practice practice practice

Say it long enough and it sounds funny.

Do it long enough and you get results.

Huh.

glass, left to right: triton dot with stormed olympia rain + clear; ink blue + clear; med. purple trans. + clear; light purple trans. + clear; quad is med. purple trans + clear; all beads small dark silver plum dots. My thanks go to Amy Kinsch for her tutorial on how-to make her Storm Beads. Some day I will make gorgeous storm beads too!

Things I learned during my last beadmaking session (and begs the question - did I really learn it, or is it once again just an observation that I made and will soon forget):

It makes a big difference if you use glass that doesn't play well with others. I'm finding some glass spreads way too much for good dot making. Some glass eats up other glass making other glass almost disappear - but not quite, leaving partial dots.. And some glass, no matter how prettily it is struck in the flame, turns clear again in the kiln. Meh.

Making two beads at a time on a mandrel helps making the same size and design easier. On the other hand, three does not. I'm better at two. With boro, I can do up to five comfortably, but soft glass wants me to keep it at two. It is surprising how out of sync beads can become when using soft glass and worrying more about the bead and less about the placement of the glass in the fire. You know those folks who can spin plates on long skinny sticks and keep them all going? Yeah, I can't do that either.

Little dots are more easily made with skinny-skinny stringers and stiff glass. Big dots are easier with rod sized glass and mushy glass.

Still searching for the sweet spot. I catch a glimpse sometimes, but never really get there long enough to register it in my brain. I'll keep trying - after dots I'm going to do lines. Nowhere near that now.

Not one dreaded tink yesterday though. Yay!