First Beads for Fall

 I made these Saturday, before I officially decided to change my color diet. In fact, these beads helped me to see that it really was time for a change.  Apparently, I'm not the only one because 3 of the 4 sets I made up are on their way to their new homes.

Of the batch, the beads on the left are my favorites.  They were made with CiM lapis with psyche and sis.  I love the way the ivory fades into the lapis.  I don't think I noticed this in my initial testing, but for this set it really works.  Besides, the blue violet is such a lovely color.

 On the right is a set made the same way with CiM olive.  This one reminded me of an aerial view of grass-covered sand and streams.  These are the most fall-like colors so far, but green is a lucky color that works in any season.

I called this set water flowers because of the colors and patterning, primarily.  The lentil is copper green with sis like the spacers, but I added a blend of 456 rubino oro and CiM cranberry pink dark frit.  I love the way the pink frit reacts with the copper green, separating it into a halo and an area that looks almost like it was thinly encased in aqua transparent.  I was also surprised to see that the pink picked up some of the silver from the stringer it contacted and moved it to its far edge.  I don't know who could have predicted that.

I'm not an orange person.  I tend toward cooler colors and shy away from ones that make a bold impression like these beads do.  I have to say I like this one.  I like the way the streaks of blue, purple, yellow and pink show up against the plain coral.  The glass I used is Vetrofond petrified wood and it's not on the diet, but that is primarily because the glass is so pretty on its own that I can't see adding anything else to it.

Naturally, the beads I made yesterday were useless.  I did make one that looks good, and another that was probably the prettiest bead I've ever made.  The good looking one is a base of light pumpkin with silver foil, sis, and psyche, decorated with bordello bumps.  I'm going to play with that combination more.  The really pretty one was too pretty.  I wrapped a core of lapis with trails of psyche and bordello, rolled it in silver foil, melted it in and reduced it, encased it in clear and decorated it with half a triton swirl flower.  Unfortunately it looked so good after I reduced the triton that I didn't want to mess up the reduction by heating it too much and it cracked from thermal shock.  The two halves are still together and it looks like the crack only goes partly through the encasement layer, but I can't use it.  I hope to come up with a solution to this problem.