Lampwork: week 23-24

[Aug 1 - 8]

August’s colour of the month was 060 cobalt, and the theme of the month was Flower Power.

Here are two sangre rounds rolled in pearl mica, a lentil made of my attempt to make honey crunch (amber/topaz over ivory) over clear. And a lentil made of Vetrofond odd light red jasper.

Week 23 reddish

Gravity swirl beads: lilac, white and ink blue, 1 lentil, 2 rounds.

Lilac swirls

This was my mystery this week. I was sold the below as EDP, and thought it was because it behaved more or less as expected with periwinkle or dragonscale beads. I got the beads below out of it and boggled because they’re transparent – I’d just wound them on, kept them hot to avoid devit and straight into the kiln. Now, it turns out there was a mix-up at the vendor – they’d ordered both EDP and striped pink, only got one unlabelled and thought it was EDP. (Striped pink is EDP with a core of rubino). I still don’t know why my beads are transparent – Julie of Lush Lampwork did a lovely colour test of striped pink alongside EDP and sedona and hers comes out opaque purple…

Here’s two rounds, the rods, and a stringer I pulled.

Not EDP - striped pink

Gravity swirl beads: pale emerald, white and CiM sherwood, 3 lentils.

Emerald swirls

A big hole bead in dark turquoise and ivory.

BHB dark turquoise and ivory

A BHB in Reichenbach multicolour dark (over black) with melted in clear dots.

BHB in MCD with clear

Magdalena Ruiz multitool beads, made with the smallest cavity, in CiM poison apple. On the end is a nugget in amethyst and BeadySam’s gem surprise frit (was also encased in amethyst).

Poison apple and a fritty nugget

BHB in cobalt and white.

Cobalt and white BHB

Two beads with cobalt: one is a cobalt base with light pink and mid purple, the other is a light pink base with cobalt dots.

Cobalt and light pink

BHB in cobalt, copper green and opal yellow. The copper green reduced in the kiln, so I soaked it in grime&lime to remove that and it came out a bit odd…

BHB cobalt and copper green

Dragonscale necklace

Here’s the necklace I made in the end for my mum.

Dragonscale necklace

It has etched dragonscale beads in petrol green and CiM mink, with spacers in mink, ivory and petrol green. The mink spacers are etched. There are also Greek ceramic spacers in mottled heather and fine silver. It is strung on brown leather thong with a sterling clasp.

Lampwork: weeks 19-21

[July 3 - 18]

For a week in the middle here, I ran out of gas *horror*. I can only replace my bottle on weekends, and it ran out on a Sunday night after the place I get it from had closed. Very frustrating!

The colour of the month challenge for July was CiM Zachary, and the theme was On the Beach!

I made some twisties featuring white, CiM ginger and stoneground, dark red brown and coral.

Brown and coral

Then I made a set of a dark red brown lentil and matching spacers decorated with the twistie and some layered dots of the colours in it.

I did a similar thing with CiM zachary, dirty martini, electric avenue and Vetro med lapis.

Zachary blues

Beachy beads

Tide coming in

I call this lot ‘Tide coming in’. They’re variable – I didn’t manage to keep my lentils the same size, and I got them too hot while adding the murrini so they went out of shape a bit. They are mostly dark ivory, Reichenbach ocean and murrini by me, Kaz and Jolene. The lentils also have some SIS shards, some CiM stoneground and some P&T vanilla. I noticed on the rounds that if I left the wraps of ocean thin, they tend to react and go brown round the edges, but are fine when thick.

Ocean

These are white encased in ocean with Kaz’ broken biskwits murrini. I love Reichenbach ocean – it has little glimmers in it.

Beachy shard

This is CiM sapphire and mermaid with SIS shards and Kaz broken biskwit murrini.

More dragonscales

More dragonscales – magic and petrol green dots.

Etched amethyst

This is a part-etched amethyst lentil. I used nail polish to draw the design on it before putting it in the etching fluid.

Ocean and sherwood 1

CiM sherwood encased in ocean with biskwit murrini and trails of SIS on one side. Unfortunately this one thermal shocked. The picture shows the back too – the glitter in the ocean gives a subtle shimmer over the green. I don’t think the red, blue and white murrini goes very well with it, but that’s the danger of choosing one at random! I don’t like the way I decorated the front in general – it’s rather bitty.

