I can see, plus sparkles and cats

What a difference the new glasses make! Just made the yellow disappear. I could actually see what I was making, for once. It took some getting used to, since I've learned to find the "sweet spot" in the flame by the color of the flame as well as the glass,

Since my new cubic zirconias arrived today, of course I had to experiment with them. I put two into a pretty little bead that I made. One of them has a tiny crack around it, and I don't know if it will survive annealing. We'll see!

I also tried my first cat bead. I modeled it after my boyfriend's cat, Fluffy, who is black and white. (Mine is all black, so he wouldn't make as interesting a bead.) It's really cute, especially since I was running out of gas toward the end! There are definitely improvements to make (the tail broke off when removing it from the mandrel, for instance), but it's not bad for a first try. Even my boyfriend, who isn't a bead fan, was impressed.

Treasures from Debbie

I just returned from another visit to Debbie S.'s house. She had an old pair of didymium glasses she was willing to pass on to me, which will be a big help for the show (cross that one off my list!). While I was there, we also cut a bunch of mandrels that I purchased from her, and I also got some gorgeous frit from her.

She showed me a bunch of beads she had received at the WetCanvas Gathering. Wowee! So many amazing beads, and it was great to see them in person. I even got to see a real kidlet by the original designer, Lori Peterson. It's much smaller than I've been making them, which would actually be easier to make, I think!

Anyway, I'm very grateful to Debbie for helping me out so much. It's been wonderful to have a resource like her so close by. She even shattered my stuck bead for me, rescuing the mandrel, with far less explosiveness than I had managed!

She was also encouraging about the quality of my beads, even the terrible sculptured flowers. It's good to feel like continuing, when I see there is so much ahead of me to learn.

Also, fun news - I've gotten in contact with lampworkers in Israel who are getting together with each other and other visitors in July, when I plan to visit. Woo hoo! Who woulda thunk it?

Rainbow bracelet

Here is the first piece of jewelry I made with my new lampwork beads. The photo isn't as nice as the real thing. It's very eye-catching.

Spring Beadmaking

It's so nice to have a three-day weekend. I have a lot of work to do for the end of the year at school, but I was still able to fit in a lot of lampworking today. In fact, that's the only time I feel okay; the rest of the time, my body just wants to go to sleep. It must be fighting a cold. But beadmaking makes me feel alive!

My goofs for the day: almost putting my hand IN the flame; attaching the rod to the bead at a part of the rod that was too cool, so the rod would attach to the bead; and somehow making a bead I really like that won't come off the mandrel. Oh well. It's especially a problem since half my mandrels are going to beads showing the steps to make the focal bead for the TV show. (I only have ten!)

Yesterday I spent a lot of time gardening, so it only makes sense that I would try to make sculptural flower beads today. It's harder than it sounds! I'll post my two efforts when I can photograph them, embarrassing though they are is. The red one used to be better, but in working the leaves, I think, one of the petals cracked, and a couple of them melted together. I have to learn how to make bigger petals without growing a third hand. Part of the problem is I'm so limited in the tools I have.

Here are the flowers, be they as they may:


I also tried two beads on a mandrel again today. These turned out more even than the last attempt, though still not perfect.


One success story is my first bead with dichroic glass. Using dichroic glass is weird - you have to heat the encasing part in the flame, then turn it around and lay the dichroic part on the base bead. Very strange and difficult. But I really like how the bead turned out. It's my favorite for today.


My second favorite is a beautiful rare peach colored glass with white, lime and light blue layered dots. Very summery!


My other favorite, which will probably be consigned to plant stake-dom, is another frit bead with silver wire over it and a rolled indented design. I really like it. Sad that it won't come off the mandrel. Maybe a miracle will happen and our strange attempt to release it by freezing will work!

I'm very pleased to hear from people that this blog is inspiring and/or helping them. That's why I'm doing it. Thanks for your feedback!

Preps for show

In the last few days, I've been madly getting ready for the show, as well as for the end of the school year at my teaching job. So much work! I have the steps (like on a cooking show) to prepare, so the only torching I've done was to make beads showing the different steps of making the focal. Lots of work with rings and maille, though, and writing up the long notes for the show itself.

I treated myself to making one other bead - another kidlet. I got its parts a bit more exact this time, including the hair and eye dots. However, for some reason, it turned out to look very much like a character on South Park. It cracked me up when I first held the head and body beads together to see how they would look. The other members of my household found it funny too.


