I love making twisties but I don't use them a lot. I can't ever find something great to do with them. But, for my vine canes I use ASK aloe vera and CIM Hades for black encased in clear. BTW: CIM Hades is my new favorite black because it isn't a dark blue or a dark purple. It is black and I use it when I don't want the spreading I would get with intense black. It is cheaper than intense black as well. If you haven't tried the Hades black, I would highly recommend it. Now, they just need to start making stringers.
For my vines I also like to use pea green with black and encased in clear.
Twisties: My all time favorite would have to be raku/Van Gogh with intense black. I just found a twistie that I really like. It won't look like much of anything until you use it. I made a twistie from the new R4 color called Michelangelo. I made one twistie with this color and clear stripes and and another one with Michelangelo and a black stripe. Make that in to twisties. I use it on a bead I plan to reduce. Michelangelo likes to be reduced and encased. With the clear in it in the twistie, it makes a nice effect I think. I need to take some pictures for you guys.
I have been working on a tutorial for using Catt's column press to make striped cane and twisties. I haven't finished it and the pictures are pretty sucky. But, if you heat up a rod and put it in this press it will come out like this:
then it is spaced well for stripes. I often put in stripes of one color and then another color on top of it and sometimes add another stripe to the color I started with and keep adding it up like you would murrini. Melt it all in and make a twistie that is super colorful or pull it out and you've got a nice long striped cane or you can cut it in to little pieces to make star-ish (not a word I know) or flowerish type murrini. I am no expert with murrini but I am trying to learn. I never used this press for making shapes in beads but I stumbled across it for making vines and I use it all the time for that. So, if you happen to have this press and don't use it very much, give it a try for this.
My pictures aren't great but here's some pictures of beads with my vine cane in them. Not much to brag about really. Some of the pictures are bad but I've gotten better since then. I just can't find the good pictures.
This bead had some issues and ended up a bit wonky. I hated to trash it since it had all of the CZ's in it so I put that ugly lip on it. My DH calls it the jug bead. My DH has also moved all of my good photos of my beads to a CD that I can not locate at the moment.
Of course Mary, I love your ideas and I am going to try the enamel thing today. I was using white enamel on petrol green and pulling it out into flat stringers and then making little leaves with that for stuff but I am not thrilled with the look.
Thanks for all the tips. I hope to get a lot of torching done this weekend so I have lots of new stuff to try.