Experimenting

I've got a rather large number of silver-lined, bright green beads that are either of Chinese manufacture, or Czech before they started to care about uniformity.

You're seeing only a small number of them in this picture; there are lots more hiding in my drawer. I like the color, but I'm not crazy about the idea of culling them; they are terribly irregular in size. And they're very, very bright; silver-lined beads are always bright, but these seem to be brighter than usual. I've been passing them over for a long time; wondering if I should just get rid of them, or let them stay, taking up space.

Did I mention that I have quite a lot of them?

So, yesterday I had an idea. I've started a new piece; it's to be completely beadwoven and contain ceramic and lampwork focal beads. It's going to be a medium-big piece, but the focal beads are heavy, so it needs a lot of structure. A lot of structure that isn't going to show . . . do you see where I'm going here?

I'm hoping that these bright green silver-lined beads will reflect light up into the piece when it's done and create a subtle glow. That may be too much to expect; I'm prepared to cover every inch of them with other beads if they turn out to be less of a design element and more of a distraction. But, regardless of whether or not any of them end up being seen in the final product, I'm using them.

Without culling. Well, at least without very much culling. The really bizarre ones do have to go.