Week - 06

I have made a few beads this week and have put them up in my journal (Lampwork Journey section)  but I really cannot make any jewellery from my beads yet (unless they are for myself or my children) because they’re not annealed.  I don’t have a kiln yet and haven’t arranged to have any of my beads ‘batch’ annealed by someone else because I don’t really have enough at this point.

Anyway,.this little pendant is for my  9yr old daughter.  She loves the little Koalas that I make, so I thought I’d put one of these little guys on one of my beads,.. if it cracks,.. I just redo.

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!

Week - 05

Another one of Lynette Owen’s dichroic cabs,.. I think I’m addicted to dichroics,lol. This cab is mine,..all mine!!  Can you see it’s a scarab beetle?  I wanted to keep this setting as clean as possible to keep the scarab design.  I wrapped it a little unconventionally,. the prongs, like little beetle’y legs,lol and the bail wires straight down and clean lines ( looks like a tie,lol) .

Hubby  said,…”you’re not going to leave those wires straight down like that are you?”… and confidently I yelled back “YEP! I really like it like that”.   Aaaaand I’ll be the one wearing it so that’s cool,lol.

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!

Week - 04

I  snapped up a couple of  dichroic cabs recently, that I found on Lynette Owen’s website,. I just couldn’t help it,… they were calling out my name :} .   I wanted to play around with some different ways of wrapping too so these cabs were perfect for providing the  inspiration. 

This cabochon has way more purple and pinks through the blue.  I have discovered that there is no way you can capture the true beauty of dichroic glass unless you took a little movie clip and rotated it back and forth. Like opals, looking at these dichroic cabs from different angles you get flashes of different colours that change the whole look.  Sooh pretty.

The setting is made with mostly sterling silver but with gold filled wire wrapped around the neck of the bail, just for something a bit different. The cabochon is actually freeform shaped (more obvious when it was not wrapped) but I decided to treat it like it was symmetrical in the end.