Clear Encasing & Silver

I decided to try a Cosmic Swirl bead.  It had several challenging ‘firsts’ for me and if the design turned out well,. to top it off I could attempt to encase it with clear,. hopefully without any carbon scum coating. *crossing fingers*

A first time using silver leaf in my studio, that was kinda cool. The first time stacking dots in such a way and combining colours like this.  The design did turn out beautifully and then I was faced with the scary decision to encase (having never done it successfully before on a bead so large) and possibly ruin a perfectly good bead. Oh what the heck,..it’s only glass right?,lol.

Well the encasing went like a dream,.. I am so thrilled with it,..took forever though, and I think this bead took me about 35mins to make,lol. It is about 1″ in size.

It survived the vermiculite without cracking,.albeit suffering a few pock marks on the surface from putting it in too early *note to self,..bigger beads need a second or two longer to firm up the skin before putting in the vermiculite,…. I was able to snap this photo and two hours later I took my bead out of my purse to show a friend and heard a ‘tink’ sound and felt between my fingers a little explosive energy ;}…..Awesome!,. now I have two cabochons,lol

As luck would have it,. it broke in the best possible way,. with both sides showing off main features beautifully.  I need to keep these as they are for a while because they look really awesome like this and I can see their gizzards. Once I am ‘over it’ perhaps after a few more cracks (which I’ll avoid once I’m able to pop beads straight from torch to kiln), I’m thinking I might just slump these and turn them into real cabochons (without mandrel holes). I think they would look fantastic wrapped in Sterling Silver.

Intense Black and a fun shape

Today I decided to play with ‘intense black’. This stuff is awesome,. and I bought a heap of it because I love the lacey webbing effect it has. Made all five beads in one session at the torch because I was on a roll

Usually 3 beads at a time is my limit because I find lampworking very tiring,.. I seem to get mezmerized or something by the flame and my eyes get very heavy(the same way they do whenever I try to read anything),…don’t want to nod off and burn my nose.

Anyway,.. have a look at the webbing on the top area of the 4th bead along. This is a good example of what intense black does.

I also really played with the torch during these,.altering the amounts of NG and Oxygen to acheive colour reations where I wanted them. An example is the middle bead where the turquoise and red is at the top. The turquoise/red section is actually one turquoise rod,. only part of it was hit with a reducing flame to cause the copper to come to the surface.

Too much fun was had in one evening me thinks :).

Clear Encasing & Florals

Ok,. today was another attempt to encase in clear without cooking the clear and turning it into a carbon filled grey scum layer over the beads.

The first bead was a warmup bead,lol. It is an implosion bead. This bead went through a process of almost turning itself inside-out to get the look of this flower. Love doing these.

The second bead is actually my second attempt at a plunged dot floral. Both of these beads are 16mm and the clear stayed nice and clear. No carbon scum here yaaay!

The orange petal floral was my first attempt at a plunged dot floral. I have not read any instructions how to do these yet and did these the way I thought they were made. This bead is a whopper at 1″ and covered in a carbon scum from letting the clear heat up too much. Oh well,lol.  The white petalled bead is my third attempt at a plunged dot floral and is supposed to be slightly pinkish since the white petals were covered in transparent amethyst. Unfortunately this bead also suffered a roasting,lol and is also covered in a carbon scum layer. The petals looks rather grey in real like *snif*. 

Soooooh it seems that I can avoid cooking the clear when doing small beads,.. but large beads I just cook ‘em. It seems my options are,.. melt mid-flame and get carbon scum,.. melt high in flame and die of old age while waiting for the glass to form it’s nice round shape.  I think I will try again after reading some instructions first, and try and figure out the clear trick.  Clear and I,… we just don’t get along :} .

Colour mix & melted snowflake

The two blue beads are the result of a bit of fun mixing several colours. They are more purpley blue in real life and they also have streaks of transparent which looks really cool,. but it doesn’t show as transparent in this pic for some reason. 

The brown and ivory one started it’s life on the mandrel as a snowflake,… was looking good until it started to look bad hee hee,.. so I melted the sucker back down to a regular round and look at the beautiful pattern. There is even a little snowflake pattern in the centres. I should call these melted snowflakes,lol.

Snowflakes, second try

Ok,.. these are a bit better I think. I didn’t even think to pay any attention to making sure the dots were all the same size and the blue one really shows that.  The pink one is much better, but I think the next time, they will be even better if I watch my dot sizes. 

I achieved a finer, more lacy look that I was trying for, so I’m really quite happy with how these turned out.

Hmmm,.. what shall I try next?….um..encased plunged dot florals???

Snowflakes

I haven’t been able to get in any torch time for a few days,. and was hoping to get to the torch this morning, but three little people had other plans for how I would spend my time today :). So despite being very tired this evening (I promised myself I wouldn’t torch while tired,..very silly thing to do),.I went up to the studio and made these.

