Plain vanilla?

Today is going to be a busy day so I'll stick to an easy one. I love the look of the ivory beads that others are making and am disappointed that comparatively speaking, mine are washed out and neither streaky nor curdled. Could this be lack f experience? Probably. How do I fix this? Get experience and see if there are any materials reasons that my beads aren't coming out like I want them to. What follows are the results of my experimentation.

1. Effetre sandstone
2. Effetre ivory. Note the nice striation and darker cast than the bead next to it, the perhaps inappropriately named
3. Effetre dark ivory. This is the old batch I had. Maybe the next batch will be darker. See bead 5.
4. Vetrofond honey crunch. This one of the 5 spacer sized beads I got out of this rod as it exploded all over my dining room. I have another rod but as I found it nearly impossible to get a gather from this ubershocky color I may never use it again. It is definitely not worth the burns.
5. Effetre dark ivory new batch. Yep. Same issues. I read somewhere or other that when this color is overheated or overworked it blanches and loses its streakiness. This must be what I am doing, although one would think it wouldn't be this easy to do on my HH torch. Maybe I'll like Vetrofond's version better.
6. Vetrofond dark ivory with silver foil melted in. I did this more because I like it than to see what difference the manufacturer made.
7. Vetrofond dark ivory. Same issue, although the rods look wildly different than the Effetre. They are a translucent beige, but work up just the same.