Obsessed with petal beads

I haven't produced much in my last 2 torching sessions as I have been practing petal beads. Each bead takes not far off an hour each to do so that's why I don't have many beads to show.

It was a lovely sunny day today as you can see by the shadows in my photo. Of course the sunny weather means we have to get onto our allotment to prepare it for sowing and this cuts down on my torching time.

These are the petal beads I have been working on. As you can see I am getting better. The one on the right is the last one I made and I am happy to say I am very pleased with it.

I am still trying to get some colour out of DH Clio. The bead in the middle is my last attempt and has a glint of pink in it. I think I may have to try a heavy reduction as that is all I have left to try before I give up. As you can see from the other 2 beads I have managed to get some colour out of Clio before. This was from a bit of rod that a friend gave me. So far I have got zip from the batch I bought.

Another friend who is also having trouble getting any colour our of Clio said that Kalypso is much easier to use and as I have some I thought I would give it a go. I'm really pleased with the way these turned out. They are a small base of Kalypso, wrapped with fine silver wire and then encased. They are fairly small and I think they would make a nice bracelet, so I will be making some more of these. Some of the wire has turned gold in places which is quite nice.