It'll be nice when I can spend some quality time at the torch progressing in my skills and doing my experiments. For now, most of my mandrels will be tied up with the beads for the show. Time to buy more mandrels?

Oh, I did do one experiment. One of my mandrels had a hideous bead that went wrong on it - the darn thing would not come off. So I thought I'd gently heat it then dunk it in water for it to crack off the mandrel. Funny thing is, I KNEW this was a bad idea, because I'd experienced the shattering that happens when you try to reheat a bead. But I really wanted this mandrel.

Sure enough, the bead virtually exploded, throwing glass everywhere in the room, and a lot because it was a larger bead. No more going barefoot in that room! But I got my mandrel back and managed to escape unscathed.

Don't try this at home...

Exciting news!

I can finally say something about my news here! I have been approved to be on a segment of Crafters Coast-to-Coast, now called "That's Clever!" Filming will take place on Saturday, June 18. It's very exciting - my six minutes of fame!

This is why I've been quiet this week; in addition to working on wholesale orders, I've been working up a project and discussing the possibilities with the show. Here's a picture of the project:

I'll be making this project from wire on up. Stay tuned to find out air times, etc.

I really want to acknowledge that the technique I'm applying for the encased flower beads comes from Kim Miles. Dec. 29, 2006: I had a link to her tutorial, but it seems to have been removed from her site. Sorry!

Foiled the foil!

Torched last night despite being ready to fall asleep on my feet, and successfully encased silver foil! The resulting bead is very pretty.

Here is why this way succeeded:

1) Debbie suggested putting the foil over a clear color for best results. I added it over Moretti clear.

2) I cut the foil much narrower than it had been previously. This made it easier to encase the whole thing.

After adding the foil and burnishing it, I started heating the clear to encase it, but just as it was melting, I remembered that I should use the clear pale aqua. So I had to switch rods, not good when you're under a time limit before your gas gets unusable. I had also used some time before trying to pull a good stringer, which came out the right thickness, if not long enough.

But I managed to cover all the silver, though it required going over it several times, and had to wait patiently, turning the rod, for the clear aqua to melt. When it did, it looked like the foil was suspended in water. Very cool.

Next I added the flower dots. These came out better than they ever had before. Unfortunately, I messed one up a bit when plunging, and the end result was making the bead a bit lopsided and the flower imperfect. It took forever in the final encasing for the last layer to melt and even out, so I ended up with a slightly imperfect bead, but very pretty nevertheless.


After this bead, I changed tanks and went to play with the frit Debbie had given me. Since I had seen her work magic with the frit she had, I tried to play with the colors on my torch. I made a clear bead, then added the frit until it mostly covered the surface of the bead. Then I heated and cooled it, using the oxidizing area of the flame (farther out) to try to get interesting colors. I definitely got different colors than before, pretty ones. I then added stringer organic dots and stripes in black. I like (don't love) the finished bead.

Forgotten bead

Oops, I forgot to add another bead made before. It's a sweet little one made of copper green, with yellow and red flowers and clear dots. I saw the clear dots on another bead, and thought they looked like dewdrops. Very nice.

The silvery color around the center apparently isn't supposed to be there, and Debbie said I can remove it with cola or toilet bowl cleaner. Yum, what a comparison! Good thing I don't drink cola.



Thanks for viewing. I appreciate all the kind comments left by supportive people!

Annealing beads, and Kidlet!

Debbie kindly agreed to allow me to come over to her house to anneal beads. I couldn't resist the opportunity to make a few last beads. I'd stayed up very late Friday night trying to research the problems with silver foil. The only things I found out were ways to prevent the silver yellowing the clear, a problem I haven't seen too much, but useful information nevertheless. I found lots of other great info, though, including accounts of the myriad ways lampworkers can burn themselves (don't let a flying piece of hot glass get into your cleavage, LOL)! So rather than head over to Debbie's right away, I made a couple more last-minute beads.

The first one, of course, was another attempt at the foil. This one was better foil-wise and with nice flowers, but not shaped well. I also added dots on the surface of this one. Here is a photo.



When I asked Debbie about the foil, she said that the mossy effect is what silver is supposed to do if it's near the surface. Essentially I have to learn to encase the foil better. The problems are twofold: 1) I'm cutting the foil too wide, and 2) I'm not encasing it completely, which is largely to do with my torch. She said this is an ambitious project to do with my torch. Yay! I'm not a total idiot!

