I made this trio of blue focals in order to trade beads with a glassact member; as it turns out, I traded both the lentils, and the third bead I used myself in a necklace, so I count this as one of my more successful lot of beads. I thought the recipients might like to know a bit about my processes, so I'm documenting them here.
3 focals. shot E620, 11february2018. Made on 10feb2018. Soda-lime effetre, dichro, thompson enamels, shards made with Double Helix, floral trailing. Pressed lentils measure approx 1.5".
These beads show the slow evolution of my abstract (aka everything-but-the-kitchen-sink) beads, and include, in addition to the thompson enamel that forms the base of the colour scheme, dichro, shards, gold leaf or floral trailing. What these don't have that the originals did is much frit—a bit of double helix (that isn't, afaict, doing much) and that's it. I think there's still plenty going on, however.
Showing the obverse.
I was a busy bee on the 10th, as this was one of three projects I needed to have finished by the following day.
taken with 5T plus phone: and lazily too, given the annoying background over exposure.
After cleaning the torch[1] I made shards
- d[ar]k purple w/ DH (double helix) cobalt[2] frit
- dk DH mystery glass
which I then applied to the base beads which appear to have been made of assorted scraps[3] or inexpensive glass[4] on top of various undocumented blue thompson enamels (of which 9650 and likely 9620 are safe bets). I don't recall, at this point, whether I put the dichro on before the thompson enamel, but as I wanted it to blend into the background, it's likely; of course, then I tried not to cover it too agressively.
Other side—these are the quick shots I take for instagram, and I find it more important to get them done than perfect
[1]Brega, the brava, my awesome bethlehem burner—howzat for alliteration?
[2]Kronos 2 fine—a giftie from my awesome ‘apprentice’
[3]the faint turquoise stripes on the 5 petal flower lentil are a dead giveaway that I mashed shorts together
[4]the pale purple used for the other lentil is probably from that 3.99/# stuff...
Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.
