More silver glass: Gaia and Clio

In getting ready for the jewelry market at Spruill Center for the Arts, I made more glass beads using new silver glass colors, Gaia and Clio, as well as my old favorites Thallo and Aurae.  i have to confess that i was unable to get any really nice colors out of Gaia.  i found it much harder to work with than Thallo and i wasn't impressed with the colors after encasing:

In the picture, Thallo beads are on the left, Gaia on the right.  The Gaia doesn't look like more than encased emerald green.

The Clio beads were much nicer. showing an interesting range of colors and a nice metallic sheen when encased:

I'll definitely be working with this color more in the future.

Happy New Year and Aurae Glass

Happy New Year!  I hope this finds all my readers well and eager to fulfill their New years resolutions.  Mine will be taking me away from lampwork glass as a hobby.  I still will be working on glass beads, but I won't have as much time as I have had in the past.  Since I won't have as much time to experiment with new techniques, I will be cutting back on my posting schedule:  perhaps once every three to four weeks instead of every two weeks which I have tried to maintain.

For today, I have just a brief note on Aurae glass.  All of the smaller beads shown have been made with my usual technique of wrapping a small coil of Aurae glass on a mandrel, shaping it briefly, reducing it, then encasing with clear:

The result is a pretty shade of blue over a light purple base.  The larger bead was made using Margaret Zinser's technique which I have described before.  I have also tried to add a stripe of Aurae on a bicone bead using transparent dark amethyst or medium transparent blue without much success.  The reduced Aurae doesn't show up very well.  I'll continue to experiment and show you the results if I'm successful.

Berries in the snow

I saw a cute idea for Christmas beads in the December issue of Artisan Jewelry Times.  Just make small, round beads with various shades of Effetre red glass and roll in clear frit:

And here are the earrings I made from them:

I'll enjoy wearing them for the holiday season.

Implosion/petal beads

I'm back at Spruill Arts Center taking bead making classes from Margo Knight.  Our first class was implosion/petal/lotus beads.  I'm not going to try to explain them, but I'll refer you instead to a detailed explanation on Lampwork Etc. by j2canoe entitled appropriately "How to Make the Implosion/Petal Beads".  Here are mine:

These are time consuming to make but worth it in the end.

Thallo silver glass

My next trial of Double Helix silver glass is Thallo, which is a beautiful green which reduces to iris green:

On the top row are two beads made by adding a  stripe of Thallo on the equator,  reducing.  The first is on transparent green, the next on transparent light green.  on the bottom row are two beads made by adding a small amount of Thallo to a mandrel, reducing, then encasing.  I love the turquoise in the first bead.  The last bead is made entirely of Thallo, which is reduced after shaping. 

I'll be taking a break from bead-making for the next week or two to prepare for the Georgia Goldsmiths Guild's Holiday Jewelry Marketplace, which will be held at Holy Innocents' Episcopal Church, 805 Mount Vernon Highway in Atlanta on Friday, November 18, 10 til 4 and Saturday, November 19, 10 til 3.  If you live in the Atlanta area, stop by!  Mentioning this blog will get you 10% anything you buy from my booth.

 

Psyche silver glass

This is the next installment in my series on silver glass, and its based on a tutorial I recently purchased from Anouk Jasperse called Making Silver Glass Sing.  She focuses on Psyche, Triton and Aurae.  Here are the beads I've made using the techniques she describes:

All of these are encased.  I just love the beautiful metallic blue.  For details on the technique, see the tutorial.  Thanks, Anouk!

Silver glass: Ossa

I'm back at my torch, experimenting (or maybe playing is more appropriate) with silver glass.  o started with two rods of Double Helix Ossa which I obtained from a friend.  This glass is a light magenta with inclusions, which reduces to a goldish metallic sheen.  Here are some of the beads I've made with it:

The bead in the upper right is Ossa alone with no reduction.  You can see the light purplish color and the inclusions, very nice but not worth the extra cost of silver glass.  The upper left bead is a swipe of Ossa over opal yellow, Ossa over Effetre purple and Ossa over transparent light purple.  All three have been reduced.  The last one is my favorite.  Although the picture shows more of an amber color, the reduced Ossa shows up very nicely over the light purple in real life.  However, I'm not enthused enough to go out and buy a batch.

