Lampwork beads on ebay

I have finally listed three sets of my beads on ebay. Yaaaaay!!! It has taken about 5 years for me to get from… my initial thoughts of how I would really love to make lampwork beads,.. to it actually becoming a reality and now selling them on ebay. Wow,.. I’m so gald I’m a patient person.

During these past 5 years, I gradually gathered lampworking tools, equipment and glass,..and then it would just sit there…..because as much as I really wanted to get into beadmaking,..I simply just had no time left in my days to learn how to do it.

Even now,. because working at a torch with molten glass is not something you can do when you are tired,. and my ‘windows of opportunity’ (which are not daily),… sometimes come at the wrong time, when I’m just too tired to work at the torch even though I have the chance.

So,. I’m not sure how many beads I will be able to get up on ebay each week yet,.. some weeks more than others no doubt, but I hope to get into the swing of things and list them regularly.

I plan to list on Sunday mornings here in Aust (which is Sat evening in the US), since I always have a few hours very early Sunday mornings before I am out the door at 10:45am. Every other day is impossible to set a regular task,..as I’m all over the place at uncertain times,lol.

I also changed my ebay ID from **remy** to **remy**studioheath .

It has also been 5 years since I was selling my jewelry on ebay,….feels like yesterday.. NOT! ,lol.. but hard to believe it was really that long ago.

Lampwork beads red set

and why not some in red?

As you can see,..I’m finally getting some beads made at long last. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for years and have had all the glass, the torch and the rest of the equipment for years, but for one reason or another,.. I could never seem to find the time to get my lampwork beadmaking off the ground. I wear so many hats (like most mums do),..one each for mother, wife, housekeeper, cleaner, chauffeur, accountant, grocery shopper, cook, maintenance guy,..eh hemm girl,..councellor, tutor, jewelry maker, webmaster, and I’m sure I have missed a whole bunch more,… I just have so many fingers in so many pies,.. adding lampwork beadmaking to an already rediculously busy life was like bringing in another pie for my 11th finger…oh wait……. erm you know what I mean…I just couldn’t stretch myself that far, even though I really wanted to. So,.. I’ve thrown away the hats for housekeeper, cook, cleaner, maintenance girl (erm..edit: not true,.. I just spent 4hrs installing the timber slat blinds in my studio grrrr.. I need a handyman in my life) and shop for groceries online again. The house is lookin’ shabby, and my family are starving but hey… I’m making beads right?!…and maybe in a week or twelve….erm ok a week or two… up they go on ebay. Now,…I just need to find someone to drive my kids all over town every afternoon and evening to their sporting commitments,…and I’d have more hours every day to play at the torch.

More lampwork beads

…and a set in purple/mauve,…mmm purdy…

Lampwork beads

Another set. These remind me of the seaside,. aaah I can hear the ocean, smell that salty air and feel the sand between my toes…. erm….or perhaps I inhaled too much of the fumes off the silver foil that I used while making these. ;} I have good cross ventilation via two open windows and a door, plus a ducted extraction fan in front of my torch,.. but I’m not happy with it and I think I need to re-position the extraction fan and/or increase the size of it.

I was a bit concerned about how much of the fumes (especially from the silver foil) I enhaled while making this set,… so I raced out after and bought a very attractive (NOT) respirator to wear next time I need to play with things that produce those very nasty fumes.

More lampwork beads

I have been having a blast at the torch,.. erm..maybe that’s a bad choice of words.. nevertheless.. here is another set. I hope to get my ebay auctions up and running again soon and list these sets. I seriously need to employ someone to do all the admin stuff for me ;} ,… blearch.. it’s just not creative or fun doing all that stuff and takes me away from the torch and my jewelry making.

Lampwork Lemur bead

Here is an end-of-torch-session-mess-around-bead. Meet little Lemur bead. Or as my youngest daughter 11yrs and collector of Furbies calls him,..a Furby bead.

Because I don’t yet have a kiln to anneal my beads straight from the torch (buuuuut,..I’m finally picking up a kiln tomorrow yaaaaaaaaaaaay!!),. I’ve never attempted to make anything sculptured or anything riskier than the snowflake beads simply because they most likely would not survive and would crack during the vermiculite cool down. The other night at the torch however, as I trying to choose some colours for my last bead for the session, my 15yr old daughter was wondering around the studio chatting to me as I worked and I said to her “I’ll make you a mobile phone dangly, what would you like?” She chose to have a black bead with ‘Watercolours’ Frit Fusion.

