all through the house...
5:
...not a creature is stirring, except these stirring crystal fish!
Happy holiday bead shopping, everyone!
You asked (in response to yesterday’s R&T News Flash):
“OK, this is a totally dumb question, but when you have solid wood circles that are in the chain, there’s no way to ‘open’ the wood chain in order to adjust the number of links you want, is there, short of breaking one of the links?”
If you can cut wood chain, you can make this!
Our response:
“Hi, your question is definitely NOT dumb — in fact several people in our warehouse have asked the same thing!
The short answer is: just like with soldered chain, you’ll need to cut through a link to shorten the chain or use small sections. You’ll have to sacrifice cut links, unless you saw through them carefully.
One of our purchasers says, ‘I have a the link we broke in order to shorten the chain. It broke on the glue line and could maybe be glued back together. These are not solid links — at least not all of them (every other one?). The chain would be sooooo expensive if solid! So, the glued ones have a barely visible line.’
Co-owner Russ adds: ‘So far, most people using these styles of chain use the whole length. You could use a fine jeweler’s saw and cut open a link. It should be possible to glue the link together with wood glue however it might snap as you try to compress the cut ends together. It would be safer to glue it together with a thin slice of veneer into the gap created by the saw kerf. We’ve not tried this yet, and I’m not going to recommend it, but it should be possible. In other words, you are on your own if you try it. 
”
I hope this helps!
Let us know if you find a method that works well for you!
