Do you know the worse thing about making the recycled lampwork beads for my jewellery? It's getting the flipping labels off the bottles! Many are stuck on with something akin to the stuff that holds the heat shields onto the shuttle!

Mostly I just soak them overnight in a bowl of water with a squirt of fairy liquid and the water based labels then just float off in the morning or maybe take a little bit of nail picking before they come off. Occasionally they leave a sticky residue behind which requires removing with nail polish remover or petrol. Some of the wine bottles are the worst, so I was pleasantly surprised with this bottle of Cianti - they came off a treat!

So far I have only made a few beads using wine bottles. I was previously of the opinion that the colour of their glass isn't nearly as nice as the Perrier bottles and so I didn't make any jewellery out of them. I was telling a customer about this the other day and I was saying "well, the colour of wine bottle glass seems a muddy green in the main and it's not that nice". And then I noticed that she was wearing a sweater in a muddy green colour ... and it looked absolutely lovely.

So I started to take note of the greens that people are wearing this season and I think this um .... sagey green (I am going to call it that as it sounds nicer) is in at the moment because someone else had a scarf on and there was a lady in a gorgeous corduroy jacket the same colour. (I have to have a corduroy jacket ...)

So I am planning on doing some sagey green recycled beads next.