Posted this cauldron bead in the gallery and was asked how I made it. Been a while since anybody asked me that and it tickled me. Time is of the essence if you want to make these beads for this season I couldn't take weeks formulating a fancy shmancy tutorial with real pictures so I sketched this out in about 10 minutes. Hope you like it. More detailed text is after the images.
First I made a fat barrel of ink blue.
Then I snipped 3/4" pieces of flashy dichro, prewarmed them then applied them to the barrel. I heated them in smooth, then twisted them in several places to break up the straight edges.
Mashed into a thick tab.
I put 3 dots of red opaque spaced kinda far apart horizontally across the lower third of the bead front. Melt smooth.
I layered a dot of opaque orange on top of each red dot. Melt smooth.
Layered a dot of opaque yellow on top of each orange dot. Melt smooth.
Used an ink blue stringer to rake the stacks of dots upward and outward. Used the same ink blue stringer to twist areas just to the sides of each raked dot to make them swirl out to look like flames. I twisted each raked stack of fire dots one or two times.
Melted it all smooth.
Then I added one big fat blob of dark silver plum where I wanted the cauldron belly to be. Melted this in just enough to make the edges flush with the surface. The rounded belly of the pot is still dimensional. Added a swipe of dark silver plum across the top of the cauldron for the rim and fine tuned it with my razor blade to make is straight and even.
I repeated the flame treatment (layered dots, raked, twisted) several times to the side and front of the cauldron to look like flames licking up the sides of the pot.
You know how if you put clear encasement too hot over black it makes that foggy crap we all despise? I thought I'd use that for 'steam'. I laid down three wiggly stripes of black stringer coming up out of the cauldron top. Melted them in almost completely smooth then let them cool a bit.
Superheated some clear and quickly layered it over the black stringer to cause the fog. Truth be told, if I were trying to NOT have fog I probably would have gotten more 'steam'. I didn't get nearly as much as I wanted. It was a good thing I had the dichro behind it added what was lacking.
By now, the cauldron was really nice and shiny from reduction, but if yours isn't, go ahead and reduce the bead to bring up the metal.
That's it!
~~Mary