As I mentioned back in November (that is, 2–3 months ago) I was on hiatus, pretty much, from beadmaking for much of 2020; but now one of my beadmaking buddies is back in town,^[1] and that's been rather inspiring.^[2]

black and white minis, mostly spot'n’streak, but some layered dots as well.

Generally when I've been away from something and don't feel like jumping right into difficult projects I was doing when last I left off, I start with easy warmups. Besides being a great way to use up and/or test random stringer, and a nice looking effect to boot, spot'n’streaks are just about as easy as it gets; he layered dots were just challenging enough:) when I wanted to put just the smallest bit of effort in.

dichro solids, with a few minis thrown in.

When I was feeling for just a bit more of a challenge than the dots, I tried doing some dichro solids, from scraps without perfectly identified provenance (IOW, I didn't wanna mix ’em with the rest of my 104 to discover they were 90...)

gold leaf minis

Since I had a repair that called for a gold leaf bead, I tried making one, along with some minis: I have a couple of ideas where specifically black and gold minis might be useful, so why not? This also allowed me to plow through a mix of shorts and stringers; the 066 is great for trailing, the standard 064 black I made into base beads:)

introducing some red into the mix...note the three ivory beads on the right, with varying levels of purplish-to-black trailing: on the mandrel testing for dense 066 black^[3]

Once I actually used up most of the black scrap, I made some translucent red with gold, because I'm still thinking about doing something in that colourway...

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