Quote:
Originally Posted by beadgal1
 Hi, Your beads are all so beautiful!!! I enjoyed the tut and found it very helpful. I am just wondering: Do you encase the whole bead everytime or just the petals you have laid down. I don't understand how to keep my beads small with all the encasing. Thanks. Beadgal |
Hi There!
I agree - the beads that have been posted so far are really awesome, aren't they!!! I'm still in the "practice" and "trial and error" stages, so no pictures from me - yet!!!
Beadgal - I can give you the benefit of my experiments, at least..."spot" encasing seems to complicate the design by causing the "spot" encased areas to want to spread while rounding up the whole bead; encasing the entire bead seems to help the base design "hold" it's configuration, design and shape. With this in mind, I can suggest two things: First, using clear STRINGER to do the encasing helps to keep it thinner that using clear ROD, thus keeping the overall finished size of your bead smaller. Second, regarding encasing, make sure you check the link to Mary Lockwood's encasing tutorial in Wendy's Post #6 above. In it, you'll notice she is using clear ROD in the example, but the STRINGER works just as well if not better - for me, at least! I'm on a Hot Head, so I definitely don't work too big (I'm a "smaller bead" person anyway, and definitely don't want to deal with the "heat" issues caused by using a Hot Head and MAPP with a huge-o bead...crackville!) So far I've had no problems, and the largest bead I've made so far, even with 3 layers of encasing, ended up less than 3/4" across.
One last thing, if you start with a "core" base of color/frit/decoration such as you see in Heather's beautiful Orchid bead, if you intend to end up with a smaller bead, make sure it's a very thin core base and it seems to help by rolling it on a marver to keep it thin before the first clear encasing. Don't worry too much if it's really super thin since you'll be adding layer upon layer atop it. At least that's what I've found so far...
DeAnne in CA
DeAnne in CA