A technique for January: Dots

After I wrote my post on choosing one technique for each month of 2009 to practice, the leader of the Danish glass group I am in took up the challenge.
She posted the idea for the group and several people wanted to join in. She has accumulated loads of links for us to look at and be inspired by, and on Jan. 1'st she posted the technique for January: Dots.

So far I have only had 2 torch sessions, but both were full of dots. December was very busy and I didn't make a single bead, so I wanted to start out slow and easy.
I used the technique described here, the Wavy Bead technique which I have done before. I didn't do as described though, I used only opaque glasses, and in stead of just dollops of glass laid on the disc, I laid out stacked dots which made funky eyes. When I were halfway through melting everything in, I thought: 'This is a fun shape. I think I'll just keep it'. So I did, and here is the result.


Next time I tried out my 5mm mandrels. They are very thick when you are used to 1.6mm, and heavy. But it was fun, and I look forward to the day that I will try to silver core some of them. I love the cored beads, it's a beautiful thing :) It may not be this year though, as I am trying to not buy stuff, but we'll see what happens.
These are my first beads with a large-ish hole.


More will definately follow :)

P~