Lampwork quiz updated

For the quiz to work better and not guess randomly if the answers are evenly split, I modified the quiz by adding another question. You can find the quiz here: Your Lampwork Element Quiz.

Last Lampwork In USA, and Tip for Turning

Today was my last day to torch before flying to Israel. It happened to be somewhere around 100 degrees outside, too, so it was sweaty business! But I did all right. The first order of business was to make a whole bunch of beads in rainbow colors (actually two sets). That went fine, except that on the first bead, I found it impossible to turn the mandrel. This was because I had unconsciously come to rely on my pinky ring to be the mandrel rest and to make it easy to turn the mandrel. Had to stop after one bead and go put on my rings. So -

Here is my TIP: Wear a pinky ring to help make mandrel turning easier!

In addition to the rainbow beads, I made a couple of experimental just-for-fun beads. This is why we lampwork, right? And this time, they came off the mandrels! Woo hoo!

The first was a bead that started with an ivory base, then added a dichroic stripe. Next, dark ivory and copper green dots were added. The finishing touch was to create diagonal grooves in the bead. The first view shows the beads coloration; the second shows the shape and grooves.


The second was a special bead that I made for a girl who had a Bat Mitzvah today. It started with a bunch of turquose, more glass than I usually use on this torch. Then I made little flowers with this pretty pink that Rebecca S. sent me, along with periwinkle. I made ivory dots between the flowers, plunged the flower centers and put a dot of clear over the holes. Didn't matter, because they just melted out. There were some pretty interesting reactions between the turquose and pink, as well as the expected ones between the ivory and turquoise.

After lentilizing the bead, I used the encased goldstone stringer also sent to me by Rebecca and made her initials: S on one side, H on the other. You can see the pretty details of the reactions between the glasses in the photos.



As usual, the purple tones don't come out in photography, so the bead is much more striking in person than here. It was fun trying these experiments!

New lampworking quiz

Find out what element your lampworking is with this nifty new quiz I made! (Yes, I did this instead of finishing the clean-up or taking a nap. We don't always make the best choices when we're sleepy, do we?)

Your Lampwork Element Quiz

The show taping is done!

And the house is a mess, and I'm too sleepy to clean it up. Last night I took an allergy tablet to try to prevent asthmatic laryngitis for the taping. It backfired, because it kept me up with my thoughts spinning, so in total, I probably only had about three hours' sleep. NOT the best way to have your one-time TV appearance!

But it's all right. I managed, though my voice went bad a couple of times. The taping took a long, long time, from 8 AM to 2 PM. It was a lot of work! But the crew had a fun time together, and it was entertaining just watching them.

On the bead, I messed it up a few times, but managed to rescue it. Phew! It would not have been fun trying to make the bead several times over. I wore contact lenses for the shoot, which I don't normally do, and my didymium glasses kept falling down, since they wanted me to have them loose to be able to put them up and say things while looking at the camera. Also, the torch was very loud, and they asked me to speak over it. Then we went back through and I repeated everything I had said the first time with no torch in the background this time. This taxed my voice. So the segment may show me messing up the bead, or not. Who knows!

I scared the producers and crew with flying jump rings when cutting them. Fun stuff. Also, one kinda cool thing is that they taped me doing the lampwork in front of a light green tablecloth I use for shows. We were joking that they could turn it into a "green screen," where they could project any kind of scene behind me, setting my studio wherever they liked. Paris, a forest, a desert, zooming down the highway, whatever!

Anyway, it's finished now. Time for a nap.

Here's a photo of the crew with me after the shoot. Left to right: Ryan the sound guy (thus headphones), Eric the camera guy (thus the camera); Celia the producer, me looking wiped out, and Lorelei the producer. Smile for the camera, everyone!

Day before the filming

As my nails with the pearly peach polish dry from their tacky state, I type this blog entry. Why, you ask? For the show, as I have no time to get a real manicure. How do you type with tacky fingernails, you ask? Very carefully, I say!

This has been an utterly hectic time. Pressure after pressure has mounted upon me. Last week, it was writing some thirty pages of progress reports for my middle school students. Then I had a brief respite at a wonderful retreat over the weekend. This was followed by two days off work spent preparing the house for the TV taping, as well as catching up on life in general.