Pulsar kitty

A little jelly-like kitty in CiM pulsar. It has kryptonite eyes and a blue Kaz biskwit murrini front and back.

Octopus

An octopus! Base lentil is pulsar, body is CiM phoenix with stoneground.

Zachary and amethyst kitties

These kitties are in CiM zachary with pulsar dots and amethyst. Again, Kaz biskwit murrini front and back.

Ocean and sherwood 2

I redid the cracked ocean and sherwood bead, but used Kaz’s multicolour mermaid murrini this time, and kept the decoration down. I like this one much better.

More ocean beads, with a BHB

I made some more using these colours: 2 rounds to go with the lentil, and my first BHB. Making the big hole bead smooth and symmetrical is definitely on the tricky side! This was on a 5mm mandrel.

Sangre kitty

Kitty in CiM sangre with Vetro odd custard eyes and Kaz biskwit murrini. The custard was a bit brighter than I was expecting! He peeeeers at you.

Birthday necklaces

[June 24-30]

Necklace for Anna:

Anna birthday necklace

Ivory and dark turquoise beads – lentil with raked dots, 4 rounds with raked dots, 4 plain spacers. The beads were etched. Combined with Greek ceramic beads in blues and fine silver, strung on silver leather with a sterling clasp. I just sat down and made all the beads for this without having much clue what I was going to make beforehand. I’ve done the raked design once before and quite like it, and I’m very pleased how the necklace turned out!

Necklace for Sus:

Sus birthday necklace

Totoro bead in Vetrofond periwinkle, 4 gravity swirled rounds, 4 periwinkle spacers. Combined with Greek ceramic beads in greens and fine silver, strung on knotted waxed cotton cord with a sterling clasp.

Sus birthday necklace: Totoro closeup

Prototype:

Totoro necklace prototype

This was my first try at the Totoro necklace. It’s lariat-style on green silk rattail with small spacers in pale blue, kryptonite, pink lady, mystic pink, dark lavender and baby blue. I decided it didn’t work very well – I think it needed larger beads as it looks very thin and sparse in person.

Flat Totoro!

Flat Totoro

A different style of Totoro :)

Lampwork: week 17-18

[June 14-27]

The dragonscale beads were also done in week 17.

First hummingbirds

Hummingbirds. I did these after Sabine mentioned Roger Child’s hummingbird tutorial on YouTube. I made the hole going the wrong way by accident the first time… This is something that I had to force myself not to do for the other ones. It just felt more natural for the body to be that way round! They are petrol green with dark lavender wings, which has photographed as blue under my halogen bulb (dark lavender’s a colour shift glass).

More hummingbirds

Some more. One has a Reichenbach mystic grey-blue body and pale blue wings, another is mystic pink with pink lady wings, and the third is MCD with ocean wings.

Iris blue on ivory

These are Reichenbach iris blue on ivory. See how the design on the lentil has nowhere near as much of a reaction line? I think this has a lot to do with pressing and only the surface of the glass being heated up as much after I added the blue. It wasn’t hot enough to sink in so much, so it didn’t produce as much of a line. The rounds were heated fully molten while I melted the dots in and gravity swirled them a very little. They’re reduced to get the metallic effect.

Lace and yellow opalino

On the right are lace beads, made by making a base of anise white, adding little bits of CiM Hades stringer and superheating it so it webs. Love the effect. On the left are yellow opalino beads. The bicone has robin’s egg blue frit on it. The rounds developed that reddish colour in the kiln, which confused me a lot! I am assuming they reduced slightly in there, but only on one side.

Wut?

I have christened these “Wut?!” beads. They are fugly. They’re dragonscale-based. The first is an ivory base, SIS dots, then Reichenbach silver brown dots that were melted in, reduced and dots of clear were added on top that were then partly flattened. The second is similar but has a CiM olive base, SIS dots and EDP striped pink dots before doing the silver brown and clear as above. Lots of devit from the striped pink and a big blobby mess!

