Encasing - Wows and Woes

It's been a hectic week pretty much away from the torch but when I was able to get to it, I did some more experimenting.  So much fun to experiement as always.  :)  That makes life much more interesting.  :) 

So here are my experiments :

All encased of course and each one I tried something different. 

Starting with the top row, left to right:  Pink flowers bead was my second try at doing a layered flower.  Hmm, this type of flower will take ALOT of practice on my part.  It became obvious to me right away that I will have to start the flower by adding one more petal making it a 5 petal flower rather than 4 petals.  Makes it easier to center the second layer of petals.  #2 bead is flowers in light blue and a couple with twistie petals encased in some new to me clear glass I think.  I like how the twistie showed in the petals alot.  And the clear glass I used, is AWESOME !  A tad expensive but it's absolutely PERFECT !  If there are any bubbles in that bead it is something I did, not the glass.  #3 bead - I love this bead !  Again I used that awesome clear glass but first I covered the colbalt blue base with silver foil and encased it leaving it silver and gold.  I wanted to see if the new glass would leave the silver - silver or turn it gold like some clears will do.  It only turned it gold ever so slightly in one spot.  The ends on this bead are PERFECT as is everything else !  Wow !  That's a big accomplishment for me still !  lol !  Bead #4 - A white base with orange flowers.  The experiment part here is the orange flowers.  I used a stringer of enamel to make the petals then encased.  I didn't know if enamels COULD be encased so this was the experiment.  I will be digging deeper into encasing enamels.  :)  The last two beads are encased frit beads.  One I just wanted to practice perfection, which I did and the very last bead is pressed which again I was working on perfection. That one is very lopsided.  More glass on one side of the hole than the other. 

So that's it.  To me, they are all WOWS because I am amazed I can still make them !  lol !  I'll keep working on the imperfections to be sure and try improving.  Just getting this far with them is a huge acomplishment for ME.  It might be this is as far as I can get.  Only time will tell.  

At any rate, the experiments were all worth the effort.  Learning new things is always GREAT !   This go round I learned it's ok to encase enamels, the difference in clear glasses is AMAZING, that it takes time to perfect good ends (for me anyway) and slow is always the best way to go when encasing.  :)  Oh and it helps TREMENDOUSLY if the clear glass one is using to encase with - melts like butta !  lol !  

So the second time I was able to torch, I made canes and stringers.  More on that in the next blog post.  Something I've wanted to do for years is coming - I hope !  lol !  

Thanks so much for coming by !  I hope you come back again soon.  :)  Have a great weekend !