The other thing I made was a Kidlet, following a tutorial I found in my wanderings Friday evening. It's so cute! I'm pretty happy with how he turned out. Two pieces, as it shows. I'm wearing it now.



While we waited for the kiln to do its thing, I bought a bunch more glass from Debbie, along with some bead release and etching cream. She's so nice to let me do this. She has some really rare colors, too.

She also made a bead while I enviously watched her work on her Big Girl torch. Sigh. It's so much easier. She made a gorgeous bead using this amazing frit that she just started using, and she made the bead a shape that was new to her. So inspiring!

I've been chomping at the bit about my torch setup. I really don't mind using a baby torch for my silversmithing, but it's not working for me in lampwork. I feel like I could do so much more with a better torch.

I'd thought a better torch was an impossible dream, but then I started thinking about drilling a hole in the outside wall of our basement and running a hose through the hole to a tank in the shed. Then I remembered something and went to look Saturday morning. Sure enough, a hole already exists! It must have been used for a dust collector or something, and it's covered now with duct tape. So it would be a relatively simple matter to set this up, if and when I can afford it. Woo hoo!

Oh, and one sad note. My cube bead split in the annealing cycle. RIP, first square bead. The others all survived. Phew!

Determined, but Foiled Again

Last night's last bead cracked neatly in half... too late to repair it now! Wish I had received Krystal Kelly's message about how to heal cracked beads yesterday... but I probably couldn't have done it on my setup anyway, since I don't have a kiln to warm the bead up.

Tonight I tried two more. On the first one, the gas ran out on me (for the first time!) right when I was near the end. I think it turned out okay, though. But I didn't get to encase the flowers. Here it is:



The second one was better, though it also fell out of the fiber blanket when I was removing the first cooled bead. Finally fixed it so that won't happen again. I made this one on a full tank of gas. Unfortunately I'm still getting the mossy effect where the edges of the silver are burning. I've been trying to research how to avoid this on Wetcanvas, but without any luck so far. I wonder what others' opinions of these beads will be? Guess I'll find out when I post pics tomorrow.



I think I need to give up on silver foil for now, at least until I can ask Debbie's advice. This seems to be a really ambitious project for my current skill level. Plus I'm almost out of the clear rods that will melt with the Hothead! It's next to impossible to spread the clear glass the way I need to in order to properly encase the beads.

Here are the instructions on how to heal a cracked bead, from Krystal of Luna Beads:

"Okay, to answer your other question about the cracked bead: you can "heal" a crack in a bead. However, any raised surface design will probably melt into the base if you aren't careful. Most of the cracks I deal with are ones that happen while I'm working. I do 5 beads on one mandrel at a time; sometimes one of them will get too cool and crack while I'm working on one of the others. BUT, to heal a crack that you notice after you take a bead out of the blanket or vermiculite:
1) leave the bead on the mandrel
2) make sure the bead doesn't have any of that lovely vermiculite dust on it, but keep the bead and the bead release dry
3) place the bead, still on the mandrel, into your COLD kiln
4) fire up the old kiln to about 960 degrees or so. You want everything to be good and hot, but not sticky or slumpy.
5) Okay, now that everything is hot, here comes the tricky part. Light your torch.
6) Go get a washcloth that is completely wet (wring out the excess water, but leave it really damp). Fold it into fourths. When you reach in to get that mandrel, the metal is going to be about 960 degrees. The part sticking out is fine, but every other part is way hot.
7) While you're high-tailing it over to your torch with your hot bead, get the hot part of the mandrel area that you will need to hold wrapped in the washcloth. It will sizzle.
8) Get that bead in the flame and keep it warm while you finish cooling the mandrel off.
9) Now that you can handle your mandrel, locate the crack. Slowly heat the bead to get the entire bead hot. If you have raised decoration, try to avoid it by pointing the flame to areas without decoration. Once the bead is hot, watch the crack. You want to see it go red hot and molten. Once the crack is molten, it is a crack no more! :-) Do what you would normally do: let that spot cool down, get the whole bead a consistent temperature, and pop that bead back into the kiln!

That's a whole lot of trouble, I know. I mainly do that if a bead that I just loved broke on me, or if I'm doing something really unique and don't think that bead will ever come along again. You really will save yourself some heartache if you can possibly anneal as you go along. Like I said, I understand why it's a pain, but the desire to make the big and complex beads is really hard to resist as your skills grow, and it's hard to throw some of your favorites in the trash after you've worked so hard!"

