Birds and Butterflies

Since all my favorite recent beads are away at shows, I need to make some new ones to take with me to Bead and Button next week. On Saturday, I drew black outlines onto glass tiles and fired in the kiln to set the enamel. Then this morning, I painted in the color details, fired again, and got down to torching.


These are big beads, 2" long and often more than an inch across. I did learn my lesson about not making them longer than my cushion press. Yet again, I'm chiding myself for filling that tiny canvas. It's hard to see the entire painting when it wraps around the bead. I press the beads to flatten them, which helps, but can distort the image if it's too extreme. Today I added more clear glass on what would become the back of some, to keep the image mostly on the front.

I also tried to keep it simple with this batch. All are single wraps. I didn't use any dichro. I did put some simple dot flowers on the background for one of the birds. Most of them will get a coat of copper electroforming this week.