Hollow glass shells

Now that summer has arrived, I've been thinking about beaches and beach combing and a recent issue of Soda Lime Times gave me some ideas for making shell beads, using hollow beads.  The results, still experimental are shown below:

The one in the lower left was made on a puffy mandrel, using two layers of glass, a transparent pin, and ivory.  I purposefully left one spot thinner than the rest, and as I kept blowing that spot ballooned out until it popped.  Then I played with the edges to produce a shell-like shape.  The others were made by first laying down a thin tube of pink (CIM Desert Pink).  Then I built up discs of ivory or CIM Butter Pecan at either end, pushed them together and let nature take its course in making a hollow bead.  When I achieved the shape I wanted, I heated one spot until glowing, then pulled that part of the bead with my pliers and when sufficiently cool, I cut it with nippers and opened up the resulting hole, again playing with the edges to mimic a shell.  There's plenty of room for improvement and improvisation!

Caramel candy

I recently purchased some Double Helix silver glass from Franz Glass and I've been experimenting with the colors.  One idea I found as a free tutorial on Lampwork, Etc.   It's listed as fire opal but it reminds me more of creamy caramel.   You make a base bead out of black,  wrap silver foil around it, burning off the edges but leaving the band intact.  Then you heat a rod of Ekho and when the tip is transparent you, you lay down one or two swirls of the glass around the bead, then encase with clear. 

In addition to using black as my base bead, I tried butter pecan (CIM 703), shown in the middle, and honey crunch (Vetrofond 990), shown at the end.  I think I prefer the lighter background,  They look good enough to eat!

Striped beads

I've been trying to make striped beads forever and haven't had any success.  at a recent class at Spruill Center for the Arts with Margo, she demoed the technique she uses and the results is shown below:

The base for these beads was black or ink blue;  the dots were made by placing 6 largish white dots around the bead, leaving space between them.  The amount of space determines whether there will be a dark line between the stripes or not line.  Then I places transparent colors on top of the white, in this case alternating transparent pea green and aqua.  I allowed the dots to melt in completely before placing clear around the bead in the center of the dots, being careful not to touch the edge.  I put several (3-4) layers of clear, then melted that in.  Voila! Stripes!

Southwest frit

After having spent a month touring the national parks of Arizona and Utah, I feel inspired to make beads and jewelry with a southwestern motif.  I've attempted to recreate the scenery of the winter landscape:  sagebrush and juniper against a background of red sandstone mesas.  I made my own frit mixture from commando (CIM 475), shrubbery (CIM 410), muskmelon (CIM426), pine tree (Effetre 344), light brown (Effetre 0444, spanish leather (Effetre 423), and brown rock (Effetre 654).  Here's what the frit mixture looks like:

Here are some of the beads I've made from it:

The three beads on the left were made by adding the frit to a base beads of commando, canyon de chelly (CIM 722) and stone ground (CIM 351), respectively plus periwinkle (Effetre 220) for the sky.  I melted in silver wire on the second bead from the left.  The bead on the right was made by adding frit to a base bead of red roof tile.

As usual, it's highly likely that these beads or ones like them will end up on my Etsy site:  etsy.com/shop/DeborahDRoss

Devardi blues

I mentioned buying an assortment of green glass rods from Devardi recently.  At the same time, I purchased an assortment of blue glass rods:

Most of them have a distinct turquoise hue.  I've been using them for larger hole beads, some for 2mm leather and some with big holes (greater than 4 mm):

It looks like these colors will expand my available colors in the turquoise range.

Devardi greens

My kiln is waiting for a new relay, so in the meantime I'll report on a project I've been working: playing with a stash of Devardi green glass I recently purchased from Amazon.  The glass is a mixture of rods of various colors and transparancies:

Using different frits, enamels and pixie dust, I've come up with an interesting assortment of basic round beads to use in future jewelry projects:

I especially like pixie dust---more on that later.