Note: I asked her afterward, and she confirmed that it should be fine to use a heavy leather glove to handle the mandrel instead, though this should be tested. I use the glove to remove my torch head from the gas when I'm changing tanks and it's really hot, and I barely feel any heat.

Bad luck in threes?

Today, after making the final two beads in my rainbow, I went for a really ambitious bead. I decided to try the same kind of flowered bead as last time, but this time adding silver foil as an additional layer underneath. Instead I ended up adding to my future frit collection.

Final two rainbow beads:



The first bead, which was almost complete, died when I was denting the flower centers with my bead rake. So disappointing!

The second bead died when my gas went too low. I thought I'd experiment with keeping the bead in the blanket while changing the tank. When I reintroduced it to the flame, slowly, I thought, it shattered.

Bead number three was a near loss. I completed the bead, leaving out the vines layer to make it more manageable this time, and left it in the blanket. It was tough; my torch isn't hot enough to easily melt the clear encasing. But when I was putting in another bead (because I just had to make one more!), the first one fell out onto the concrete floor.

As you can imagine, I was horrified, having heard the sound of glass breaking. Fortunately, it was only a small piece that had attached further up on the mandrel, and not part of the bead. The bead seems to be intact. I'm letting it cool more, and will post results later.

Later: Unfortunately, the bead cracked. I don't know if it will come off the mandrel intact or not.

Improvements are happening!

I'm pretty proud of the progress I've made over the last few days. Here is a photo of a couple more beads that show I'm starting to be able to make consistently well-shaped beads:



In case it's not obvious, these solid-color beads are for a project I have in mind. I've been making one per bead-making session. They take less gas than the fancier beads, so it occurred to me to save them till later, when my tank has chilled and the torch is cooler. Sigh. I'm already starting to get frustrated with this torch setup.

Now on to more exciting beads. On Monday evening, I tried to create a bead with a certain pattern. When encasing it, I managed to completely destroy the pattern, so I gave up and went for an organic look. Sure enough, it turned out so pretty! It's the largest bead I've made on this setup, too.



And now for the latest favorite bead: This one was an attempt at the same bead I tried Monday evening, embarrassing though it is to admit what Monday's attempt was. This one was much more successful! I'd been leery of keeping any paper on my workbench for fear of frying it, but this time I put the tutorial there out of harm's way so I could follow it. And voila, a very pretty bead! All of the flowers are recognizable as such, though I photographed the best one here. There are several layers with clear encasing between. The vines got a little smudged, but the flowers stayed intact. I'm very proud of myself! And everyone who sees the bead in person really admires it. I think I'm getting closer to saleable beads!



I'd post the link to the tutorial, but it's still too embarrassing... will do so after I master the technique.

Thanks for looking!

Playing With Techniques

Tonight I added photos to my previous post, so scroll down to see the progressions of the photos.

I've been very busy with work for school and making wedding jewelry, so there hasn't been much time for torching. But I have been consuming Cindy Jenkins's book, and I was finally ready to try some new techniques the other day.

Technique 1: In the very end of the book, she gives some troubleshooting tips. One tip enabled me to finally make a perfectly round and shaped bead! This tip was that newbies tend to apply glass to the mandrel without starting at the very tip of the molten glass. I started doing this, as well as shaping up a basic bead before adding more glass, and the improvement has been huge! Here's a photo of my first Perfect Orange Bead.


Moving from perfection to definite imperfection (otherwise known as experimentation), we move onto the saga of the semi-lentil. Debbie had told me that the best tool to make lentils was the Target ice tongs. The "famous" Target ice tongs, in fact. So I went to Target, fully intending to buy a pair. And I thought that would be easy! No such luck. It took a long time trying to ask unwilling associates to help me, but in the end it seemed they were out of stock. I found some Oneida ice tongs, but they didn't seem to make an even lentil shape when closed. There was an item that was out of stock, and the tag read "SS Tongs," so I figured these must be them. When the customer service folks tried to look them up, however, hundreds of items came up! So I kept hitting a dead end and ended up buying the Oneidas.

