I have a series of notebooks that I’ve used to keep track of ideas and plans for lampworking. I’m on volume 5. They are nice big books with quad rule so I can write or draw any which way. There’s a lot of repetition as I try to focus on specific shapes or colour combinations, but something seems to grab me and send me off into the creative depths of the flame when I sit down at the torch. I’ve made my list of the base colour of the bead and how I want to layer the features or details onto it. The list is usually 10 or so beads long. I seldom get past the 2nd planned combination, the glass has other ideas.
There’s usually one rod colour of glass that speaks to me that day and demands that I stay with it. Either using it as a base to feature other colours, or as the design to pop on something else. If I really want to focus on the list and make that effort, the resulting beads just aren’t right. Back I go to that demanding rod of glass. (It’s really annoying when it’s one of those rods that explodes – Dropped Crystal’s Friday.) The demands may come from a colour too. Deep greens or cobalt blues call. These demands show up in the swirling colours of many of my geobeads.
This Bicone Blue Geobead is one of the results from a blue day. 
When I’ve wandered down the path that the glass demands, I’m always curious about the results. Waiting for the kiln to run its program and cool completely – usually over night, it’s a long time to wait to see how the beads turned out.
Those other 8 combinations that I’d planned? – they go back in the book and become a list for another day, another wander down the forked path of glass with other ideas.
I’ll send this out into the flame and see you soon.
