"Picasso" Czech Glass

Let me introduce you to "Picasso" Czech Glass:



To be honest, I'm not a big fan of glass beads. I prefer the more natural, "earthy" appearance and textures of gemstones. This may have something to do with local limited availability however - all my favorite bead shops have plenty of "fire-polished" and/or "pressed" Czech glass, then a smaller selection of other types of glass beads. A few years ago I was at a bead show and stumbled upon a booth that only sold Czech glass - and most of it was unlike anything I had ever seen before: the glass appeared to be one color, with one or two other "washes" of color that didn't quite mix together, like different weights of oil. It would be my luck that I would fall in love with this stuff, with all my budget for the day blown, and only five minutes to decide what would be worth going over my budget for.

I finally decided on a few different shapes with similar colors of seagreen, robin's egg blue, and hints of amber. When I paired them with a handblown pendant I'd picked up from an artist in Portland, I was blown away with the results:



When I was headed out to this year's bead show, I was excited to look for more of these beads, since I hadn't seen their like anywhere since. I was so overwhelmed at the show, it wasn't until weeks later that I realized I never ran across any. I've spent the past few days trying to find an online source. Just imagine how fun typing in "czech glass" to Google's image finder and paging through all the hits before you find anything promising! Finally, I stumbled across a good image with an interesting label: "picasso". And I was off!

Apparently this kind of "wash" has it's own label, which made things so much easier! Once I used the label to confirm none of my regular sources had any available, I poked around some other online shops with mixed results. So I crossed my fingers and did an Etsy search: BINGO! Another amazing reason to love Etsy! Now I just have to decide which ones to buy first!

So are you in love yet? If not, head over to these amazing shops to get a better look!