Playing with Marbles

It's been 4 days since I posted about the challenge I was undertaking and I have had 6 responses.  Today I am happy to say I have completed my first challenge!

A fellow Etsy team member and shop owner, Katharine challenged me to make a set of "cat's eye" marble beads.  She said her Mom had been a marble player and  she remembered the way the cat's eye marbles had a "glowy" look about them.  I spent 2 days trying to replicate that in polymer clay.  Sorry to say, I was not happy with my results.  But I decided not to totally give up on the idea of marble beads.

You see, I too have childhood memories, not of my Mom's but of my Dad's marble collection.  He had a box full of marbles that he had once played with as a young boy.  I remember running my hands through these small  glass spheres and being in awe of their colors and patterns.  Some of them were solid white, while others had swirls of two or three colors.  I used to like to hold the transparent ones up to my eye and look through them at the light.  Daddy told us how he would carry them to school and play with his friends at recess, drawing the circle in the dirt.  So it was with these fond memories that I worked on my beads.

I did look at vintage marble images on google to get ideas on authentic colors.  Because of course I wanted the brightest most colorful marble beads I could make without straying too far from the real thing.  So here they are.  They may not be transparent like cat's eye marbles and they certainly are not perfectly round.  But I think, from a slight distance, they look like marbles. And I think my Dad would agree.

My polymer clay marble beads

So thank you Katharine for your suggestion that I make marble beads.  Being that it is almost Father's Day, I couldn't think of a better way to remember my Dad, as a young boy playing marbles in the dirt!

Some of my Dad's original marbles

It's not too late to give me your ideas.  Leave me a comment here or on my Facebook page.  I would love to hear from you.