Autumn colors

The temperatures and the humidity are dropping in Georgia and there is a definite nip in the air.  It's time to start thinking about fall.  I've made an attempt to reproduce the Pantone fall colors in lampwork beads and here's the result:

As usual when attempting to reproduce the Pantone colors, its sometimes difficult to find an exact match in lampwork glass.  The glass I have selected is as follows, from top left to top right (Effetre unless otherwise noted): Alabaster turquoise (352), Lipstick (CIM 140), Avocado green (210), Weimaraner (CIM 811), EDP (254), Leaky pen (CIM 508), Heat wave (420), Desert pink (CIM 957), unknown color (label lost in the move from Fort Wayne to Atlanta), Lichen (Vetrofond 986).  All of the beads have a stringer of silvered ivory wrapped round the equator of the bead with silver wire melted in, and have been distorted out of round to add interest.  They are currently on sale in my Etsy shop: www.etsy.com/shop/DeborahDRoss.

Purple

Awhile ago, I purchase Timeless Purple frit from Bead Goodies.  I've been experimenting with it and one combination I like is the frit over a base bead of Plum (CIM 658).  After melting in the frit, I let the bead heat up and flow under gravity.  When I like what I see, I cool the bead, add dichroic sparkles (magenta), encase the bead in clear, and shape it.  Then I add cubic zirconium or two for good measure and this is the result:

Similar beads will be on sale in my Etsy shop soon (www.etsy.com/shop/DeborahDRoss).

40 shades of blue

In celebration of its 40th anniversary, Spruill Center for the Arts is holding a gallery exhibition entitled 40x.  Spruill students and instructors are encouraged to submit work which relates to 40 of something.  Those of us enrolled in Margo's Lampworking class decided on a theme of "40 shades of blue".  We each brought in various shades of blue glass rods, divided them up and made donut beads from each of the rods.  Here are the beads as they came out of the kiln:

Each of the students in the class has the option of submitting their own take on 40, so check back and see what I come up with.   The submissions will be on display at Spruill from October 9, 2015 to January 4, 2016.  Hope you can stop by!

Copper foil

It's summer so it's time for Margo Knight's lampwork bead class at Spruill Arts Center in Atlanta.  For the first class of the session, we learned the tricks of how to apply copper foil to beads, something which I have done before without much success.  It turns out that you must lay down a thick layer of enamel prior to placing and marvering the foil (except for white---more about this next time).   Then you must heat the glass to develop the blue-green color.  I applied frit (Georgia Peach from Val Cox) on top of the heated copper, followed by teal and white stringer, and finally gold foil:

The tabs in the above photo were made on white glass with enamel, and the tube bead was made on turquoise with enamel.

Turquoise and enamel

I've already done quite a bit of experimenting with enamels on glass and below is a combination that I like:

Thompson Enamel transparent beryl green (9443) on top of light turquoise (Effetre), with and without melted silver wire.  I like the ocean waves effect.  Look for these soon in my Etsy shop:  www.etsy.com/shop/DeborahDRoss

Lily pads

I bought a new frit color a while ago, Lily Pad from Glass Diversions, and I have been experimenting with it on different backgrounds.  Below is the frit on Nile Green Opalino (Effetre):

I've already made earrings with the combination and they are for sale in my Etsy shop (www.etsy.com/shop/DeborahDRoss);  bead sets of these beads will be on sale soon.

On the beach

After a brief vacation to visit my daughter over the Easter weekend, I'm back in Georgia, experimenting with stripped beads reminiscent of a beach landscape.  Here are some of the combinations I've come up with:

The small beads are made as described in the previous post:  a single color with a stripe of silvered ivory around the equator, accented with silver wire.  The larger beads made with stripes of various Effetre colors laid over Seashell Swirl (Vetrofond 955):  light turquoise, Nile green opalino, transparent teal and light lapis with a stripe of silvered ivory and a twist with a cubic zirconium in the middle.   The larger bead on the left has been fitted with sterling silver bead caps and a bail made from silver wire fitted with a silver bead.  As usual, similar beads will soon be on sale in m Etsy shop (etsy.com/shop/DeborahDRoss).