I've made a series of striped, frit, and floral vases lately; this is an older style, though somewhat more transparent. It features my efforts to do iris, rather than the crocus style flowers I typically use to decorate these.

Since I was practicing the iris form I put more flowers on than usual, and added stems later, one of which (oops) crosses a foreground flower. Ah well. This is one of those beads that doesn't reach for greatness, but just by luck of the draw came out nice despite such minor flaws. This bead does show the camera's unfortunate tendancy to distortion; it actually is a nicely shaped bead, though fairly small as these things go (perhaps 25-30mm long).

Just for fun I show a closeup of one of the flowers.

This particular flower is made from cane near the end of the pull, which is why it's rather weird in its coloring, showing the substrate of periwinkle blue. I like it any way. (Some of the other flowers show the cane as planned: yellow-green stripe bordered with fuschia, then purple, separated with purple-black stripes.)

file created 08jun05; bead created early june. Effetre, thompson enamels

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