[re-posted from the Bathroom by request; lots of pics, most were previously posted either in the bathroom or the Gallery]
[also, it's "Dragon", not "dragon's blood". but now i kind of want to see what that one'd do...]
I've never used Dragon over another color; were you using the zephyr as "filler" and completely encasing it with the dragon, or was it dragon dots/stripes on a clear bead?
I love the range of colors I'm getting out of it - greens, blues, purples, even a bit of red sometimes around the silver leaf - and I especially love the unpredictability.
Here, the whole top of the bead all the way to the first bright blue stripe is dragon; the thin kind of foamy-white stripe just above the blue stripe, and the reddish-brown stripe above that, are all a reaction between the midnight magic and the dragon.
An even more intense dragon, and the most dramatic colors I've managed so far on such a small bead:
And again, the whole top half+ of the bead until the wide silvery-red (clio, probably) stripe is dragon; the thinner reddish stripe above the fine yellow line above that is clio/dragon border interaction. Here the bottom stripe is also dragon; the small stripe at the bottom is more of a greenish grey.
My least-colorful dragon; i still like the color, even when it doesn't feel like playing.
(and on my long beads, even if the dragon mostly stays blue/green, i usually get at least *some* blue/purple at the very top)
In real life the apple-green banding is a lot more subtle, until you look at it really closely; the overall effect is more of that pale blue. (It's very much like Gaffer's Chameleon, which kind of makes me want to try making some beads out of that...)
This is the first *really* dramatic dragon bead I did - i was already really liking the color for the grey/green with subtle yellow/blue banding that I'd seen before, but this is the bead that got me all obssessed:
(the top half+ is all dragon, until the thin brown stripe (i want to say allspice, maybe?) above the thin blue foamy stripe (probably midnight magic, reacting with the allspice? maybe. it was *weeks* ago...)
A combination of things - i'd just found a few rods of Lizard, an old favorite which I'd thought long-gone, and wanted to really cook it to maximize the lizardiness; i had a bunch of colors that didn't really want to play well together (different viscosities, making it harder to get a nice smooth surface); and the bead was just fighting me in general. There may have been a tank-swap in the middle... But I worked that bead a lot harder, hotter, and longer than average, seriously cooking it, and cooling it, and cooking it again over and over until i was slightly less unhappy with the shape and the bead release was starting to crap out. And then I think this was one of the beads where I completely forgot about the silver leaf until the very end, and instead of just leaving it off and letting the bead win I decided to stick with the original plan and just keep going. So another round or three of cooking and cooling and reshaping. Before I put the bead away I knew there was going to be *some* interestingness, but the colors don't really come out until the bead is *cold* cold.
When I did the first round of "tinies" I wasn't actually expecting much - there's not enough glass in those to really get a reaction, and they're too small to survive a lot of overworking. But I figured worst case I'd end up with a bunch of greyish/olive green beads, which would be a perfectly lovely thing.
I did three mandrels-full, and worked each one slightly differently: one just the way I normally would, without trying for any kind of reaction; two where I spent more time (carefully!) heating them after they were done. Kind of forgot to pay attention to which one was which, but they all turned out with similar ranges of colors:
The bead that popped off the top mandrel was also a bluey/purple one; the interesting thing I discovered was that whether it's a bunch of tinies or a 6" long "big" bead, however I work the Dragon I'm likely to end up with a bit of blue/purple at the end nearest my hand.
I've since done several more rounds of tinies, mostly just working them like it's any old color (but using the "keep them all warm until you're ready to put them away" approach rather than the "once each individual bead is round, keep it out of the flame while you work the others" thing), maybe just giving it an extra flash or two of heat at the end, and I've been keeping them all in their own bowl (rather than mixing them in with all the other tinies waiting to be cleaned), and I've got a nice mix of all those ^^ colors.
(I'm working on a Lynx, and especially when I'm cooking the colors and trying to encourage the stripes to interact with each other I'll turn up that center oxygen to get a really hot, really focused flame; almost more than a "real" striking color (because the dragon changes can be subtle), heating/cooling different zones of glass will get you more variation than cooking the glass more-or-less uniformly.)
(i've since discovered that I can get a similar range of colors - although less of the *really* intense blue/purple - from tortoise, so i'm slightly less concerned about someday running out... but i've got enough to at least see me through my current obssession, and it's definitely at the top of my "add some to my shopping cart any time i'm placing a glass order" list.
)