Creative Yearnings

After the drama over the weekend, I really have been having a rough time coming up with the desire to torch, let alone ideas of what to do when I get there. While Joe was trying, and failing, to teach me how to smith, he told me never to light the fire until you know what you want to do with it. Otherwise it's a waste of coal and time. After quite a bit of hemming and hawing and some heavy duty searching for inspiration, I decided I was going to try working with colors I haven't had much luck with to see if my luck had changed.

These four beads represent all of today's efforts. None will be used for anything other than experimentation, so into the annealing bubble I use for demos they went so I could see what they would look like today. The bead on top is my first effort, a twistie of clear, DH Aion2, and Terra 2. It looks almost like the Terra struck in the picture, because it's darker than the creamy Aion2, but I wasted so much gas trying to get the stupid flower right it unstruck again. Note to self: Do all the bead elements except the striking first and then strike the Terra. The Aion2 did develop a lovely mother of pearl sheen showing pink, lavender, blue and green that does not show up at all in the picture. The flower on the other side of the bead almost didn't get posted but, hey, who cares if I can't make flowers yet. I'm learning. Underneath it is a plain clear bead I encased with my stringer to see if I could strike it at all. It struck, but the Aion2 didn't come out. Figures.

The third bead down I will consider a success. It is TE331, which had come out as clear light aqua every other time I've touched it.  I know the beads above look like I got something out of it, but this is the sort of base state according to the info I got from Double Helix.  The red is the thermal striking. This struck! Now if I can clean up the color a bit I might be able to use it in a bead. The last bead is my favorite of the bunch. I decided to go with a base of CiM poi, since I know that likes silver glass and I don't think CiM ghee does at all. I made my base, wrapped and melted in my stringer and made my flowers, which I don't think came out badly. Then I struck the Terra. Lo and behold, it worked. I got some really cool color development out of the section around the copper green flower in the first picture, I think because that section got hotter before being cooled down and struck. The opal yellow one is neat, but I like the echo of the copper green in the base. I don't know if this is a good idea or not, but I'm going to try this with silver foil and slytherin next, and see what happens.