small in quantity.....

but LARGE with style.  This firing was smaller than my usual since Bill had most of my bead trees in the woodfiring yesterday.  They will be there until tomorrow.  I usually like to have a full kiln since firing too many times burns out the elements. I was always so anxious to fire, fire, fire when I first got a doll kiln.  (Prior to that I had a little 6 x 6) I've had to change the elements once after numerous firings and it wasn't fun. I approached it like I do many things....just DIVE right it!  Didn't work out too well and I needed to seek Bill's assistance (Actually, it was more like he took over and I assisted ;o)  No hurry to travel that road again!

Anyhow....Here are a few color combos from the kiln opening this morning.  I used some of my favorite colors and put them on one bead.  Four of the five I have grown to love.  The fifth one was not one of my favorites, but I thought that it might work with this grouping (I needed a fifth!)  And it DID!!  It looked fabulous.  It's the yellowy one that kinda bursts out from the center of the glaze.  Very cool!  These beads are large (16 mm - 5/8") and will be listed in my shop later on.

The pendant is another path I decided to travel.   Again, I took a couple of color favorites and put them on one piece.  There is definitely something to be said for time spent with your glazes.  Once you know them, there are so many more opportunities.  I probably shouldn't say this (I don't want to be jinxed!), but gone are the days that I am grinding too much glaze off of my beads because they pooled and disfigured the bead!  Now I'm off to go for a hike with one of my BFF's ;o) (that's an almost 50 year old being hip ;o)