This is a first attempt at stacked dots and snowflake style beads. They were heaps of fun to do. The round bead is an imploded snowflake.

I’m very happy with these for my first go at them,…but my brain is now fried. 8]

Studio

Well no time for torchin yesterday,.. or today *snif*. Will try and grab some time on it tomorrow if possible.

I bought some mini-orb (mini profile corrogated iron) to put at the back of the workbench,. which looks great because it matches the high pitched roof of our house and it appears to flow right through the wall to outside.  The view out the right of this picture overlooks our large courtyard which is almost enclosed as it is surrounded by 3 1/2 walls.

Day 7: Van Gogh revisited

A second attempt at the Van Gogh flower,.. a lot better,. and I learned a lot between this bead and the last attempt.  I know how to make improvements and will have another crack at it again soon.

At this point in time,. calculated generously, I have had 17hrs in total at the torch.

Day 6: Encasing with clear

A second attempt at encasing with clear. Much better,. but still a few small scum patches.
This bead is a big sucker,lol. I mixed my own colours for this one.

Day 5: A busy day at the torch

Starting the day off with making my first twisties. Too much fun.

This set was a second attempt at implossion beads and a first attempt at encasing with clear. Unfortunately unknowingly, I cooked the snot out of the clear and it turned brown and icky *snif*.

Playing with different colours. I love the topaz and black. It took all my strength to stop myself from popping that round one in my mouth and chomping on it,lol. Mmm mmm delicious creme caramel.

erm…the top one, a piece of chewy I pulled off the sole of my boot ;}. and the other two were made from one of the first twisties. 

This one is suppose to be a Van Gogh style flower phrrrt!

Day 4: Trying new colours and dots

Oooh,.. getting brave and playing with more colours,lol.

A couple more lentils, not sure what I was thinking when I made the bead on the top right,.. erm, I must have changed my mind half way through,lol. The bottom bead was an attempt to get the dots to spread and make a cool pattern.

The pics are a bit zagged because there is no way to keep the dimensions restrained when resizing,.. so to get a better look,.. click on the pics to go to the actual images.

Playing with dots. Hmm very fun.

Day 3: What’s cookin’ today

Well yesterday I was stunned when my turquoise turned this really cool terracotta colour,. and while I thought it was pretty cool,.. I needed to find out why it happened and how to prevent it (or how to make it happen deliberately). So today was all about trying to make turquoise beads without the terracotta ‘copper’ coming out. Also it was about dots,.. and how to make dots big enough to join up and make a cool pattern.

Well,..almost no terracotta,lol and the dots still need some work .

Okay,.. erm…. well hello terracotta. This one was meant to be. My first lentil shaped bead and my 11yr old son decided he’d like to have this one,..said it was ‘waaaaaay cool’, lol.

Day 2: Torchin in my own studio

This is awesome,. so much to learn,.. so many pretty glass rods, frits, powders and sliver to play with,.. oooh what to do first.  hmmm play it safe and stick with black and white for a bit,.. erm,… I have plenty of black and white and can afford to make some mistakes in that colour,lol.

Third set

Okay,..moving right along,….lets try another colour combo…
Fourth set … oooh these are nice,.looks like I needed a bit more Oxygen in the mix,. then the copper may not have popped out of the turquoise,.. but I kind like the effect nevertheless.  Think I might even do this deliberately one day,lol.

Day 1: torchin’ in my own studio

LOL,. I can hardly believe it,. sitting in my own studio,. torch lit, music loud and lost in a world of molten glass and a new and exciting journey of beadmaking.  Whoot this is so much fun.

First set

Second Set

Gas Connected at last!

It has taken me 3yrs and 2months(since I ordered my Bobcat torch from the US) to finally getting my studio set up for lampworking. 

A few weeks ago my replacement Oxygen Concentrator arrived,.. strapped to it’s very own pallet for the trip in the truck. Not a mark on it,. perfect!. Today, my natural gas line was extended to my studio yaaaaay finally.  Not pretty,.buuut who cares,lol.  I am however, going to buy a small cabinet (cd type cabinet possibly) and cut a hole in the back an fix it permanently to the wall to cover this.  The plan is;.. the door/s will be key locked(with key placed high on top of bookcase) so that small visitors, animals and other curious hands cannot turn the tap on.  Although we don’t allow small visitors to roam around upstairs in my studio(too many other dangers there), I fear that it might happen one day when I am not home to make sure of it. So I think my idea of a little lockable cabinet will keep my mind at ease, as well as also serve as a nice place to store my torch lighter, my lampwork safety glasses (would hate to have to replace these because a little person decided to play with and break them *gasp*), and anything else that is a potential risk to keep out in view of the little ones.

Yaaaay,.. I’m cookin’ with gas!