Uh, experiments.
That's it. Experiments. With, um, technique

These beads aren't so much fugly as frustrating. Now the ones I made yesterday, for Fran's bead curtain...them's some ugly beads. I had three goals in making these:

  1. use up the zillions of shorts piling up, many in unusual or limited run colours[1]
  2. experiment with those colours
  3. practice marble mold style beads—gravity swirls, lotus rakes, etc

a series of beads made and photographed 23sep2015. Effetre, CiM. 3/32 mandrels, sonyRX, natural light.

Oh, and make beads for shows/ISGB, to whom I'll be donating a bunch of beads for the next gathering—our guild volunteered to provide the beads that they tie to the goody bags. I've always enjoyed that little touch, so I'm very happy to participate in this project.

More conventional shot.

In addition to attempting round beads—which I think very difficult to do without molds—I've also been playing with a set of brass rollers, which are very helpful in making cylindrical beads, like the floral I've showcased. I was pretty happy with the technique on that one. I've also discovered some fun combos via the gravity swirls (and one lone lotus rake) but obviously my skills with presses and molds could still use some ramping up.

[1]Which, of course, was why they were piling up—because they were special.