She left the studio and I had a brain snap . I thought,..I might just surprise her with a little black and watercolour frit kitty. Whaahaahhaaaha…yep little Lemur was suppose to be a kitty ROFL@myself. Ok,.. well it was my first sculptured bead and maybe I overdid the eyes just a little LOLOLOL. Anyway,. I thought, if I keep it small..it might survive like the snowflakes did, and I will anneal it when I get my kiln,..so little Lemur was born,..all of 15mm high. My daughter loves him, and even my hubby likes him,.. he took him to work, (for three days grrrrr) to show him off *giggle*.

It is hard to see in the pic, but he has a pink and blue fritty body.

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Latest Lampwork bead set

Here is my latest set. I was not quite sure what these beads reminded me of as I was making them and it was really annoying me,.. I was thinking maybe kind of tribal but that still wasn’t quite it either. As soon as a dear friend of mine saw them she said Batik!,..and yes that was exactly what they remind me of,…gorgeous patterned fabric, created using hot wax masking…. oh wow that brings back some scary,..yet fun memories of my teen years. I can almost smell the beeswax.

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Blue Lava set

This set was made up over sessions 4, 5 & 6 back at the torch after my break. Except there is that olive bead from session three. The set is a result of quite a few uh..huh moments I had, both at the torch and away from the torch as memories suddenly came flooding back.

I decided to stick to a technique over a few sessions to see what I can do and what I can learn from doing it that way, as opposed to doing one of these, then one of those.. kind of thing. I really enjoyed this technique and process when I was making beads before so it was a no brainer to start with these and make a whole set of them. I love the effect on these beads with the turquoise, brick red and spiderweb reaction of intense black.

Click to enlarge

At the torch again

Third session back at the torch since my 20month break and my aim was again to get rounds and also see if I can get a nice olive shaped bead. I also wanted to play with a colour that I used to love playing with because of it’s colour reactions in the flame. The brick red & turquoise comes from the same rod of ‘turquoise’ glass. A reducing flame causes the copper in the turquoise to come out.

While I was having fun watching the interesting effects from the reactions,.. I forgot to make sure my ends had nice puckered holes, silly moi, so the holes in the olive shaped bead and one hole in the bead on the left,.. could have been better. *smack*

Here is the result of my 3rd session back at the torch.

Back at the torch

Back at the torch for the 2nd session since my return to beadmaking after a 20 month break *gasp*. Before I even lit the torch, I decided to first imagine what it feels like to get that molten glass blob to flow and find the balance on the mandrel. I was determined to get round beads again quickly and I think that thinking it through first actually helped. Practicing dots was also on the agenda for this session.

I was relatively pleased with myself after this session. I got the round beads that I wanted, and by the third bead, I got that ‘feel’ for the balance back again. The dots were meh,..not great but pretty much up to the standard I was at when I was making beads before, so I was happy with that.

Here is the result of my 2nd session back at the torch.

Lampwork Beads

Very recently I lit up my Bobcat Torch,.and tried to calculate how long it has been since I was last at the torch. It felt like a while and I guessed it would be about 10 or 11 months,.. but to my horror when I checked the date of the last beads I made, I discovered it was actually 20 months!!! .
Where did that time go? How could it have been so long? I know I have been busy as usual but gees,.. I feel ripped off,… like 10months has been stolen from me or something.

Anyway,.. so I continue my beadmaking journey 20months later *snif*…… The first session back at the torch after such a break left me thinking OMG,.. I have to re-learn everything,.. I couldn’t even get a round bead whaaahaahaha. I left the torch feeling like,..hmmm it’s not like learning to ride a bike then,..I had forgotten how to feel the molten glass and get the right balance of glass on the mandrel, the implosion bead was like an imploded implosion with carbon scum inclusions because I forgot how to adjust the gas and oxygen to get a neutral flame,.. why I even thought I could do an implosion bead in the first 5 mins back at the torch when I couldn’t do them well before is anyone’s guess phrrrt!,..so all in all, it was disastrous and I was a little disheartened after that session. I think I suffered a case of overconfidence and underskill,. probably due to the excitment and fear,.. followed by relief of actually lighting the torch again without blowing the studio up.

Here is the result of that first session back at the torch. Don’t laugh….oh alright..you can laugh,..I did.

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.