Torch Time!

Greetings all! Starting this week I'm going to be writing a blog post once a week with pictures of beads that have been created that week along with the glasses that were used to make them. The ones that I love I will put up on Etsy for sale, but the intent for the blog is to include all of them, the ugly, the imperfect, and the good ones. Most of the beads this week have been basic dot beads as the goal is to just get back on the torch on a regular basis.

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This is my favorite bead created yesterday. It started out with a base barrel of clear glass. On top of that I put dots of alternating Effetre white and Vetrofond Topaz Odd, which gives the bead both the topaz and the blue colors. Once all the dots were melted in uniformly, I grabbed the edge of each of the dots on the top and bottom of the bead and dragged them down to a point. The final step was to heat and swirl between each dot down the length of the bead. Vetrofond Topaz Odd is a very fun color to play with and the blues show through even more when it is pulled down to a stringer! #Vetrofond_TopazOdd

This was another bead created with Vetrofond Topaz Odd. This time I took a rod of Effetre white and striped on a layer of Topaz Odd down about an inch of the white all the way around, heated that portion and pulled a twistie out of it. The base bead then was clear and I wrapped the twisted white/topaz around the clear bead. Once it was all hot and melted in, I pressed the bead into an oval. On top, I took two murrine (I think these were basic murrine purchased long, long ago) and pressed one onto each site of the now lentil bead. I happened to have a hand mixed yellow stringer hanging out on the bench that I thought would look nice with the orange flower and I used that to draw the stem and leaves on each side of the bead.

This one was a simple one, but I was happy with how even the dots were (not perfect, but pretty even!). The base is clear glass and on top are Effetre white and black dots.

This bead started with a base of green, though I'm not sure what the green was this time. On top of the green I layered white dots and Effetre Dark Matter dots. The dots are quite uneven, but I love how they interact with each other. After all the dots were melted in, I upped the propane on the torch and was able to pull out some reds and metallic bits from the Dark Matter glass. #Effetre_DarkMatter

These next two beads were practice with disk style beads. The colors are basic Effetre red, orange, and yellow (they were spare short rods I had lying around the studio, so not sure of the exact colors here). I laid down a disk of the base color, ran a ring of a couple other colors around that and then started layering dots up to build the stars. Last step was to put on the white dots and melt them in just enough to not pop off later!