Flame

Stringer Lines: These are a few bright
simple beads that I made for BoC, who
urgently need more bead donations. The
large stripy green and orange crunch was
made with a core of white and then a
number of encased stringers I made at Di
East's. We were experimenting with
layering transparents over different
opaques to make a full rainbow of
colours. If you look closely, you can see
a yellow centre in the wide green lines -
that stringer was made with transparent
green over yellow. I made this bead as a
cylinder and applied the stringers side-byside,
working from one end to the other,
melted them all in and then crunched. Try
to keep the joins where the stringer starts
by Heather Kelly
and finishes all in the same place, then you can
try to press the bead so they are on the side, or
you can cover them all up with a vertical stripe of
something opaque. (They weren't that visible for
this one, so I left them on the back).
Tulip Lines: This is a focal lentil I made with Plowden &
Thompson 100 COE tulip, which is a lovely colour that
can strike from yellow all the way to a light red. In this
lentil I have yellow and orange. I used Reichenbach deep
black for the stringer - it stays black and doesn't spread
or web under high heat.
Sun Over Sea: This bead was something of an accident. I
was intending to make a lentil, then ended up with a
spinner so couldn't finish shaping it properly. It has a core
of Reichenbach mystic grey with a spiral of Arke around
that, reduced and encased in Lauscha soft clear. Then I
added some random lines and splodges of Notos, again
reduced and encased. This gave the blue MOP look. The top
of the bead was unbalanced (and this point is when it
began spinning) so I just added lobes of more clear on
either side, put some Notos on top of them (and some dots
of it around the top), and used my tweezers with teeth to
squeeze out the 'ears', before reducing and sticking it in the
kiln. I wasn't entirely sure this would come out looking ok,
but I actually rather like it. It is very shiny and the Notos
looks fairly golden, so along with the teeth lines that made
me think of rays of sunlight, I called it Sun Over Sea.