More and more and more glass

I have jumped into another research project that I am very excited about.  Hopefully I will have some bits of info to post along the way for that one.  In the meantime, I am going to keep playing with glass and start some new garb (that is actually part of the research project).  Cheer!

This weekend was a long weekend, so I had a good bit of time at the torch.  I am still working on getting consistent shape and getting an idea of how to put the right amount of glass on the mandrel for certain sized beads.  I also got to anneal two batches of beads in my mini-annealer.  Yay!

I realized this weekend I need to use better light for taking pics, rather than doing it in my kitchen (like this one). I am really happy with the green with the dots and the amber one. The little green one has marks that run along the surface and it matches some period examples for Norse beads. I will be making a great many more of these.

The blue has a decoration on it, but it did not show in this photo as it was not an opaque white after it cooled. HOWEVER, annealing it brought that out and the decoration is now a stark opaque white! The amber with the swirled dots was one I loved, but it cracked in half. The yellow and cobalt at the bottom was done in the same manner as the red/yellow above right.

The yellow and red one at the top was a happy accident. I was trying to feather some lines of stringer, but I dug in too deep and pulled the glass out. I opted to do it on another bead in a later session because I liked the effect so much. The light blue fish eye one was my favorite, but it cracked while annealing :-(

On Saturday, Lady Rosamund du Grasse brought her glass over and we both dabbled around an made these beads.

Final batches of beads. Several more of the green with the lines pressed in. The light blue I am VERY happy with the shaping on. The blue barrle was more of my playing with stringer and moving it on the glass. And the red fish eye one makes me happy, even those the spacing is off. I like the effect!