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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

I've made a set of beads from dark purple glass, each with four very pale blue swirls and dashes of red. The plain smaller beads are also the very pale blue while they are separated by clear swarovzski crystals. The tiny bead caps are silver. I had thought to use larger Tibetan silver caps but after looking up the composition of Tibetan silver on the web, decided against on the grounds that the information was that this type of "Silver" more usually does not have any silver content at all. Indeed some of the cheaper caps have a large proportion of lead as their metal content.
The beads are what is called donut shaped rather than round and since they are made by hand, there is a slight variation in size according to how much glass is added to the mandrel during torching.

To be sung to " We three Kings" melody since I've just been looking at a book with cross stitch Christmas cards in it.

We three cats of Canvey are
Bearing leaves to take home to Ma
Nick and Bill and Nancy too oo oo
Scattering fur we go

Oh Oh
Cats of midnight black are we
To replace the kids you see
One so old he's turning brow ow own
Sleeping in Ma's armchair
I can't sit in my own armchair

When it's sunny, when it's warm
On the trailer, but not in a storm
Never mind the dust and traffic noise
Sleeping the day away.

Not to be outdone, I've posted 11 pictures of my latest lampwork beads on
http://www.picturetrail.com/gallery/view?p=999&gid=11160190&uid=5604171
Here's a very simple one made from scrap window glass!
Clear glass with coil
I won't bother you with the 100 or so other beads I've made in the last few weeks. As you can see, I like experimenting with the glass to produce one-off beads that are unique. There's something to be said for producing only one of a kind in any endeavour.

I haven't posted pictures of beads I've made or of the seed beads for some time so here are a few now. I call these tentacle bracelets for obvious reasons. They look better on a wrist than flat being photographed.Original tentacle bracelet: I already has all these beads so didn't need to buy more for this experiment
The pink one was slightly different than expected. I did half of the second layer of tentacles with the red crystals and the other half small white discs.Pink tentacle bracelet

Every morning, I walk down to the shops to get DH's paper and a few groceries. If the weather is fine, like today, I come back via Canvey Lake where there is always something to see. Weekends, the fishermen are there, trying to catch the carp that inhabit the murky lake. They have to put them back after removing the hooks and the largest I've seen caught was about a foot long.
Last summer some Canada geese arrived to keep the ducks and swans company and must have liked the area because they've stayed and a few pairs have bred. One pair I counted 10 babies and another had six. The rest didn't seem to take the trouble to breed this year.

A bit better focus on this one but you can see how much movement there is by the white lines in the road!

... or it's really hard when trying to take a panoramic photo from a moving balloon to keep everything mapped together and focussed ;-).

Wish me luck! I just sent off a disk for a first submission to Alamy. I hope they pass the quality check. If you don't try you'll never get anywhere...

This is a holder page for a photo-prompt list for the month of June for my friend David, and myself. It will hopefully eventually be a place where you can see our entry thumbnails in the table below. I shall not put this on the front page until there is at least one entry in the table. The idea is that this will help promote more taking of photos on both our parts and be a learning opportunity. We've started small as we're both new at this challenge prompt thing.