Winter Colour Diet - Session 4

Session 4 marks the halfway point of this colour diet, if I actually decide to stop it at eight sessions.  I may well decide that I just want to keep working this way, it's that fun.

Overall I had a pretty good day last Sunday, but the studio is only usually open for 4.5 hours on Sundays so it wasn't a really productive day.  It takes a fair bit of time to make test beads, and then the large focals I'm making take a while too.  In any case, here they are.  I am feeling unusually rambly tonight, so bear with me.

This bead is a base of Mystic Beige, rolled in silver foil and some Striking Color frit.  The creased silver glass you can see is Triton, there's silver mesh in there and then SiS on the ends.  After making this bead, I'm even sadder that I have no more Mystic Beige.  I'm not sure how well you can see it in the bead picture, but the base where the silver foil is on the Mystic Beige went all funny.  It's hard to explain, so here's a close-up.  It looks all weird and slimy and not like anything I'd want to touch.

This one is Seashell Swirl, silver leaf and Striking Color frit on the base.  There's also some Aion, silver mesh and a lot of Clear and SiS.  It looks a little yellow by the silver because that's how Moretti 006 clear seems to want to treat my beads.  I do much prefer it to the way the other Clear was treating them though, so I will find a way to deal.

Next up is a core of Light Brown Transparent, rolled in Striking Color frit, encased in Clear.  Then it was wrapped with fine silver mesh and encased again, this time with both Clear and Pale Emerald and decorated at the ends with SiS.  I think this is my favourite bead from last weekend, but I'm a little bothered by how stiff and lifeless the dots are in the right-hand image.  I am awful at surface decoration.  My next class needs to be about surface decoration techniques.

Oddly enough, none of the silver in this bead turned yellow even though I didn't consciously do anything different.  I'm not sure I get what's going on, but maybe I'll figure it out over the next couple of weeks now that I'm paying attention.

This last bead is a base of Mermaid with Striking Color frit, Adamantium ends and SiS scribbly decoration.  I really love the designs that the frit made as I was letting gravity have its way with it.  And I will mourn my Striking Color frit like a dead pet when it's all gone... which will be soon.  *cries*

So far, so good... I'm having less trouble staying focused than I feared I might.  And it's feeling really good to use up some of this glass.

Here's my colour testing queue, if you're interested in what's coming up over the next little while:

1. CiM Mermaid
2. CiM Great Bluedini
3. EFF Dark Violet
4. EFF Anise White
5. CiM Tamarind Unique (-1)