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Twisties are used to decorate beads and can be simple or more complex ones of more than two colours. I've finally succeeded in making two good twisties thanks to a tutorial at Aussie Beadmakers.
If you click on the complex twistie link, it will get you to the tumbleweed site.
The first twistie is
Glass Twisties
Because the dark blue and black used were very similar colours,my second twistie was lavender, pale blue, pale green and black.
Second good twistie

Just for a change from beads, I thought I'd post a picture of a piece I did about 10 years ago. It's a roundel made using tracing black with an old fashioned pen and fired in the kiln to fix the , what is essentially, powdered black glass suspended in a medium. Once fired the paint is permanent and tracing black work forms the starting point for lots of the older church windows as it is one of the pigments used to add detail to a window. The outer edge of the circle of glass was sandblasted to make it show up. The full sized pattern is placed under the glass and the tracing black, as it's name suggests, is used to trace what's underneath.

I've been busy making more samples to show to prospective buyers. I'm still having problems with my oxycon as it is only giving me 2 litres of oxygen per minute for the torch so I have to be careful when using pale glass that it doesn't get "smoked" from unburnt fuel. I hope the problem goes away when I take delivery of my new oxyconAnd more beads: Another set of samples..

I found a Flower Marble Tutorial on the WetCanvas site and adapted it to try to make an implosion pendant. Simply, this is a pendant where the pattern is in the centre of the glass, much like childrens marbles. Here's one of my better efforts, although not very good, but it's a start.

This bead is made from Bulleye glass, mostly yellow with yellow and blue stringer applied. It's 24 mm long and about 25mm bobble to bobble. The shape is achieved by melting a blob of glass into a bead on the mandrell and rolling it at an angle across a graphite marver plate to give a cone shape. Different colours of stringer were applied around the base to make the bobbles. The white seed beads are a right angle weave practice piece.Here's another: Inverted cone shape

These are some of my latest beads.
My latest beads: Just out from a kiln anneal this morning
I've made a number of hearts in different colours. Both the hearts and crystals are about 24mm at their widest so take a good bit of glass. The pendant is of scrap window glass with yellow and blue COE compatible frit. I've made a number of these too. The blackish bead with swirls is one of a number all the same in a set.Set of beads with swirls

Hey, way to go. I clicked on the Alamy link without knowing what would turn up. Perhaps you could add something like "Stock photos for sale" to the site under the link. I like the River Boyd photo. Did you submit that one to Alamy?

I won't go into the trouble I had at PC World trying to buy an exterior case for my crashed hard drive and eventually had a refund from them. I thought as a last chance and as I was in the area, I'd call into Maplin Electronics to see if they had a case for a serial ATA hard drive. They supplied me with a 3.5 IDE/SATA HDD USB2.0 Combo Enclosure from www.newlinkproducts.co.uk for £39.99. I took it home, opened it up and proceeded to join up the leads. Nearly ALL of the info is readable and some of the games still run from this now external drive. I'm in the process of copying over all the essentials and have just managed to get back all my favourites.

About a week ago, our relatively new, 7 months old, hard drive crashed overnight. We've had to wait nearly a week for an engineer to come from PC World as the machine was still under warranty. He confoirmed that the C: drive had failed and fitted a new one. He tried to take the old drive aay with him but I said I wanted it to stay so he suggsted I'd have to pay over £100 plus for it but I persisted and he called up his bosses and confirmed that I could keep the old drive without paying. My reasoning was that when chkdsk was run it completed 46% satisfactorily before stopping after encountering an error, so some at least of the drive might be accessible. I'll disconnect an external drive presently connected to the computer and re attach the old drive to see if I can get anything from it .

This bead is about the size of a 20p piece. Not quite regular and not very prepossessing colours. I finally got my sample set of 6 inch length borosilicate rods after three months on order. I can't seem to get a bead larger than that in boro. Hence the thoughts about a costlier torch. But can I justify spending another £600 or so on another torch and a few more hundred on the other ancillary equipment if there is no guarantee that I will be able to sell the beads I make.First boro bead