Pinks

Mystic pink hollow with purpur frit. Mystic pink lentil with hades webbing: this behaved slightly oddly, didn’t web well and formed some whitish lines as well. Devit? Then a dark lavender lentil with hades webbing (I adjusted the photo so it appears the normal colour rather than blue).

In week 18 I also made beads for birthday necklaces for two of my friends – to be seen in my next post! Plus a number of tiny little spacers in pinks, blues, and greens.

Dragonscales

Whoops, this post has sat as a draft for over a month. Must get a move on!

[June 14-20]

Mum wanted me to make her a necklace with dragonscale beads.

There’s a tutorial for the technique by *Naos* at Lampwork-Etc. Basically, you want a base colour that will allow spreading, a dot colour that will spread, and some extra-silvery SIS. You make SIS dots on your base, put small dots of the spreading colour on top of those, and melt them all in, doing a very gentle gravity swirl just to allow the dots to move, spread and push each other into shape. When your colour spreads enough, you end up with scale shapes butting up against each other that are bordered with silver. When it doesn’t spread enough you can still see the base inbetween.

I did a number of colour tests to see what would work and what wouldn’t.

I had plans to test a whole bunch of bases, but with round beads if it spreads properly you don’t really see much of the base, so I stuck with ivory most of the time. She suggests using Vetrofond dark ivory – I used Effetre light because I thought that might be a closer match than Effetre dark in terms of how reactive it is. Other options she mentions are copper green and Vetrofond ochre green.

The spreading colours she suggests are Lauscha olive and steel blue, neither of which I have, and EDP. There are some more posts in the thread I linked with suggestions for other colours. I tried everything I thought might spread.

I tried with silvered coral stringer for some – it doesn’t make much difference most of the time. If they don’t spread properly it gives a slightly darker outline.

Dragonscales 1

L to R:
1. Ivory base, SIS, EDP* dots. As suggested, works well! The EDP has devitrified in places though.
2. Ivory, SIS, petrol green. Works a bit, probably needs bigger petrol green dots. The ivory has stayed lightest on this bead.
3. Ivory, SIS, periwinkle. Doesn’t spread enough.
4. Ivory, SIS, coral. Doesn’t spread either, but I do quite like the way the colour’s escaped slightly (in the periwinkle too).
5. Transparent amethyst, SIS, EDP*. You can only see the different base right round the holes!
6. Copper green (over black), silvered coral stringer, pastel yellow. Less said the better
7. Ivory, SCS, petrol green. I used bigger dots, and the coral is a bit darker than the SIS version.
8. CiM mink, SIS, CiM poi. This has gone very weird! The dots seem to have gone inside-out.
9. Ivory, SCS, mink. I like this one – the mink is a bit translucent and the dots are a warm browny-purple that hasn’t shown up in the photo.
10. Ivory, SCS, raku. Works very well! Not much colour in the raku (I rolled it in a press to chill it) but the little there is does add something.
11. Pastel yellow, SIS, CiM leaky pen. The leaky pen works pretty well, don’t think the base colour was a good choice though!

Dragonscales 2

1. Ivory, SCS, Reichenbach magic. Works! Slightly greener than the raku.
2. Ivory, SCS, Reichenbach multicolour dark. Also works!
3. Ivory, SCS, Reichenbach iris blue. I was hoping this would work – apparently most blues don’t. I suspect all of the iris colours will.
4. Ivory, SCS, Reichenbach caramel. This one also goes metallic when reduced, like the irises. I would expect flamingo to work too, as it seems to react in exactly the same way, only pinker. Really like this one.
5. Ivory, SIS, CiM hades. Works and goes a tiny bit webby round the edges of the black.
6. Ivory, SIS, copper green. Pretty separation. Works, though not as enthusiastically as some of the others.
7. Ivory, SIS, CiM poi. You can at least see some of the poi this time, but it still does weird things!
8. Ivory, SIS, opal yellow. Turned out like the poi – you can’t really see what the dot colour is supposed to be at all.
9. Ivory, SIS, MCD. A repeat to try for different colours. Hasn’t been annealed yet, so they’ll probably strike further in the kiln.

