Orphan Lamp Work Beads - the Dreams of Jack Flanders via Larry Scott

For a number of years, Larry Scott was my favorite lamp work bead artist at Bead & Button and every year I would buy a number of beads from him.  A lot of the beads that I bought from him were his Byzantine beads, so called because of the complexity of the surface design.  Most of these came in sets of three, one large and two matching small.  The last year he was at the show I bought 3 sets of orphan beads from him, sets of two small beads with no matching large beads.  I had always had it in my mind that I would make bracelets with them.  This past week I finally made the bracelets.

For these dark red beads I picked garnets.  This one somehow reminds me of India, so I have dubbed it Dreams of India.  There is a series of radio plays by the ZBS Foundation featuring Jack Flanders, and Dreams of India is one of them.

For these golden yellow beads I picked amber.  This one I call Dreams of Sumatra, another radio play featuring Jack Flanders.

For these purple beads I picked Dog Teeth Amethyst.  I call it Dreams of the Amazon, yet another Jack Flanders adventure.  I had the gemstone beads in my stash for the first two, but I had to order beads for this one.  I ordered them from Goody Beads, which features Dakota gemstone beads.

The silver beads are Bali silver, which I had in my stash, and the clasps were purchased from A Grain of Sand.  All of the bracelets are strung on Soft Flex Sterling Silver Extreme 925 Flex Metallic Flex Wire, Medium (0.019 in diameter).  The bracelets fit my slender wrists fairly closely.  Because of the weight of the gemstones they tend to hang with the clasp pretty much on my pulse point.  I love them.  The are perfect with a three-quarter length sleeve hand knitted sweater.  I have sweaters that match the first two, but not one for the third.  I guess I'll have to make one.