The owner of these presses is coming by tomorrow, and I figured she might want ’em back, so I decided to give the long versions a try. All that practice making short tubes has paid off, and I was able to make suitably long tubes.

34x25x18mm. Longest measurement is hole to hole. Czech glass with effetre canes; 15oct08.

However, I overestimated the diameter of the tube I needed, and so a lot of it stuck out the edges. Because this was a cattwalk press, it was mounted in a vise, and the one side of the vise meant that the extra was unevenly distributed along the two long sides of the bead—so when I swopped off the stuff on the "free" side, I opened the bead up. With a little fiddling, I changed the shape of the bead from a sort of flattened, rounded rectangle, to something that vaguely reminds me of the back of a victorian couch or headboard, and which frankly I like better.

Other side. Whoopsie. Didn't do a very good job styling the bead. Le sigh.

Again, all the floral trailing practice paid off, because I was able to keep the bead cold enough that it didn't lose this fun shape, which of course an open hollow bead is very prone to doing. Unfortunately, my daisy florals still need a lot of practice, but at least they're pretty colors and co-ordinate nicely with the base glass—very springy. (So of course it's fall.)

Showing the third opening.

As a stringer I was immediately intrigued by the elongated opening on the bottom of the bead—perfect for a multi-strand fringe type tassel—perfect for the victorian-ish shape, no? —I'm looking forward to stringing this up; I think it'll be great fun. And I certainly have plenty of pink and green beads, since after purple and green, and ok, green and orange, pink and green is one of my fave combos.

bead, photography & post: all 15oct08.

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.