Dragonscales 3

I had to take these pictures in sunlight to get the colours mostly right. Three are pale blue over EDP, the other is teal over magic (bases all ivory as before). I don’t really like the effect. The EDP ones are still very dark, and I think the magic makes a tidier shape on its own. The pinker one is where I melted the EDP in flat before putting the transparent dots on top, but it isn’t consistent all the way round.

I then etched most of them to see how they would look. I didn’t etch the one with copper green dots, because the copper green base bead went washed-out when I etched it and I liked the colour in the dots.

Etched dragonscales 1

Etched dragonscales 2

*I have since discovered that what I was sold as EDP is actually striped pink – EDP with a core of rubino. It works spreading-wise, but EDP only should give better colour… if you can work it successfully.

Lampwork: week 16

[June 7-13]

This week I was trying to use red, green and blue in the same bead. It’s tricky.

Fritties: Sangre lentil encased in clear with chameleon frit. BeadySam’s Gem Surprise frit over white, then over a sangre core that was encased in clear, then over dark lavender, then over periwinkle. Dragons Candy frit over sangre (way too dark!). Dark blue transparent over white with Gem Surprise.White core encased in teal, with robin’s egg blue frit. Another sangre core encased in clear with Gem Surprise.

Fritties

Jungle beads. I’m calling them that because the lentil looks like someone twisted a jungle! The bases are sangre, periwinkle and pea green, and I used some short ends of twisties from Jolene to decorate each bead. The lentil was half periwinkle, half pea green with all the leftover little twistie ends from the other beads, and the centre was swirled.

RGB jungle beads

Another pair of tries with red, green and blue. The left lentil is a white core, half encased in dark grass green, half in cobalt blue, zig-zag and dot decoration on top. The second is a pea green base with black hair thin stringer lines, encased in teal, then med lapis, dark turquoise and dark blue transparent trails, and sangre on top.

RGB lentils

I decided after these that to use red, green and blue successfully together in one bead, I probably needed a fair amount of white in it as well. Haven’t tried that yet, though!

I had another go with Reichenbach silver brown. Here there is a silver brown core, reduced and encased in clear, and a sangre core encased in silver brown, reduced and encased in clear. The second one in particular I got too hot while trying to melt the clear round.

Silver brown rounds

Variety of things:
Pale green apple faux boro stringer over sangre, encased in clear. Hades and multicolour dark twistie over sangre. Sangre with very thin rings of MCD, encased in clear. Repeat of the first one but with more faux boro stringer.

Faux boro etc

And a matching lentil – sangre with pale green apple faux boro stringer, encased.

Faux boro lentil

In the How Not To Do It files, silver brown over sangre lentil, reduced and then begun to be encased… It was taking ages, I already suspected I’d got the core too hot, and then the fire alarm in the hall started beeping because its battery was running down. So I put the bead away as was and went and fixed the alarm.

Wrongggg

Here we have a kryptonite lentil rolled in purpur, chameleon, robin’s egg blue and granny apple green frit and the centre swirled. The middle two rounds are dirty martini with those same frits and then with a red frit blend. Finally, a rose opalino lentil with purple twisties.

Pastels

This is rose opalino and Reichenbach pink lady with SIS round the centre and swirled, plus Jolene’s purple murrini.

Rose lentil

Teal lentil with quartz grey shards. I was going to do more with this, but broke my bead release. Then two somewhat messy kaleidoscope beads from Passing the Flame. Then two tiger-ish beads. The first is a black base with a green and red twistie, SIS, some uranium yellow transparent and encased in clear. The second is a black base, SIS, yellow and red twistie and some amber on the surface.

Shard and PTF beads

Lampwork: week 15

[June 1 - 6]

The two on the right are CiM dirty martini bases, with a twistie of magic and hades on the rightmost, and MCD and hades on the other, then encased. The magic didn’t strike. (The MCD developed brighter colour after annealing). The other two are a white latticino twistie wrapped round a black base.

Twistie rounds

This one didn’t work very well, but it does show my rainbow murrini. It is a mid amber lentil with a couple of green twisties on top.

