Sundays beads and Monthly Colour Challenge finished.

I've finally managed to get a handle on the hollow beads. I was struggling to get the class thin enough using a rod of glass and having purused a Spotlight on Hollow Beads and Vessels tutorial by Corina Tettinger authoress of the flameworkers bible Passing The Flame.

I read a tip that apparently helps some people and that is to use 2-3mm stringers instead of a whole rod.

I had a few rods of commercially bought Effetre 004 clear stringer, unfortunately the quality is really poor and the glass leaves misty white lines in the beads. So I thought that I would use them up to practice the hollows on. The bead with white dots and the one with pale blue dots necxt to it are made using this glass. The photo is not very clear but you can probably see that they are not completely clear (fortunately this won't show when they are etched). The two on the left are made using my own stringer with Effetre clear 006. As you can see they are much clearer and much thinnner. So this seems to be the way to go.

Finished at last.

Since the beginning of April when the Monthly Colour Challenge was announced on the Frit Happens Forum, I have been getting together a set of beads in all shades of Effetre Amber. This has been good practice for my petal beads and is probably the first set of beads I am really pleased with.

There are 2 challenges each month on the Forum. The other one is the Monthly Theme Challenge which because of a big lampworkers show coming up is "Flame Off".

So having finished my petal beads I was thinking that with a little adapting I could make them into "Fire Beads". Here is my first attempt:

I couldn't really capture the depth of these beads in the camera as they have lots of layers. I think I can improve on them and aim to have another go next time I get to the torch.

Whilst I was purusing another tutorial - this one Gems in Bloom a series of recipes by Jacqueline Parkes (she has this on half price offer at the moment). I read that you can help frit to spread by making a disc bead, rolling in frit and then melt down to a doughnut shape. The first bead I did this with and then encased (not that well). The second two beads I wrapped the disc in clear and then melted the clear. This stretched the frit - can you see?

The frit I used was Sugar Pie Honey Bunch from Cheeky Cherub on Etsy. I posted about it here: http://earth-shinedesigns.blogspot.co.uk/2012_02_01_archive.html as you can see the colours came out completely different when I applied the frit to Effetres Opal Yellow. The pinks completely dissapear, of course I might have melted them to oblivion! Definately worth some more investigation.

I'd almost forgotten about this. Every so often I have been making disc beads with Reichenbach Iris Orange. I couldn't get fantastic colours out of them but they look very nice etched. When I was looking through my collection of accumulating beads I realised that I had several that would look nice together.

When I was at the By George It's Lush weekend I made a bracelet but I wasn't very happy with it. I have very small wrists and when I bent the wire to fit some of the beads got chipped. So I took it to bits and came up with this.