Glass practice

There is no wasted session when it comes to glass.  Even though it's possible to spend two hours over the torch and end up without a useable bead (this happens often), I learn something about the way the glass moves in the heat and where to place extra glass if I want to move a design element to the middle or the side...it's always helpful to the beads I make later on.

Last week Ben drew some adorable little Halloween characters and asked me if I would make him some beads like the guys in his picture.  Halloween is one of my favorite times of the year, so there was no way I was going to turn down the request.

So here is what I came up with--
     the spider:

    and the skull:

But I couldn't just stop there...so I made a few more things to go along with those two.

    A witch:

I love the wart.

   A ghost:

   A bat:

   and an eyeball:

Here is the whole group:

   and the final set put together for Ben to use as a zipper pull on his backpack:

But what is Halloween anything without glow in the dark elements?  So I embedded some glow in the dark glass in the layers...awesome.