Lampwork day #9: total dedication.

Today, like last Sunday, I woke up bright and early and really eager to get started.  These were the first beads of the day.

I tried to put my awful murrini in them and also keep using my newfound knowledge of making "fine round beads."  This practice taught me to make the "fine round bead" shape FIRST and then go on with adding murrini and covering in clear.  The second bead as you can see shows how the murrini stretched when the bead took the round form.  I will look into how to make the clears less cloudy this week.  (Though I don't even know what for as I am already running out of clear!)

Then I also tried this dotty design...

There are the three beads on mandrels in case they cracked or something. 

But they didn't!

Up to that point these are all the beads I'd made in chronological order from first to last.  Noteworthy to mention that these are all the beads I'd made that hadn't cracked and split. 

This picture was taken around 4:00PM.  ...This is probably around the time the madness started. 

I decided the blue didn't look very well in this combination so I replaced it with an off-white color.  I loved the results so I made EIGHT BEADS!  (In the pictures you will see six because there are two I still haven't taken off the mandrels)

Check out the texture this weird off-white glass gets!  ...I really like it.  It kind of looked like that on the rod too. 

I love the kind of vintagy look they have. 

Oh, look at those dimples!  What a champ, I am!  hahaha

Then I made this little spaceship for my brother :)

He didn't think it was quite as adorable as I thought it was, but it's ok.  He isn't warm like that.  But I accept him.  lol. 

...So, today was really successful!  I'm really proud of myself!  Oh and also I was able to take most of these beads off the mandrels without help, so that means I'm pretty close to figuring out this bead release issue.  A lot of progress in a week!  I can't wait to see what I'll be up to in the next few days.  (can you?)