I picked up the beads this morning from the flameworking class!

The beads were still on the mandrels. When I asked one of the Craft Center helpers how to get the beads off, he said that you basically had to twist the bead until it got loose, then twist/pull it off. He demonstrated… and naturally, my turquoise bead broke because it was too brittle! I kept the pieces, though, because it looked so pretty! This is the one where I tried the Saturn rings technique:

Here’s a group picture of my beads (sans the broken one), taken as I was walking home:

Here is the swirly bead where I used the unicorn horn (opaque blue and opaque light blue over clear):

This is the bead where I added the copper frit and blue dots on a base of opaque light blue with a clear overlayer. I think this one turned out the best.

This one was the two rows of dots that bled into each other. I had used a clear turquoise for the base, put opaque light blue dots, then put more clear turquoise on top. I think the clear turquoise on top just blended in with the turquoise underneath, so it doesn’t look like much! There are slight bronze streaks, too, which I think is when the glass burned because I must have gotten it too hot.

This was my “hearts” bead. Again, you can see some bronze/red streaking from where the glass got too hot. Who knew that glass could burn? This is also the one that I still can’t get off the mandrel!

My boring clear bead. This one also cracked when I tried to twist it off.

And my final group picture

Now for Angela’s beads:

Angela had a big turquoise bead, too – we ended up using the same colors (unplanned) for our first two beads!

Angela’s dots turned out really nice. She used a white base and dark blue dots over clear turquoise dots.

This is Angela’s heart bead, which apparently got burned, too:

Angela’s “fritted” bead, on white:

Angela’s swirly bead turned out nice, too. Mine hardly had any of the color on it, but she got a nice mix:

I got one of Angela’s beads off for her but left her to deal with the rest, which seemed pretty stuck at the time.

Even though two of my beads broke, I’m still happy with the results and overall experience. I most likely will not take this up as a regular hobby since I can’t make it out to the lab on campus regularly enough to make the cost of a pass worth it, but I’m open to taking other glass classes in the future!