Tack fusing and slumping the snowflake on 3 and 3/4 inch squares

So I followed the colour de verre instructions for this project which included a 3 part firing plan, the first was a panel fuse in which I placed 2 unadorned pieces of glass on top of each other, the firing schedule for this is in previous blog.  The only change I did there was to ramp up the segment one to 400 degrees and ramp up segment 2 to 600 hundred degrees.  I also cool down the piece to 900 degrees instead of the 960 degrees suggested in directions

The second step was to tack fuse the snowflake to the glass.  In this step I ramped up 300 degrees in the first segment and took it to 1225, firing schedule was as follows:
300 dph..........................1225 degrees............................hold 30 mins.
400dph...........................1325 degrees............................hold 10 mins
Full ................................900 degrees..............................hold 1 hour
100dph...........................600 degrees...............................off

Tack fusing was successful, snowflakes retained all of their shape but lost some of the "snowy" look.  Could that be because more heat was used?

Finally I slumped the whole thing twice.  After the first one, I noticed some pulling on the sides, so I corrected that by lowering the heat slightly and holding longer.  The firing schedule I used for the second one, the green one is as follows:

300dph.............................1215 degrees......................hold 15 mins
Full ....................................900 degrees......................hold 60 mins
100dph...............................700 degrees......................hold 1 min
OFF