More fun with fire

The lampworking thing is sort of addictive! I've been practicing, with an aim towards producing uniform, round beads so that I can eventually make a paternoster. I think I'm ready to start working with the actual glass I want to use, it seems that each color rod behaves a little differently, which makes sense since different metals and minerals are used to make the colors and each one melts and burns at a different temperature. They also seem to wind onto the mandrels a little differently. If I was good at this, I would be working all the glass at the coolest possible temperatures but I've got to figure out what that is for the glass I want to work as I am not good at this yet.

Anyway, the result of my practice is, as you see, a lovely Viking-ish bead swag! With some dangley bits of things that went terribly wrong but I could not bear to throw away.

 And some close ups:
The stacked beads in the center are the first beads my husband and I made (he made the silvery blue one and I made the red one).  I'm pretty pleased with the clear one with red spots and the amber one with a black stripe, my first attempts at embellishing.  The whole thing has been a learning process but it's fun and oddly relaxing.