Red Hat Beads

I had a request - or a suggestion - that I should have some Red Hat items for an upcoming event. For the past few days, I've been spending a lot of time at the torch working on that little project.

This was one of the large focal beads I came up with. I liked it a lot and thought it looked sort of "folk arty". It was a way of working my way into the red/purple combo that just doesn't come naturally to me. Adding the ivory and creamy greens made it easy to work with.

As I worked my way into the solid red/purple combo, I eventually wound up with this:
I like the free form, organic nature of it and then I started with the dots...
So, all in all, I like these and think they'll be fun to finish into some nice pieces.

When I get some good pictures, I will post some of the other things I did as I worked through the colors and then wound up with some new techniques that turned out well. Unfortunately the pictures I have taken so far have not!