Photos, as promised

Today was fun. Lampworking was a priority, since I needed to finish that top-secret big project. I woke up to a raging blizzard, which made ventilation interesting. I keep the sliding glass door to the basement open with a big fan pointed toward it and blowing outward on "Hi". Today, because of the winds, we had lots of snow blown against the door, plus the wind kept wanting to blow into the basement. That led to a few times when it seemed my flame would go out, but it survived in the end.

In addition to the big project, I made a couple of fun things for myself. One was another attempt at a hollow bead, which started out better but ultimately was destroyed by bead release that cracked and fell off. The other was a vessel that I like better than I've liked any I've made so far. Maybe I'll post pics tomorrow (which is a snow day, hooray!).

Here are photos of the projects from yesterday.

This is the burgundy and pink vessel I made, with accents of gold dichroic glass. I made the stopper for it out of flexible Sculpey. The only problem with it is that the bottom was too thin, so when I was cleaning out the bead release, the cleaner went through. Now it's sort of more a vessel bead than a vessel that would hold anything. So on today's vessel, I made the bottom much thicker.

Here is my first attempt at a hollow bead. The photo doesn't look as pretty as the bead itself, which I really like. There is a big bubble in the center, and golden dichroic swirls on the outside. The blue color in the center just comes from reflections from the ends.

Maybe I'll get to do more on our snow day tomorrow!