Monkey Business

These are the beads that I made yesterday. I must apologise for the blurry photo, I didn't realise until after I had removed the beads from the mandrel.

I've joined another forum which is run by a friend of mine. It is called Craft Pimp and they are a very friendly bunch. It is not just for lampworkers but all crafts.

Anyway, they are having a monthly theme challenge and this month is your chinese zodiac animal. I'm a Monkey so to go completely outside of my comfort zone I made these.

I am so pleased with how they turned out considering they are my first attempts.

The colours I used are Effetre Dark Red and CIM Adobe, CIM Peace and CIM Tuxedo.

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I posted a picture of my Fire Beads on the Craft Pimp forum and someone asked me if they were an implosion. I told them they weren't but it got me to thinking. I was taught how to do an implosion bead at a workshop and thought that the effect would be nice for the stamens in the centre of a flower bead.

This is what I have come up with

Unfortunately I didn't get to finish the bead as the bead release broke but definately something to work on I think.

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I also had another play with the Cloud Busting silver infused shards I bought from Frit'n'chips. This time I layered it on some Effetre Light Silver Pink. This is a hollow bead.

For some reason these shards always seem to come out of the kiln with a mirrorlike finish. I think in this case I quite like it.

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I finally decided on which spacers I would like to finish these sets which I hope to list on Etsy soon.

There are details on how I made these beads on earlier listings.