Lampwork beads with sand - and others - and an update

After feeling like somebody had pulled the adrenaline plug out of me this morning (after getting the new insulin for my husband!) most of the day, I did promise to somebody that I would post the sand beads. As I experimented with a few more things than sand, there are a few more other lampwork beads as well (all of the pictures were taken before cleaning the beads - but they're cleaned now).

The first picture has only the sand beads. The biggest one doesn't show the sand well, and that's just as well as it has an internal thermal crack. I don't expect it to live. The other 3 are sortof OK for a first experiment, the two on ivory not quite matching enough for earrings, and the encasing of the teal one left some sand exposed, but I like them anyway.

The rest of the torch session went to experimenting with Effetre petrol green. I quite like the colors I got out of it, but experimenting with my torch flame at the same time, I boiled some rather badly - they have bubbles the whole way through and the beads are brittle. I'm not sure the glass is any good to even make into frit). I like the copper color, as well as the yellow I got out of it - unfortunately most of the yellow is in the boiled glass beads, so I'll have to find the right flame size and mandrel/glass position to get one without the other. I know how to make plain teal or petrol green spacers now, as torch flame goes, but the colors and not boiling the glass at the same time is a different matter. I know I can reproduce the copper color in light teal (otherwise I wouldn't have sold the second set, I really like how these turn out) and petrol green - the first time I got yellow on top of the red.

I am positively not sure whether this is a phase every lampwork newbie goes through or whether I'm just taking a scientific approach to my mistakes and try to turn it into something positive. Given my (in my opinion) non-existing lampwork skills I'm using glass that's rather inexpensive, practice, and see what I can get out of it.

I'm most certainly going to use sand again. It's just too much fun. Frit from the beach.

Oh yeah, as one pharmacy already filled one of my husband's insulin prescription the other pharmacy didn't fill the other one. Not even if he was going to pay the full price. I'm calling the medical insurance tomorrow to find out what of this is law and what of this is policies. I am really tired of people with diabetes being dependent on "just in time delivery" here. To me, my husband is my husband first and a person who happens to have type I diabetes second. The term "diabetic" is turning into a discriminative term to me. A person is a person first. If they have a so far incurable disease they at least shouldn't be discriminated against, especially not those who take good care of themselves who have this incurable disease.

P.S.: the petrol green based beads are now available at Island Edges (well, the un-broken non-brittle ones.)