Winter Colour Diet - Session 11

I've been struggling at the torch for the last few weeks.  Everything that can go wrong, seems to... and I was feeling awfully down about it all week last week.  But I think I'm on the upside of that curve, or at least I hope so.  I'm really enjoying my 'plasmablossom' design -- I think it is evolving again into something else entirely, and while I'm not 100% thrilled with the beads, I am excited about seeing the next ones, which is a much better way to feel than I've been feeling for the last little while.

This is Reichenbach Magic over Pale Ink Blue with Ivory and Leaky Pen.  The aventurine was encased with Taxco Silver Turquoise.  I put some murrini into the bead, and I didn't even make an absolute mess of it.  It's not perfect, and it's not flat, but I think I just about have those stupid little chips figured out.

Here we have Double Helix R170 over Pale Ink Blue.  I got really nice strike out of the glass, but it's a colour that's pretty easy to get along with.  The aventurine is just clear-cased, and there are Ivory dots here and there.

This one is original Double Helix Luna over Pale Green Apple.  The dots are Pale Green Apple and there is SiS wrapped around the bead (and swirled) and some Copper Green dots.  There are lots of things about this bead that I want to work on, but I am pretty excited about getting Luna to strike (and keeping the strike, since that seems to be my last hurdle on my silver glass course).

The flowers in this one are Ivory, and the base of the bead is Pale Green Apple encased with Reichenbach Magic.  The swirled stringer is SiS and there are Psyche dots.

This bead is a sad attempt to use Double Helix Ekho. I realize now that the Ekho really needs to be encased to do its thing, and I won't be trying this again in this way. The aventurine is clear-cased, and there are Clear and Ivory dots on the bead. The colour under the Ekho was Pale Green Apple.

I don't remember which silver glass I encased the Pale Green Apple with here, but it doesn't much matter because it didn't do anything very nice. The flowers are Ivory with Pale Green Apple, and the aventurine is encased with Taco Silver Turquoise. There are Ivory dots on the bead as well.

And finally, this is Red Copper Green with a frit blend I created by accident by dropping some reduction frit colours into my dwindling supply of Terra frit. I lost a lot of the strike on the Terra even though it had great colour going into the kiln, and I forgot to reduce it, but I like the spots of bright colour, so I'm sort of glad.

I've been mad about this frit accident for a week now, and I'm still peeved since I can't get any more Terra frit and there's no way to pick all the misplaced little bits out of it without going insane.  I guess I need to just use it all up and get over it! :)