Hmmmm...
..let's see if I can explain (I'm much better at demonstrating than explaining!LOL)
I've been doing implosions for awhile so the minute I tried the pleat technique, I knew they were essentially doing the same thing. You know where you are focusing the heat of the flame at the edge of the encasement and the twisty? And then as you're holding the mandrel almost vertically and the encasement begins to flow down and cover the twisty and the end of the base bead creating the effect of the fat lady's ankle as someone so graciously analogized it? The flowing stops when your encasement meets the mandrel in this case. And then you do the same thing on the other side of the bead, creating her second ankle. ROTFL.
Well, the implosion is created the same way. The heat of the flame is focused on the edge of the encasing "disk" where it is going to flow down and cover the surface decoration (whether it's dots or frit or petals or whatever). At this point, you are basically holding the glass rod vertically just as you held the mandrel vertically above. The implosion design happens when that surface decoration gets sucked down with the encasing layer. The difference is that the encasement continues and "traps" the surface decoration fully encasing it -- where when you did it above, the mandrel prevented this from happening.
So the pleated bead is basically the on-mandrel version of an implosion. In the case of the "pleats" you've used the encasement to pull the twisty down -- in the case of the implosion you've used the encasement to pull the surface decoration down.
OK, does that make any sense???? Just try it on blind faith (trust me), and you'll get it!
Best,
Lea
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