Towards the end of the last buying trip to Hong Kong I spent a couple of hours poking through some smaller but very beautiful bead nucleated flameballs and baroques. I’ve yet to finish drilling the flameballs I collected for a necklace for myself (I need some hours from somewhere) but I did get to make two of these pearls into brooches last week.

Right from the start my imagination saw this pearl as a sleepy koala bear stretched out on a branch..one leg hanging down and head pillowed on branch and arms.

The lustre on this pearl is incredible, liquid metallic pearl white with rainbow overtones.

Sleepy koala

The second pearl will sit up on its own but is still now a brooch…I thought at first it was a cuddly furry rabbit or teddy bear, but have decided it’s a sitting on his haunches cuddly squirrel, with his tail curled to the side. Again amazing lustre and texture and a rainbow of overtones.

Squirrel pearl

To make each of these unique pearls into brooches we spent some time filing a deep and precise groove into the backs of the pearls, which exactly fits the base bar of the sterling silver brooch finding, which is glued into the slot to make the brooch.