Aki prepares cane for the lily bead, using the Japanese 'Volcano Torch', which shoots a feathery flame straight up. |
Tongs hold the flower milli cane over the torch, while one cane piece heats on the hot plate behind. |
The end of the cane is tweezed to a point, and then snipped off. |
Here you can see the point before snipping, as well as a couple of ready to go pieces on the hot plate. |
Five flower cane pieces are ready, and Aki begins to wrap the base color on to the mandrel. |
The creamy base color is on, now to add some clear. |
A tungsten pick is used to move the clear around and give depth to the bead. |
A type of gold leaf was wrapped around the bead and worked in. Some of the leftover can be seen at the end of the finished bead |
The gold leaf is worked in and moved around. |
The first milli flower chip is jammed down into the bead, point first. |
More flowers are added, each one coated with clear. |
Leaves are added as well, until all 5 lilies are in place, 4 blue and 1 white, after one of the blue cracked into pieces. |
Melting the flowers in, getting them soft. |
I believe Aki is working on a leaf here with the pick, spreading it out. |
Each flower is then made to 'bloom' by slowly pressing the milli chip into the base glass and spreading it during the process. |
Both tweezers and the pick were used. |
Getting close, you can now see how the flowers have opened up. |
Marvering for the final shape of the bead. |
A few little finishing touches..... |
And voila', we're finished with a nice blurry picture, woohooo! |
The finished product - how sweet it is! |
Aki added a really neat petal to the white lily. |
And then blessed me by letting me take it home as a gift. |
I like the waves of the cream colored glass, really cool look! |
Aki moved on to next make a Cherry Blossoms bead. LOTS of blossom millis ready for this one. |
Base colors are ready, and crushed gold foil flakes have been applied. |
Applying the blossoms, one by one, sometimes very close and on top of each other. |
Ah, finally some good focusing to see the application of the milli chips. |
Beginning to marver, shoring up the ends of the bead. |
Final marvering, working in all of those blossoms. |
Finnisimo, and the colors will look much better after it cools. |
Ah crap, this one's blurry too! |
The finished product - more utter sweetness! |
The colors are awesome, and I love how Aki uses brown stringer to create the 'branches' as well. |
Did I mention Aki is a great friend? Yeah, he let me take this one home as well.... |
WOOOHOOOOO!!!!! |