Slushee of death. Heh.

Anyways, the reason there were no shards of ice involved was because she use Ice Shards+Melt/Freeze, or at least that's my story and I'm sticking to it. OR the seed should be that it makes the weapon out of water and then those instances of an ice weapon are a result of this new seed (replacing Water Whip) plus Melt/Freeze. Ice Shards could be revamped to include no weapon creation bits, or could be added to that in some fashion. I think this second one makes more sense, at least to me it does. It's easier to form water and not have it be ice, correct? And then with more work you make it ice. I mean, Ice Shards is already a pretty big seed.

As for small weapons being the only things created, there is a very good explanation: Weapon Finesse. If you can't use the bigger weapons, why create them? Small weapons are faster, and since benders tend to be fast rather than strong, it makes sense to use it. Just because you can make bigger weapons doesn't mean you have to, and just because you don't doesn't mean you can't.

That ice hardness was another problem, is there any way for them to increase the hardness of ice? See Frostburn for more details on using ice.