Hey wanna see some more pictures of stuff I made?

So last time when I said I was working on beads inspired by ancient coral what I meant to say was that I was working on more of the ones I'd already made with just a soupçon of ancient coral.

And I made a butt-load.
There's soooo much inspiration on line. From ancient coral:

And ancient amber:

Turquoise and ivory:
To fossilized neolithic bones:

Or just regular antique bones, like in that last pic. And tons of it is actually less expensive to buy outright than to try and reproduce, considering all the time and effort it takes to make anything that looks remotely convincing. I'm not trying to copy anything in particular, I love it all and want to somehow combine all the details of antiquity into one UberAncientBeadofDeath.
But yeah so far I gots:

OMG I just counted them- SEVENTY EIGHT friggin' beads. Lawdy. How the hell to divide them up for sale?   
I also got a box of this faux beach glass from the mosaic isle at Michaels. 

And I got to sticking 'phemera on the back.

I used Mod Podge dimensional magic just cuz I picked that up at Michael's too after Shipwreck mentioned it. It's really good for transfers even though I should've been more careful and used less of it to keep it from soaking through the paper. You can see what the hell I'm talking about here in this one against dark background. And if that don't make sense too bad.

I've been so busy being lazy I'm surprised to see all these things I got done.

Can't decide if the pix against light or dark work better. Somehow all the ones against dark managed to be super blurry. Plus I managed to rub off strips of image when removing the paper pulp. 

In this one of Krishna, the image is quite visible and easy to photograph.

Others didn't fare as well, like this one which has a stamp with a gorgeous image of the three Kings following the star... whatchacallit? In Spanish we say Tres Reyes Magos. Also it said Australia across the bottom, but the thin stamp didn't stand up to the rubbing part of the transfer process and I should've stopped when I was ahead but now I have this glob. Why did I bother to solder it? Maybe I'll scrape off the paper and change it into something else.

This is another stamp that went completely transparent, making the image almost invisible. Even worse against the dark background. It's a chick holding a sheaf of wheat. Sheaf? Is that a thing? OMG- I just looked up sheaf and sure enough- it's 'a bundle of grain stalks laid lengthwise and tied together after reaping!!' Dang, I'm good!!

(See- I celebrate these small victories not because- as Mom thinks- I'm just obnoxious, but because I loose the war against my own gross laziness and general immobility everyday. So you cheer the little things. My younger sister who's getting her PhD despite considering herself the 'dumb one' of the family says she jumps and hollers when she accomplishes any little thing in the lab. All these brilliant Asian students who already knew how to do whatever it was stop to look at her curiously. In her evaluation the prof said, "You bring a lot of joy to the class.")

Some are sort of visible but the camera wants to focus on the top of the glass, not the back, which your eyes instinctively know how to do. This is an old confirmation card from Uruguay.

So yeah I guess for these the light background works best. This one's a section of Indian currency. I also did some where I glued iridescent flakes on the back as you can see below.

I decided to do earring pairs. So here I'm thinking that the dark backgrounds work better. Too bad about the friggin' blurry.

Here's a big pendant one.

And some teeny earring pairs.

I purposefully avoided any overly-matchy pairs.

There was a lot of glass in this little box. I still have more pairs picked out.

I didn't even use any of the purple tinted glass. It offended my sensibility to see purple on beach glass, however faux it might be.

Anyways, three more pairs...  I wonder if I should just offer them like this instead of finished earrings.

A few more picture pendants.

As well as some picture earring pairs.

Including these below I fucked up by rubbing off the Mary face in a Joseph and Mary pair from tiny icon images.

Meanwhile I managed to sell a pair of caged bead earrings before I'd either listed or blogged them.

 Made this set of white earring pairs that sold, and this set that's still available:
The Doves. Set of 35 earring pairs
Now look at this: