Transforming roses into an almost indestructible bead…I love it!

I start with your beautiful roses.  They can be old or new – it doesn’t matter… they just can’t have any mold on them.  Then I cook your roses and I cook them and I cook them some more.  This part of the process can take as long as 5 weeks because basically I’m forcing your roses to decompose.  At the  end of  this process the results are a material that looks and feels  like clay but smells like roses.  From the clay I roll your beads and let them air dry for about a week or two, they are not oven baked because this could destroy the rose fragrance.  During the drying process the beads can shrink down to half of the original size.  Since all of the beads are hand rolled and the rose clay is 100% organic I can not always make an exact size bead.   Sometimes beads will shrink to half the size and other times they won’t shrink that much…nature seems to have a mind of it’s own.  What I can guarantee is that all of the rose beads will be as close to the same size as 30 years of hand rolling experience can make them.

All of the rose beads will be some variation of brown. What I’m saying is when I decomposed your roses I turned them into dirt and dirt is brown.  Red roses are reddish brown, yellow roses are yellowish brown and, I have even seen a very dark red roses have a blueish hue…once again it’s nature!

Next comes gemstones… There are so many different types of gemstones.   Precious, semi-precious, birthstones, zodiac stones, and stones that have certain metaphysical meanings. With all of the different gemstones & reasons to pick them…well, the list of choices could go on forever.

Finally the wire & sheet metal.  I really like the delicate look that a fine wire adds to a piece of jewelry. It becomes the chain that connects the gemstones to the rose beads. In many of the pieces I create I use bronze, sterling silver, and 18kt. gold filled wire. I also use sterling silver and jewelers brass sheet metal to make my discs and washers.  Jewelers brass is the same color as 18kt gold but it doesn’t have the same high price tag.

I think the thing that excites me the most about doing what I do is … this is not just wearable art & it’s not just jewelry, IT’S YOUR ROSES!