Here is my take on butterflies for Beads of Courage. Below are the steps I use to make these beads and I have a post on my blog. I was never happy with my butterflies until I tried using my Gaffer and Val Cox veiled cane. Nikki Carollo posted some butterfly beads in the BOC thread and a light bulb went off in my head. I have lots of veiled cane. I tweaked her design a little and came up with this way of making these beads. Feel free to use my tutorial for beads of your own to send to Beads of Couarge. Post your pictures here. Sorry I didn't have any "action" shots, hard to tweeze, hold the bead and take the photo at the same time.
Wrap mandrel with first color of glass to form a tube shape. Make sure the ends are dimpled nicely as it will not be possible to return to the ends to make them smooth easily.
Use the same color of glass to make four tall dots to form the beginnings of the wings.
Take your second color of glass and wrap around the raised dots. You can see here the bottom side is done and the topside I started in the middle of the dots. I like doing this so I can use the molten glass to get into all the edges. If needed add some glass to make the two wings the same size.
Use your third color and stripe it down the sides of the wings to build up more height on the wings.
Heat in the center of the wing on side.
Use a razor tool, stump shaper or simlar tool to crease between the wings. Repeat on the other side.
Heat one wing and use parallel mashers or tweezer to flatten the wings.
Here all wings are mashed.
Heat each wing and use tweezers to make ridges in the wings. You may need to heat and tweeze a couple times on each wing, if you are not fast enough. I like to start in the center of the wing and move to the left, then go back and finish on the right.
Finished butterfly.