Bread and Butter beads

I've been spending a lot of time recently working on what I call Bread and Butter Beads - sets of 8-10 round spacer-type beads decorated with frit, maybe a bit of silver, and some raking for patterns. In doing so, I've developed a much greater respect for what are often referred to as "spacer beads". It's not so much the individual bead that presents the challenge as it is trying to create 8-10 of them that are closely matched in shape, size and appearance. I think I'm getting better though - the last set I did only had about 1mm difference in both height and width among all the beads.
Here are some of my latest ones:

Color Splash: My own frit mix of purples and pink/peach glasses over Effetre Dk Lavender and Fine Silver foil, raked for pattern. I though it was neat how the reaction of the glasses in the frit reacted with the silver to produce oranges, greens, and some blues. These remind me of fountains we saw at Disney World where the water would shoot up through colored lights and then come splashing back down in great colored drops of light.


Potpourri : I revisited Misty Tulip - a wonderful pastel frit from Jon at LBSupply, and these remind me of the potpourri-filled bowels you see in country houses. The base glass for these is Vetrofond's oddlot Seashell Swirl which I am currently hoarding like mad - it does such gorgeous things with frits! The bicone is a round bead gone wrong - makes a really pretty accent. SOLD

TieDye Surprise: I was playing around making reactive twisties one day and came up with this one of coral and EDP glass over a core of rubino. It looks nice over Opal Yellow, but on Copper Green - excellent! I love the way the colors have spread out, and the green in the copper green has even separated out to a degree. I've since been playing around with other reactive color twisties that use rubino for a core - stay tuned! SOLD

It's gotten really cold here again, so I'm loathe to spend too much time torching. Yes the basement where my studio is is heated, but there is no way to heat the return air for ventilation, so there is a constant chilly breeze. I'll try and get some in tomorrow.