Wednesday and yesterday were flat-out working on the school yearbook, which had to be at the printers this morning. This was, of course, at the same time as I had to teach year-end classes, do more work on progress reports (still not finished), and meet with the producers of the show in the afternoon yesterday! To finish the yearbook, I worked at my co-teacher's house with her until 2 AM. It was a massive amount of work. So I ended up getting about 3.5 hours of sleep.

Then today, more work had to be done on the yearbook. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that my class is performing a play on Monday, no small feat! And one scene of the play was written by a student and sent to me Tuesday night, revised by me Wednesday, revised more by him that night, and given final revisions Thursday for the first rehearsal yesterday and the second (& last) one today. Now, after spending about an hour reading emails, I still have about 600 unread messages left.

So... lampwork? What lampwork? I did some torching Tuesday evening because I had to for the show. I blew up the stuck beads, cringing in panic that the hot sharp pieces would fly at me. I got lucky, though, and am starting to learn to control the shattering. I also made two test beads, one on a mandrel that was double-dipped in the release that was too thin, and the other on a mandrel dipped in my original bead release. Both of them came off like a dream. Nice beads, too. It would be a nightmare to have them get stuck while taping for the show! Oh, and I ordered a kiln. It should come while I'm in Israel, hopefully.

My nails seem drier now. They turned out pretty! Hopefully they will be nice enough on the show, and they won't chip, especially when making the chainmaille.

Besides setting up a display of my jewelry, the most important thing I have left to do tonight is to make a lampwork bead like the one to be demonstrated tomorrow. On less than four hours of sleep, I'm not looking forward to it... it's all I can do to stay awake. Wish me luck!

If they let me, I'll post photos of the taping tomorrow.

Stuck beads

I guess my last lampwork night was a total loss. None of the beads will come off the mandrels. I think the bead release I was using was too thin. Too bad, because I really liked a couple of the beads. Maybe I'll photograph them before destroying them... I really need the mandrels. Very sad.

No more torching for a few days, as I'll be out of town at a conference. But I'll be back Monday and Tuesday, working hard to prepare for the TV show!

Back in the saddle

After too many tortuous days of too many hours spent on job-related work, during which I was unable to touch the torch, I finally descended into the basement. It has been a cool Spring in Boston so far, so I wasn't prepared for a hot, muggy night in my basement. To my surprise, despite the fact that the basement has always been chilly, even too chilly, I wound up sweating over the torch. This is partly due to the fact that we are having a thunderstorm, and the humidity is through the roof - my hygrometer reads about 77%.

My aims at the torch were first, to have fun; second, to make a non-breaking new cat body; third, to try a flower again, and that's about it. Oh wait, I was going to make a palm tree...

Instead, I broke a lot of glass.

How, or why, you ask?

It was accidental, I assure you! Lots of little things. Trying to make petals with the wrong kind of tools, and having them shatter on me. Introducing the rod to the flame too fast, forgetting that even though I felt hot, the rods might not feel the same. Trying to make more green stringer for the TV show, and, well, finding I haven't exactly mastered that.

The other weird thing was that torching felt totally alien to me. I couldn't remember which hands to use for what, and the glass seemed to melt too fast, and, and... Then I remembered that I was wearing the new lampworking glasses, which I'd only worn once, and I was using a much smaller mandrel than I ever had. Eventually I got the hang of it again, but I've definitely lost ground.

To the beads: The palm tree was a dismal disaster. I don't know what I was thinking. My tan base (I don't have brown) for the trunk turned another color. And forget the leaves. So I melted it all down to form a... well... interesting sculptural bead. Let me know what you think when I post pics.

The next bead was an attempt to do a color change reaction with ivory and turquoise. I wanted to add another color, and the dichro rod was just sitting there, soooo.... I think it turned out pretty!

The last one was a kitty bead body. We'll see how that one turned out. I'm not sure the top of the bead came out too well. But I tried to make it structurally more sound, so hopefully parts won't randomly break off this time.