Happy Independence Day

There is a bit of glassy goodness at the end but first I want to share this

 If you leave Joe alone for too long, he gets bored and finds something to do.  I love the skull with the pipe and helmet I found in his man cave corner.  The skulls are models he bought at Toys-R-Us, of all places and aged and decorated.  Periodically I'll find one doing or being someplace odd.  Read that part about Joe getting bored.

I haven't been bored.  The set of beads above is some new Val Cox frit (Ocelot Spots) I want to talk about.  The white bead in the middle I'm referring to as my resting state bead.  CiM Peace, with Ocelot Spots frit melted in.  It's pretty in an amber kind of way.  On the right are 2 beads with Ocelot Spots on Effetre super clear.There's a lot of variation in the way the colors distribute themselves....

The beads on the left are Ocelot Spots on a base of Effetre Straw Yellow.  I didn't deliberately reduce them, but on a hothead, everything gets reduced anyway so I might as well run with it.  Notice the greens and blues around some of the frit?  Not present on clear. Present in a lesser degree on the top left bead.  I figured since I was going to get reduction anyway, why not go for a boro kind of look and encase it?  Here are the results - I like it!