The start of each bead

The ancient Italian art of Millefiori:

Growing up in Europe, I was always fascinated by ancient crafts and art techniques.

Millefiori was originally used in Italy to make wonderful creations in glass.

The term millefiori is a combination of the Italian words "mille" (thousand) and "fiori" (flowers)

The millefiori technique involves the production of polymer canes with multicolored patterns which are viewable only from the cut ends of the cane.

So it starts out with a rather large cane, which I then roll it into the size I need. The images now become more delicate.

Now I cut little slices off the cane and roll the them into the polymer bead.