Lampworking day #61, four big holed beads and a hollow bead disaster. ...for a change?

These are from Wednesday and I can't even begin to tell you what a big disaster this was.  I mean you're welcome to skip forward to the pictures, but seriously you won't get to experience the disaster unless I tell you about it. 

My idea here was to make four big holed beads and one hollow bead and just put them in the kiln and forget about them until the next day.  Sounds easy enough right?  NOT. 

Ok so here's what happened.  I've told you all about bead release.  It's the gunk you put on the mandrel (the steel stick) so that the bead won't fuze with the steel and you can remove it afterwards, with a hole in the middle.  Anyway... so I don't know what the hell happened, if I was pulling on the glass too hard or if the gunk wasn't applied properly... but my glass kept getting off the mandrels!  It happened.. THREE TIMES.  On two of these beads.  Can you guess which ones they were?

If you guessed the ones on the right, you are correct.  Honestly I don't know how I got them to stick eventually, but thank god I did, cause that's kind of a lot of glass that I didn't want to waste.  Also I just love the colors and I don't have a lot of them. 

Oh and I didn't mention it before but I also used some of my glittery powder on these.  I didn't realize they would look so matte but I still like the fact that I got it only on the dots, it looks cool.  And purposeful, which it was!

Here you can see the disaster a little better.  I'm loving the color combination though.

And this lump is the hollow bead I was trying to make.  I won't show you yet what one is supposed to look like if you don't know, cause then you'll think this is pretty, like my friend Paola did. 

You can tell by the shape of the hole that this was not an easy bead to turn... ;)  This is the third one that didn't stay on the mandrel.

I do regret this didn't turn out right because this was a lot of glass and I really love the color combination.  :(  But I will try again!  I will.

THEN.  You think I'm done right?  No.  My kiln wasn't programmed correctly so after all of these beads are sitting in the kiln ready to anneal ...THE TEMPERATURE STARTS TO GO DOWN!   So I frantically start to re-program it the fastest that I can so that they anneal properly... while the temperature is quickly dropping.  I finally got it but I'm sure they're not properly annealed.  These will go back in the kiln the next time I batch anneal.  :( 

I was so scared while it was happening and my mom was yelling at me to come to dinner... I wanted to kill her.  She just didn't understand.  lol

Anyway, they're not so bad.  I really like the colors.  :)  And of course I love their huge holes.