Rainbow murrini on lentil

I am really pleased with the way this one came out. It is a clear core encased in CiM khaki, with Kugler silver green frit that I reduced, then a bit of clear striped over the top, and some of my complex green murrini. I love the way it looks like it has water washing over it.

Khaki and silver green lentil

The Theme of the Month Challenge was June Bug this month, so I tried making ladybird murrini. I had to fight a bit with a huge gather, and I now know why people like stainless steel punties for pulling larger amounts of glass. The ends warped, so the ladybirds from there have no heads! They can be added onto a bead anyway, so they can still be used, but I would rather like some proper punties… (I have had no luck trying to use other glass rods as punties. Something always gets too cold and falls off/shatters exactly when I don’t want it to. I have been pulling my murrini using stainless steel chopsticks, which works well if they’re bullseye-style and you make a relatively small amount at once).

Ladybird murrini

And the colour of the month was Effetre 026 teal. I’ve included in the picture the teal hollow I made a while ago to show the batch variation you can get – it’s much bluer than the (probably older) batch I have more of. There’s a spacer, the hollow, three bases with different twisties wrapped round, and two with teal bases, white dots, more teal on top.

Teal

This is a periwinkle opalino lentil with trails of teal on top. It has a watery effect (looks better in person – in the photo the periwinkle seems to come more to the front).

Watery lentil

A ladybird bead: I made a core of lime green, added bome very fine black stringer lines and mostly encased it in dark grass green. Then I added my ladybird murrini, capped with clear and patted in a bit. (There’s one on the back I melted in flat and didn’t cap. It didn’t come out well). Then there’s a 3D ladybird I made in situ on a base of dark grass green. Finally there’s the METAtropolis bead take 1, with a P&T black oblong, white and mid amber dots and ladybird murrini.

Ladybird beads

Teal and CiM kryptonite lentil, with a twisted line of SIS around the centre and complex green murrini.

Teal and kryptonite lentil

METAtropolis bead take 2. P&T black tab shape, fine clear stringer for the brickwork and two handmade ladybirds. (P&T black will stay black under transparents).

METAtropolis bead take 2

P&T black lentil with vine cane and ladybird murrini that have been capped with clear.

Ladybirds with vine

Dark lavender and CiM kryptonite lentil, with SIS swirl and Jolene’s purple murrini. Dark lavender is a lovely colour, though it colour changes to blue under incandescent light (as here).

Dark lavender and kryptonite lentil

A sandy, beachy lentil. Ivory, silver foil and Jolene’s orange murrini.

Sandy beach lentil

Reichenbach caramel and flamingo testing. I did these because Melanie of MindMelt did some colour testing of flamingo, and her description of the rods she had sounded a lot more like the caramel I had. Since I had a rod of each, I thought I’d compare them.

Caramel and flamingo testing

L to R:
1. Clear lentil part encased in copper green, with flamingo trails. The copper green reduced a fair amount.
2. Caramel round (did this previously).
3. Caramel reduced.
4. Flamingo reduced – both these go metallic.
5. Copper green on caramel.
6. Copper green on flamingo.
7. Silver foil on caramel.
8. Silver foil on flamingo.
9. Clear, encased in copper green, caramel on left, flamingo on right.
I didn’t get such impressive results as Melanie, and the colours on top of copper green didn’t get the outlines hers did, but I have an idea why not. It has happened before for me that colours you would expect to get large reaction lines with (and which do when they are rounds) don’t do it nearly so much when I press them as lentils. I am suspecting that when I add the surface decoration to the lentil, the base isn’t getting hot enough for the glasses to react together properly. On the lentils here you can see some pitting on the top colour where the raised parts got too hot when I was melting them in, but they still haven’t properly sunk in to the base. Need to adjust my technique, I think. Possibly the copper green layer was also too thin in this case.

Anyway, my results do show that caramel and flamingo react in exactly the same ways in these tests. Caramel is just always browner and flamingo is always pinker. They both reduce to metallic like Reichenbach’s iris colours, and are very pretty doing so.

Ivory lentil with orange twisties from Jolene wrapped around. Thermal shocked, so it has a crack down the centre.

Orange twistie lentil

Reichenbach silver brown again: tiny cores and Laura Sparling’s thick encasing method. They’re better than my previous efforts, but I was still getting the inside too hot.