I used the Oneidas to smush the bead (below), which is not an even bead, or even really a lentil, but came out kinda cool, looking like honey. Then, since I wanted to experiment with eye dots, I gave it eyes on both sides. I don't really know why. I don't like this bead, but my fifth grade students love it! They think it's so cute!


My final bead for the day was a dual experiment. On one side I decided to place a millefiori piece. Since my first attempt smushed the glass all to weird shapes, I discovered that a) I needed to make a bigger base bead, and b) I needed to raise the piece to my hot glass, which I did with the back of my thing with the little ridges in it that I don't know what to call - help, anyone? Anyway, it eventually worked. The pic of the bead makes it look like the black feathered out, which it didn't; it's only a reflection. Also, when pushing the millefiori in, it distorted the beads, and I was reluctant to round it out too much for fear of ruining the millefiori. So I used the tongs again to help even up the sides and square up the bead.


Finally, I wanted to try making a flower, so I did so on the other side of the same red bead. Needless to say, it's pretty ugly, but hey, at least it's recognizable as a flower! Unfortunately, a little of the yellow glass turned threadlike and attached itself to the bead. Oh well!

More torching

Tonight I tried a burch of techniques. In a way, I'm reviewing what Tink did with me before I move ahead. Although I did try two new things...

• Made two beads on a mandrel. This was pretty hard with the cooler torch, especially since the tank was already at the "need-to-rest" stage. But they pretty much match in size. Neither is perfect, but they're both workable. Note that the dark shapes on the beads are reflections of other beads.



• Used this wonderful color called "copper green," recommended and sold to me by Debbie. Wow, it's beautiful! And it winds onto the mandrel like a dream. Especially good after a green bead I made out of what must have been Bullseye accidentally; it took tons of time to work with! Very pretty now, though.



• I then added some frit given to me by Debbie to the copper green. She wasn't sure it would work, but it's really cool! I love this bead.



• And for the grand finale, I made an indigo bead, added organic stripes of black, then ivory, and encased it (!!!!)


• If that weren't enough, I wanted to try a square bead. Frustrated at the lack of marvers, I looked again at my stainless steel table, and thought -- why not! So I used that surface, carefully reheating each cooled spot after pressing it, and voila - an encased square bead!

I'm so proud of myself.

Latest beads

I haven't torched in the last couple of days, as I've been busy with some orders. But I was able to take photos of my latest beads to post here.

I've received nice offers from lampworkers to batch anneal my beads for me. Yippee! I'm also on the lookout for a decent kiln, but in no hurry at the moment.

Photos:


This bead came out with some beautiful patternings in it, which I guess is an inherent property of the glass, according to Debbie. And the dots mostly came out okay, but I had trouble with one, so it got to be too big. Obviously I haven't cleaned the bead release out of it yet.


I call this one "creamsicle" because it reminds me of a grape creamsicle, with the colors and patterns that turned out in it.

My last bead won't come off the mandrel. Plus it was a real experiment that didn't turn out well; it's pretty ugly, I think. My first bead I don't think is worth salvaging! Not a bad record so far.

A generous community

Since I started lampworking, people have been so sweet... Rebecca S. offered to send me a care package. I found another lampworker, Debbie S., in my area, through the ISGB forum. She was offering free cans of MAPP gas she doesn't need anymore. When we got in touch, she offered to let me buy a few supplies from her. Yippee, especially since I had that problem at that store!

We met today, and she was so kind. She told me all about the properties of different glasses. It's amazing to find out so much information; she knows the glass almost like intimately knowing another person. She also told me that the man who gave me a hard time has quite a reputation and routinely puts people off. I wish it were otherwise.

I picked out some beautiful rods from her extensive collection, as well as some gorgeous dichroic glass pieces. She said it's actually easier to work with that glass on a Hothead torch than a "better" torch. I'm still going to wait until my skills improve, though!

I took a couple of hours to work on beads today. Made a sweet little turquoise one with just the right shape and good puckers. I'm so proud! I added black dots, but had some trouble with one of the dots I placed late in the game. Should have left well enough alone...

I also made a nice one that looks like a creamsicle, with violet and cream mixed together. And the last one was a big experiment; I'm not sure how well it turned out. I tried lots of things on it. Good for learning, anyway.

Will post pics when possible. Back to teaching school tomorrow!

One more thing. Someone posted a link to a majorly extraordinary lampworker, and I want to save it, but not in my mess of bookmarks. So here it is: Tobler Glass Creations. I doubt that I'll ever get that good!