Winter Colour Diet - Session 0

Last spring, when I did my 'Spring Fling' colour diet, I kept a journal of all the beads I made and the things I learned about the colours I was using.  I found that just going through the exercise and forcing myself to stare at and critique the beads really helped me to avoid repetitive mistakes and to capitalize on neat things I might otherwise not have noticed.

I didn't have a blog last spring when I did this, but since I do now I might as well do it here :)

These beads are from the palette before I 'finalized' it, although all of the colours used in them are still with me.  Thus, this is session 0 of 8.  If you missed my post on why/how I am doing this restrictive palette thing, you can read that post here.

The little lentil on the left is made with Seashell Swirl, Silvered Ivory Stringer (SiS) and a little bit of Taxco Silver Turquoise (which I didn't reduce).  The nugget on the right is Okey Dokey Artichoky, Seashell Swirl, and SiS.  Both beads have a motley mixture of Striking Color frit on them - I was given little samples of them and just dumped them all into the same container to save space, and I rather like the result.

I made these two beads with my new Zoozii's Medium+ Duo press, which I don't have the complete hang of yet.  The nugget shape is giving me particular trouble because it seems to want to leave little ridges on the ends of the beads.  I'll go back to war with it tomorrow.

This bead is Van Gogh Caramel over Light Brown Transparent, with Adamantium end caps and SiS.  I took so long to shape it that I lost the strike on the silver glass, and I draped it with Taxco, Rubino and god knows what else in desperation towards the end to give it some colour.  I really need to practice with these striking colours because I just love them, but so far they seem to hate me like poison!

This one is Reichenbach Mystic Beige with the same half-struck Striking Color frit mixture.  It has Adamantium end caps, SiS and was finished with trails of fine silver wire.

This one is Dark Ivory with Artichoky.  It's got Adamantium end caps, SiS, and stringer/dot decoration with ivory.  I got a little carried away with swirling.  Swirling seems to be my new 'thing' - I can't seem to stop doing it.

Deep inside, this one is Artichoky with the Striking Color frit blend and SiS, all swirled up.  On one side, I applied some silver Dichro and plunged the heck out of it.  On the other side, I laid down a twistie of some reduction silver glass.  I think the twistie was made from Triton, Aion2 and Elektra2.  I tweezed the twistie flat, over-reduced it and covered it with Clear.  The back of the bead was finished by putting a big smear of Adamantium, bordering that with SiS and dotting it with Sasha's Silver.  The whole thing was reduced and then put into the kiln to stew in its own freaky juices.

I like some of what this monster has going on, and don't like other parts of it.  I want to try the plunged dichro thing again because that turned out kind've cool but the other side of the bead needs some rethinking.

Overall, I think I am most pleased with this one out of this batch.  The core of it is either Mystic Beige or Seashell Swirl (dammit!  I need to take notes!), with a little silver and some TerraNova2.  I encased that, plunged it deeply in random places, and added huge swirls.  There's a layer of fine silver mesh strips, encased and melted so that the silver condensed into little dots, and then some more swirling which turned some of the little dots into little sharp lines.  The ends are finished with SiS, and the dots on the front are SiS covered in Sasha's Silver, raked and reduced.

And finally, here is Dr. Strangelove.  I made my own shards last week for the first time (they didn't come out so good... more practice tomorrow!) and this is Artichoky with those shards and SiS.  I'm pleased with the odd twists on the side, but think I could have been a little more inventive with the surface decoration.  I might make another one of these tomorrow and see where it takes me.

These colours are pretty fun to use together, and I'm looking forward to the next 8 sessions with them!