There’s a fantastic organization out there called Beads of Courage (BOC). As a group, they provide beads to children undergoing surgeries (in many cases, MANY surgeries) as a way to help them cope with the process.
Starting with a string of beads spelling out their name, the children then get beads to mark milestones and procedures. Go for a blood draw, that’s one type of bead, chemo another, x-rays, heart operations, etc, etc, etc…all stuff distracting kids from the business of growing up and being a kid.
In short, BOC is a group of nice folks.
They rely on donations of beads from bead makers all over the country and world that work in glass, polymer clay, wood, felt, metal, you name it, and when they don’t have enough of a certain type of bead, they have to buy and supplement that type with plastic beads.
Recently I learned that the kids that undergo radiation treatments get glow in the dark beads, and that BOC’s been supplementing with plastic beads.
I’ve decided to do something nice, and I’m making an effort to make 60 glow in the dark beads to send off. This is a lot of beads for me, since by and large…I don’t do beads. But I have glow glass, I have mandrels, and doing 10 beads a session isn’t a whole lot when they’re on the smaller (not 1/4″ rod) mandrels.
I think I got 11 in the kiln tonight, so I’m ahead on the next session.