yippee!!! got my laptop back from repair and i’m good to go!  i’m now back to surfing wirelessly from the comfort of my living room couch, wrapped in my fave blankie with a cup of tea rather than being stuck in that subterranean teenage hellhole i’ve suffered through over the past few weeks.

I have lots of old posts to catch up on so to begin: here’s one new beadie i’m particularly proud of – my first successful encased floral!! It’s about 1.5″ long and has 3-4 large red and yellow flowers and about 6-8 tiny yellow flowers.

this is my 4th attempt (i’ll have to take a photo of the very sad three previous attempts, lol) and other than the clear encasing being a little burnt it came out pretty good.  the flowers are nicely defined and they didn’t smear even when i pressed it so all in all not too shabby.   

Generally speaking i’m not really into flower beads but encased florals are such a very classic lampwork technique (they require a certain amount of skill and mastery of heat control) that just about every glass beadmaker attempts to master them at some point.  Being able to make one (in my opinion) serves as proof of a certain level of skill development i’m happy to see i’ve finally achieved.  My motivation to make these is a floral bead exchange on LE – it was just the push I needed to force me into trying something out of the norm.  I’ve challenged myself to make at least three error-free encased florals by the exchange deadline (May 31st).

Here’s a close up of the other side.  I added a navy centre to the big flower this time in addition to the bubbles.  As soon as i get time to torch again i’ll be making some more…