A Daffodil Bead Tutorial: My first attempt...

What is going on in the studio this week... ? Learning. I purchased this great tutorial from Corina Tettinger... its Called Daffodils Bead Tutorial ( how to make an encased Daffodil bead and similar 3-D flowers. This is 54 jammed packed pages of pictures and instruction.. and really if you are a lampwork artist who is interested in this. I highly suggest it. You can find it on Corina's web site. Corinabeads

Here are my two really two first attempts, I think I am happy with them.. Considering when I first took them out of the kiln.. I had my "visions" on how they should have looked. WEll on 2nd inspection I am happy with the first go around..

This first bead has a simple flower on one side, and a daffodil on the other side. Its a very wonky bead.. You know hot heads can be a bit tough to shape this much glass in one sitting.. but my goal was just to try and get flowers made.. task accomplished.

Here is the first actual daffodil I made.. its a bit mashed, but it kind of looks like what I was trying to make.. :-)... The next one is twice as big, bead wise... and I did two daffodils. with a bunch of the simple flowers with the bubble dots.. I love the 3D look to these beads.. and the yellow and greens go so well together! One problem I did have was the distortion of some of the flowers.. I plan on working on the "size" of the flowers... there fore the beads should not be so big.. and hopefully I will have less distortion.. since there will not be as much glass to fight with on my hot head. That very last bead.... well I had started to try different colors of "flowers" but was just so exhausted doing these two.. I just plopped it on a white barrel bead and mashed it..

A picture from both sides of the 2nd bead.. it is shaped better..It really was a lot of fun to do.. and oh man, as I was doing this I was getting all kinds of ideas, I can use with this technique. This is why we try new things.. to spark our muse.. and be creative.