Silver brown

Lampwork: weeks 13-14

[May 18 - 30]

I had a go with my Reichenbach silver brown. It seems I can get some colour in lentils, but I’m not having much luck with rounds, either overheating to get blue/brown/grey, or it going entirely transparent and invisible! It’s a colour that reduces and then strikes when you encase it, which you have to do keeping it very cool. I tried over various base colours. I’ve since had some advice about a slightly different encasing method that helps keep it cool (see Laura Sparling’s encasing tutorials), so hopefully I’ll get some better results…

Reichenbach silver brown

In most of the small ones all that you see is the base colour I put it over. Here are the lentils where I got some colour – the smaller one is over cobalt, the larger over clear.

Silver brown lentils

This is a dark ivory lentil with silver brown stringer on top, reduced, and random trails of clear on top.

Silver brown on ivory lentil

My glass nippers arrived at this point, so I could start using my murrini.

Bicone: clear in the centre, dark ivory one end, dark turquoise the other, capped ends with clear. I raked one side over to the other with a silver brown stringer and added a dot at the end, then added some of my green murrini.

Murrini bicone

Dark ivory lentil with silver brown swirled trails. One each of my current murrini on each side (black and white, coral and lime, green). Also a large dot of silver brown reduced and covered with clear, and some smaller dots.

Ivory lentil with murrini

Petrol green encased in clear lentil. Some SIS and the coral and lime murrini.

Green lentil with murrini

Dark ivory base, raked silver brown stringer and reduced. It was shaped into an oval with Magdalena Ruiz multitool, which I found a bit tricky. Need to practise using that a bit more! It needs a 1.6mm mandrel and I’ve been using 2mm exclusively recently.

Ivory oval

Murrini in CiM french blue, dark turquoise transparent, dark turquoise and daffodil yellow. The yellow appears as greenish.

Blue-green murrini

These three are all reactive frit on a base of uranium yellow. There is Gaffer silver blue lustre frit, Reichenbach iris green (the coppery one) and Kugler silver green. They were all reduced, though the iris green’s the only one that has much visible effect.

Fritty lentils

Murrini in red, yellow and white.

Red and yellow murrini

Periwinkle set with blue-green and red-yellow murrini flowers.

Periwinkle with murrini set

Vetrofond med lapis lentil with silver green frit, reduced. The effect is rather subtle, but it’s a beautiful deep blue with variations from the frit.

Lapis lentil

Periwinkle murrini.

Periwinkle murrini

Complex green murrini. They have two med lapis spokes near the centre and my gather was pretty enormous before I pulled it! (Ok, they aren’t particularly complex… the name helps me identify them though!)

Complex green murrini

Here we have, left to right:
1. Gravity swirled CiM dirty martini on adamantium.
2. Reichenbach mystic grey-blue lentil with complex green murrini.
3-5. Reichenbach magic rounds with complex green murrini. Matching lentil that also has coral in it.
6. Vetrofond med lapis round, encased in clear, then vine cane added. Mostly encased again and periwinkle murrini put on top. I balanced the shape back to round by adding a few more dots of clear here and there and melting them in.

Week 14 selection

Kitties! The smaller one is pearl grey with light grey spots, the larger is Reichenbach magic with black dots, a little light pink nose and whiskers.

Kitties!

Rainbow murrini. After all the ones I’ve been making that have extra stripes and things in the middle, I decided to do some very simple ones that just have more colours round the edge. A couple are transparents, next time I’ll stick to opaques.

Rainbow murrini

More critters! The owl is Reichenbach multicolour dark. Its eyes were meant to be amber but it turned out my stringer was striking orange instead, so they went red. Then there’s a cow bead from Emma Green’s tutorial.

An owl and a cow!

These are Reichenbach ocean with my rainbow murrini. I plunged and dotted the ones on the lentil with clear, and they look a bit like jellyfish! I used some of the teeniest ones on the rounds, poked the centres and left them part raised.

