I seem to have issues with making any two alike though. Even when I think I have a matched pair, they turn out to have been made with different stringer, brown and black for example. I guess you can easily infer that my workbench is a mess! Cleanup might be in order.
My experiments with striking colors gave beautiful backgrounds, if a bit dark. I guess I prefer the high contrast of a light background.
My absolute favorite so far is this pillow shaped bead, plain on the back for electroforming. I can't wait to get the carving going. The hole goes through vertically, so it will make an incredible pendant. I even broke down and made some plain ivory spacer beads to go with it!