Barcelona!

My inspiration for these beads came from a trip to Barcelona and a dress I saw in one of the shops.  Everything was so bright and vibrant and ...... sunny!  There is of course a story behind this all........

Last year my husband took me to Barcelona to celebrate our 10 year wedding anniversary.  It was a very special surprise!  You see, 10 years ago we decided to back pack across Europe for our honeymoon .  We had no map, no plan, nothing booked.  All we had were a couple of backpacks, a train ticket and three weeks off work.  Fantastic!

What adventures we had....hee hee....all recorded in our travel journal that we occasionally re-read and have a good laugh about.  It would have made a very funny blog! Maybe still could.....

One of the places we were going to visit was Barcelona but due to circumstances beyond our control, we never made it.  It was a shame but in a way I am glad we didn't because I don't think I would have appreciated Barcelona then as much as I do now! 

It is a beautiful city filled with the most inspirational art, artists and architecture.  Honestly it is an amazing place to visit!  Where else can you find buildings like the Casa Batllo designed by Antoni Gaudi.  It is an architectural masterpiece .... or should I say one of his arhitectural masterpieces .... the man was a genius!

This was only the outside....the inside was completely amazing in many different ways...the picture below shows the swirling whirlpool of a ceiling in one of the rooms in Casa Battlo.  One room could give you enough inspiration to last a lifetime and my notebook is bulging full of ideas for beads and jewellery! I could write pages about Antoni Gaudi, he was a very unique man!  Definitely worth having a google search ....

Barcelona was a fascinating place to visit and we completely exhausted ourselves visiting everything we could - The Picasso Museum, Salvador Dali Museum, Guell Park and The Sangrada Familia to name but a few...all amazing places to visit.... But...on our travels from one place to another we found this really strange building.  It looked to me like there were lots of eyeballs on sticks watching us walking around the streets....very different! .... definitely my kind of thing ......

It was clearly something that had stuck in my mind because the other day I sat down at my torch and made these beads....

The beads were made using Effetre Turquoise 591034 as the base colour.  I started by making a barrel shaped bead which I heated gently and then pressed into a lentil shaped mould.  After returning the bead to the flame to remove the chill marks I added a random selection of dots in different sizes using a pale blue stringer (Effetre Pale Blue 591224).  I heated the dots enough for the glass to adhere to the bead but I didn't completely melt the dots, I left them slightly raised.  To make the larger dots a little bit more interesting I decided to add Effetre Lapis 591246 on top and finished them off with Effetre Periwinkle Blue 591220.  With each addition of glass I made sure the dots were raised and not melted in the surface of the bead.  They look quite funky!  I'm not sure if I am going to sell them yet or make them into a unique piece of jewellery.

Another place we were both inspired by was the Picasso Museum and I know there is Picasso inspired set of beads lurking within me ..... just waiting to be made ..... but that will be another blog for another day ......

Sarah xx
A Blogin Blog Directory