Ocean with rainbow murrini

Three lentils: one of Reichenbach antique green with a red, turquoise, yellow and dark turquoise twistie on it. (Antique green’s a bit like very very diluted goldstone – it has little shimmers in it). Then a rather unsuccessful attempt to strike magic on top of cobalt blue, and finally a lentil of multicolour dark.

Three lentils

Lampwork: weeks 11-12

[May 8th - May 16th]

May’s Colour of the Month challenge is Effetre 212 Lime Green, and the theme challenge is Spring. I made beads for both.

(212 is also called pea green pretty much everywhere else. I have rods labelled both, but Tuffnell’s currently calls it lime green and I think that suits it better because it isn’t pea-coloured. 214 is nile green elsewhere, pea green at Tuffnell’s. I did spend a while wondering about this :p)

I started by trying some ringed spacers. NTS: dark yellow doesn’t actually show up that much on lime green… It’s also a tad trickier than it looks to keep the rings even. I tried again with orange fine stringer instead.

Lime stripeys

Lentil sets: clear with lime green dots of various sizes, topped with white dots, repeat until you can’t make them any smaller. With matching pair of spacers.

Lime and white dotty lentils

Then I did the same with CiM olive and lime green.

Olive and lime dotty lentils

Big stripy lentil: transparent sage green base, with stripes of opaque sage, lime green and red brown stringer.

Green stripy lentil

Faux boro using pale green apple and iris gold frit, encased in clear. None of the cola colour I was getting with my straw yellow.

Pale green apple faux boro

A faux boro lentil: didn’t photograph incredibly well – the light shining through it makes it more amber than it looks normally. Plus another couple of rounds, with different stages of adding more frit.

Faux boro, lit through

Red roof tile trio: lentil plus spacers with SIS round the centre.

Red roof tile with SIS

Set with lime green base and petrol green raked dots.

Leafy green lentil

Then some spring themed ones:

Garden bead with red roof tile for the ground and dark blue transparent sky. Anise white clouds, vine cane and yellow commercial millefiori, with a pair of matching spacers.

Sunflower trio

Pale green apple hollow rolled in iris gold frit. Hmm, too much frit and iris gold is better if you do more with it.

Iris gold hollow

Then I tried making murrini, partly so I would have some bullseye style ones to practice using so I wouldn’t waste the ones I bought from Kaz. My first try wasn’t hugely successful – I pulled most of it way too thin. So I tried again, with more colours this time, and found out that you really do need to use very contrasting colours. Lime green and CiM butter pecan might look different enough, but they really don’t show up against one another once you’ve pulled them down and tried to use them in the centre of a murrini (which is the part that gets smallest when you actually use it – the edge spreads out a lot, making the stripes on it bigger).

Green murrini

I tried making shards again with a blue frit mix on Effetre rose quartz. But the part that actually blew up thinly didn’t have any frit on it… and I got cellophane thin very pale transparent shards. Not so useful! This is a rose quartz lentil with the thicker pieces that did have frit on them.

Shards on rose quartz

Another garden bead, this time with lime green between the ground and the sky. I used a pink commercial millefiori, didn’t cap it with clear and it devitrified. Another one for the etch pile, I think, as otherwise the bead’s quite nice.

Pink flower bead

Then I started practicing using twisties, because I won the silent auction for Jolene’s Huge Jar o’Twisties, so I thought I’d better work out how to use them!

Here we have a pea green lentil with opaque blue twistie. I added eyes and turned it into a sort of snail. Then we have a dark amber lentil with a twistie that Mizgeorge gave me, and a light ivory lentil with swirled SIS and red and clear twistie from Mizgeorge over the top.

Twistie lentils

I made some black and white simple murrini (Effetre black, so it’s purplish).

Black and white murrini

Some twistie rounds. The red and blue ones are encased to spread them out, the purple ones spread out enough on their own so I didn’t encase them. I think they look like sweeties. And also a clear lentil with subtle semi-transparent blue twistie in it. You can see it better in person – it has misty lines.

Twistie beads

Coral and green murrini:

Coral and lime murrini

Pictures of the murrini in use coming up. My wheeled glass nippers arrived halfway through the next week, so I could cut them up and use them then. (I got Leponitt ones from mosaictraderuk.com, and I do love them).